A dreadful backward step

What if the timing of a woman's periods is irregular, ranging from three to five or six weeks over the months, and even missing one here and there? She would not suspect that she was pregnant until an abortion was out of the question, and could not even be considered (assuming she could find a doctor who would perform it at all)

It is likely that a woman in that position is more likely than average to have other health problems, physical ones or emotional ones like anorexia, and more likely to be at risk in pregnancy.

Shame on Texas

They see the pregnant woman as custodian of a separate life, and therefore see abortion as murder. We have people who support using a plane that could have rescued people from peril in Afghanistan for evacuating dogs instead. It's a funny old world, isn't it?

A woman should have control over her own body. No doubt that rule will spread all over USA so they will travel to Canada to obtain abortions. I support a woman's freedom to choose. My mother was a healthcare assistant in the 1950's and she saw a woman die from a botched up abortion and a few years later another woman came in for fertility treatment but received short thrift from both the nursing and medical healthcare professionals because she had previously tried to bring about an abortion herself. It is going back in time.

Horrified as I was about this step back into the dark ages, I was also shocked at the new gun laws!
“ New Texas law allowing people to carry handguns without permits stirs mix of fear, concern among law enforcement
Starting Sept. 1, most Texans will be able to carry handguns in public without going through training or having to get permits. Law enforcement officers worry that could make their jobs more dangerous.”

It has to be the right of each individual woman to choose what happens to her body. It is also true that, in some cases, not Be I Ing born is perhaps the better option.

I know of a young woman who is currently expecting a baby as a result of rape. She chose not to have an abortion. This is the second baby she has had after being raped, possibly because she is a crack addict and gets herself into dangerous situations when she is using, and possibly because she is small and vulnerable. The first child was taken away for adoption before her first birthday, because the young woman couldn't parent her properly. Her own childhood had been horrific and she had no idea how to be a mother. During both pregnancies, she tried to give up drugs and would be clean for long periods of time, but then the addiction would be too strong and she would go back on crack. She has been repeatedly warned that it may damage the baby but the need for drugs overwhelms her. Afterwards she loathes herself and wants to commit suicide. When this baby is born, it will probably be addicted too. It is likely that it will have permenant brain damage. When it is born, it will be taken straight into care.

I can't help thinking that maybe abortion might have been the better choice. That baby is suffering in the womb. Every time that its mum goes through withdrawal, baby does too. God knows what damage is done when mum goes back on drugs.

Maybe it will be undamaged. Maybe it will get wonderful foster parents who cope with a drug dependent baby, and loving, patient adoptive parents. But maybe none of those things will happen and it will be condemned to a miserable life before it is even born.

That's just one example of a case where non-existence might be better than existence, and at least her mother had a choice. If that choice is taken away from American women - and if it happens in Texas, it will happen in other states - how many damaged, unwanted children will have to be born? And the US system is harsh. There is very little provision for people who can't make it on their own.

My DD in the US says that abortion is a much more controversial political issue over there. She knows several people, including women, who wouldn't vote for Hilary Clinton because of her support for Roe vs Wade.

Yes I watched that Alioop, a very good dramatisation of the situation that normal, everyday families can find themselves in. Even more chilling, in Texas, the person who drives the woman to the abortion clinic can be prosecuted for enabling an abortion.

If any of you watched Three Families, about abortion laws in N.Ireland, there are a lot of reasons why some woman need to have them. It must be awful to make the decision to do it, never mind having idiots making laws forbidding you.

SueDonim

Isn’t it strange that once the babies that are so desired by the lawmakers are born, the very same people then want to wash their hands of them, affording the child and their family no statutory maternity leave, a lack of medical care, a minimal welfare social net, and an education that they begrudge paying taxes for. Heaven help them, too, if they’re black or disabled or a migrant.

Exactly this! If you are going to force a woman to bear a child, at least support her, feed her, feed the child. The irony of this happening, just when people are getting, rightly, incensed about the reduction of women's rights in Afghanistan is mindblowing

I noticed that around the time of the Trump/Biden election there was a lot of pressure in churches as I saw a video that was circulating where the preacher was telling the congregation "IF you don't vote Trump, you are NOT a Christian!"
I suspect the same people are the ones telling people that the vaccination is the mark of the beast and that you have to vote "this way".

As my husband often remarks, sometimes the ones with the most "Christian" values in America are often the most Trump loving, intolerant, gun toting, haters of the poor, gay, coloured and trans people. They seem to have their own agenda and it's a political thing, certainly their behaviour is not biblical. Whatever happened to shock horror people thinking for themselves and making their own choices based on information and freewill. Shocking times! Obviously not all Christian groups are this way, but they do exist.

This move in Texas is abhorrent!
One of the things that really annoys me about the US is that individual states have their own laws. Could you imagine if the law said one thing in the West Midlands and something else in the East Midlands?
I know many states in the US are bigger than the whole of England but all 50 of them are still parts of one country in the same way as our counties are, and the laws should be the same across them all.

Why on earth would any woman vote for the Republicans.

