Communicator (communicator) wrote,
Communicator
communicator

Abortion Debate in Commons

Tomorrow (I think) the House of Commons considers the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. There is a chance that the time limit for abortion will be cut back: perhaps from 24 to 20 weeks. Some people may know that my brother has a daughter who was born at about 23 weeks (almost two years ago now) and against the odds not only survived but seems to have escaped disability.

Nevertheless I am against changing the legal position. This is because I think that there are desperate situations where a foetus must be removed from inside a woman quite late in pregnancy, and I wouldn't want the woman or the doctors to be deprived of this recourse.

I do think late abortion is a dreadful thing. There is one obvious way in which it can be reduced - and that is to make early abortion easier to obtain. Reduce the cost, stigma, waiting period and other barriers, and the proportion of late abortions will reduce.

There are three sure-fire ways to reduce the number of abortions overall. These are, in order of ease of making it happen: 1 - More widespread understanding of reproduction and access to contraception. 2 - Reduce the hardship and stigma associated with motherhood (e.g. among the young, the old, the unmarried etc) 3 - make women more financially and emotionally independent of men (so they are more confident to say no to sex they aren't happy with). In other words - radical feminism.

Some people of traditional views may not like these changes, but if they really feel abortion is as overwhelming a social evil as they say, I don't see how they can oppose them.
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  • Phew what a scorcher

    I see Gove has backed down on climate change and it's back in the curriculum again.

  • GCSE Computer Science

    My book is now for sale

  • LJ Settings

    At the moment I have set up this journal so that only friends can comment. I hate doing this, but I was just getting too much Russian spam.