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abortion stastics
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
personally im pro abortion and pro (reasonable informed) choice
but apparantly there are now more abortions due to highly treatable medical conditions like cleft palettes than ever before, and the number of abortions of downes syndrome kids now out does live births
is this a sign of people seeking perfect babies and consumer is always right society, when lets face it - life isnt perfect and its the imperfections that make life what it is
and im aware lots of people believe they honestly couldnt cope with a downes syndrome child as it is a major effort, but it cant be that many
trying to find statistics at moment
but apparantly there are now more abortions due to highly treatable medical conditions like cleft palettes than ever before, and the number of abortions of downes syndrome kids now out does live births
is this a sign of people seeking perfect babies and consumer is always right society, when lets face it - life isnt perfect and its the imperfections that make life what it is
and im aware lots of people believe they honestly couldnt cope with a downes syndrome child as it is a major effort, but it cant be that many
trying to find statistics at moment
0
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im am searching i odnt take pleasure in making up stories
edited to say - can you close it?
I'm pro life and pro choice. Those characterisms are extremely one-sided.
If what you say is true (and to pessimistic me it certainly sounds true), it means that, as many people have said, people today in general have many more choices than their maturity allows. I think society itself is going through puberty: Its "body" is way more grown than its "mind".
or a girl to embaressed to buy condoms cause of what people will think
i just sit there thinking ':eek2: this person is having sex when they're acting so immature!!??'
It was in a newspaper I was reading last week.
The article I read was prompted by an exceptionally late abortion- the abortion was done outside the usual abortion window but was allowed due to the medical problems with the baby- and this was merely a cleft palete.
The article was focused on the doctor who allowed the abortion to be performed so late.
I know that's not much help as I can't back up my sources and all that but it was probably a shitty tabloid. Not sure which one.
the Mail online
It's a shame parents cannot be aborted. :mad:
My friend has 2 boistous kids and has just discovered that she may have a high risk that the one she is carrying now has downes. She's having another test today and has been told her options...abortion being one of them. I think she would have an abortion if there was evidence of downs...and I wouldn't blame her. if you find out early then you have a choice!
enough healthy babies are aborted because the mother feels she can't cope with a child. why is it different if the child has a disability?
having any child is really hard work, but having a diabled child is harder, and if a woman feels like she can't cope with that, then she should be able to make that choice without feeling guilty.
it annoys me when people talk about abortions of healthy babies as 'a woman's right to choose', but when it is revealed that the babies had abnormalities, the woman suddenly becomes a monster.
And we all know who the last people to try that out were don't we?
Wow, what a fantastically ill-informed opinion.
The doctor in the cleft-palate case only allowed the abortion because it was, in his opinion, a very serious disability; it was a very serious cleft palate, and in my opinion the religious fuckwit who called for the judicial enquiry should be ashamed of herself. That case is proof why religious bigots are dangerous, as they seem incapable of not getting involved in things that do not concern them.
Down's Syndrome is similarly a very serious disability, and the parent should have the choice to decide if she is capable of looking after that child.
If you only "begrudgingly" accept the right to abortion, what other solutions do you have in place? Contraception fails, before you suggest that; most women who have terminations are not reckless sluts who just can't keep their dirty little legs shut.
Shall we go back to back-street abortions performed with the use of a coat-hanger, causing the deaths of hundreds of women every year?
I find this 'fact' in particular very difficult to believe.
An excellent way of putting it.
Education, Education, Education as Mr Blair would say. Of course Abortion should be an option, and I wasn't going to suggest women who have terminations blah blah blah, for all we know it was planned.Why should something so harrowing be treated so trivially? Show me where it says where this case was a serious cleft palate, in the article or anywhere else and I'll concede.
And the "religious fuckwit" who called for the judicial inquiry was, herself, born with a cleft palate. She seems to be living a normal healthy life (even if she is in the clergy
Contraception doesn't always work, but 95-99% of the time it does. There's also emergency contraception as a failsafe, and at least 9 other methods other than condoms.
And....how can a routinely correctable developmental abnomality of the head be compared to an irreversable chromosome trisomy?
But the "legal timeframe" is slightly extended for cases where it is discovered that the child may be born with a severe handicap.
The law is rather vague as to its meaning of "severe" and the article I posted mentions a cleft-palete as being considered enough to warrant a late abortion.
Search for the last time the cleft palate abortion case came up, I think I started the thread. The abortion was allowed, and the doctor not prosecuted, because in their medical opinion the cleft palate was suitably severe to merit a termination, and it was discovered very late.
Just because she was born with a cleft palate does not give her the right to shove her nose in where it was not wanted. The motehr made a tough choice, and the doctors gave her it, fully within the law. West Mercia Police concurred with the medical opinion, then this silly trollope came wading in and issued a judicial review of West Mercia Police's decision to not prosecute the doctor who performed the abortion.
In the doctor's opinion the cleft palate was severe enough to count under the 1967 Abortion Act. The Police agreed, some religious busybody decided it didn't. I think i will trust the doctors more than a curate, cleft palate or no cleft palate.
I'm pro abortion and pro euthanasia (more strongly on the latter) as I believe that a woman's body is her own and it's her choice that should count. Yet at the same time there's the question...
Is abortion becoming more of a form of contraception than a last resort these days? Maybe it's better sex ed that we need...
As for the cleft palate... whilst often the condition is treatable with cosmetic surgery, I think it can be pretty nasty. I doubt it was easy for the woman to have the child aborted in the first place... some people seem to think that a woman will walk in and not give a toss... I know that if I were in that position it wouldn't be an experience I'd like to remember.
As for the anti-abortion people and fundies... Well maybe they should adopt or at least financially support all the kids brought in to a world that can't be supported by their families, or that are born with a crippling illness.
For what it's worth, when I thought my baby might be spina bifida last year, I had kind of decided that the only circumstances in which I would terminate were if the condition was "incompatible with life", e.g. anencephaly or something simillar. As it turned out there was nothing wrong with him though.
I'm not saying that abortions are not mainly (or only) the woman's choice, but you can't use that phrase as an argument in any case if it's not a general rule.
You said yourself in the old thread:
" But just how disabled is disabled?"
We could argue until hell freezes over what can be catagorised as a condition worthy of abortion and what isn't. I'm sure there are doctors out there who would consider cleft palate a minor problem including my lecturers when I was taught about cleft palate, but you are 100% correct that cleft palate CAN be serious if it spreads further into the skull. If this was the situation(and it is still treatable) then I'm sure the police would not have had a case to investigate.
But in reverse there are so many other abnormalities, really heartbreaking ones like Icthyosis and Anencephaly where the baby dies not long after birth, probably in agony, and for their own sakes need aborting which cannot really be classed alongside cleft palate, especially a minor "cosmetic" one which this case could or could not have been.
The law needs to be clearer as to "how disabled is disabled?".
THE NUMBER of foetuses aborted because of likely deformities has increased by 8 per cent in a year, figures have revealed. Overall 1,863 abortions were performed in 2002 under the law that allows termination where serious handicap is likely, including 690 with Downs syndrome, 17 per cent more than in 2002, and one with a cleft palate.
Oi. Sorry to wade in here slightly late but can't let all those comments go by without mention. Especially as you're usually so much more balanced than this, Kermit.
All the curate is doing is this: asking the courts to do their job and keep an eye on whether and to what extent doctors and the police are following the law. Remember, the Abortion Act was a very carefuly worked out piece of legislation. The police have now decided to investigate pending the court case. You can't chuck around words like 'fuckwit' just because you disagree with somebody's stance on something. And you can't assert that "the mother made a tough choice and the doctors gave it to her fully within the law" - that is the very question that the curate has asked the courts to decide. Kermit does not declare the law in the UK, the High Court does. It seems from the starting point to this thread that more people than a "religious busybody" are concerned about the appropriate limits of abortion. Let's give our courts the right to interpret the Abortion Act and let Parliament discuss any changes - but let's not demonise people who are expressing their opinion about what the changes should be, or giving the courts the opportunity to keep an eye on what public bodies are doing.
OK, rant over. I just read that and was rather disappointed. Sorry to go off on one!
The only person who should have been able to call this case into the courts is the Attorney General, certainly not some religious busybody who has shoved her unwelcome nose into something which has nothing at all to do with her.
Was she the mother? No.
Was she the doctor? No.
I hate people who do this sort of thing, it is disgraceful.
I put what I believed, I didn't say it was a rule.
But as for suicide, there's a difference between ending your life and bringing something in to the world that would change you in the long term. Suicide is a long term solution to a short term problem and people suffering from mental illness can be helped. But as for abortion, if a woman is raped then why shouldn't it be her right to terminate the baby? Instead of bring another life in to the world. It's her life that's going to change as well as the baby's life that's going to start.
Personally I don't believe that in a state of mental illness, a person should be allowed to terminate their life as help can be found, but in the case of terminal illness, I'm very pro-euthanasia.