It never fails to amaze me that America who claims to be the leader of the free world can still be in the dark ages when it comes to things like abortion, woman's rights, racism, allowing 14 year old children to marry etc.

kwest

Clearly this change in the law has not been thought through properly and encourages extremist reactions at either end of the scale.
It is a much more complicated situation than we are seen to condone or reject in these responses and there is no easy answer. Sometimes these dreadful procedures have valid reasons for taking place.
However, I would still suggest that people do a little reading around the International Rights Of The Child. It may give some people time to pause for thought.
The girls and women ,who, for whatever reason, agree to getting rid of the life growing inside them often suffer psychologically for the rest of their lives. We try to soften the words used to describe the procedure but at a very base level the underlying belief for many of these people is "I killed my baby".

kwest I am well aware of the UN Rights of the Child and many years ago I was responsible for my local council adopting them and implementing them in all their dealings with children.
The problem is that a foetus is not a child. It has no independent life of its own and it cannot live without its mother.
Yes girls and women always remember the baby they lost and they may need help to come through that loss, but why would it be better for them to have a child and for two people to suffer rather than one?
But as I said it is largely irrelevant. Women have always had abortions, they will continue to have abortions. They will simply be less safe, not always medically supervised and done in secret. So what you are actually proposing is that physical harm should be added to psychological damage. During this process some women will die. Making abortions illegal doesn't stop them happening.

I don't particularly care for the thought of abortion, but feel that only the pregnant woman can or should decide whether to have an abortion or not.

To me it is totally disgusting to expect a woman who has been raped, or forced into an incestuous relationship, which very, very few of them chose, to have to give birth to the child.

Abortion is, however, such an ethical dilemma that I would greatly prefer contraceptives and advice on contraception to be readily available.

The religious lobby against abortion or contraception could always devote their efforts to premoting chastity and planned parenthood, plus fighting for every worker's right to a decent wage, but few of them are active in any of these causes.

There would probably be fewer abortions if more people were able to bring a child up in moderate comfort.

When I read about the Texas decision, I thought I'd woken up in the 1960's - horrendous. What really creeps me out about the people who put the rights of a fetus before the rights of a women to control her own body, is that I never hear ANYTHING from them about the responsibilities of men to use contraception. Are they going into schools and colleges to teach both young men and women how to avoid unwanted pregnancies? Of course not! They're just sanctimonious women-hating hypocrites.

There are many Christian pastors and 'Christians' in the USA who preach hatred as far as abortion, homesexuality etc etc. Hatred to me is not a Christian attitude. I know someone who works for a pro life Christian charity and they 'help' and encourage women who are pregnant (for many reasons - rape, incest, young girls) to keep the baby by offering free baby clothes, pushchairs etc. However, I am not sure for how long this assistance goes on. I think that after the baby is born the help finishes. They are very anti abortion and it is known that they make the women feel very bad about themselves for considering an abortion even though the circumstances in which they got pregnant could have been very traumatic.

Clearly this change in the law has not been thought through properly and encourages extremist reactions at either end of the scale.
It is a much more complicated situation than we are seen to condone or reject in these responses and there is no easy answer. Sometimes these dreadful procedures have valid reasons for taking place.
However, I would still suggest that people do a little reading around the International Rights Of The Child. It may give some people time to pause for thought.
The girls and women ,who, for whatever reason, agree to getting rid of the life growing inside them often suffer psychologically for the rest of their lives. We try to soften the words used to describe the procedure but at a very base level the underlying belief for many of these people is "I killed my baby".

Just because a country has the might of the military, the finances to wield control and state of the art technology, it doesn't mean that the people are progressive or liberal in their views. Unfortunately, America still has a lot of laws based on hardline religion and that means that women are finding themselves having to obey draconian laws. I have a friend who lives over there and had to remain married to a religious, controlling husband because he seemed to hold all the cards when it came to the children. It was heartbreaking and totally alien to us as British citizens who would have found that the state is incredibly supportive of us as mothers in comparison.

From the outset, Gilead didn't seem too far into the future, and the Trump presidency brought it ever closer... His deliberate skewing of the judiciary ensured that the most Conservative, intolerant of anything that doesn't support White Male Supremacy views will have the upper hand legally. Bigots and Women haters continue to oppress those without the power to oppose them. This is the ongoing legacy of a man who was described in no uncertain terms by leading psychiatrists as very dangerous. What does it say about America that not only did he become President, but that his malign influence continues. Meanwhile, there are many many people who will suffer as a result of this awful retrograde step.

Well said! I think you will find some of them voting against free school meals or decent education funding for children!

This is a long and shocking article. It is worth reading if you have the time www.thenation.com/article/politics/anti-abortion-white-supremacy/

I’m pro choice and find this a very worrying step. The film Vera Drake was a great way to demonstrate how hard it was for women before reliable contraception and access to safe abortion, particularly for poorer people.

Doodledog

That is dystopian.

I saw Margaret Atwood on her UK tour just before lockdown (it was to promote The Testaments) , and she said that the US was slipping into Gilead-like ways. It looks like she wasn't wrong.

I've never understood the concept that a shortage of fertile women would devalue fertile women. I'd have thought it would be the infertile who would have been turned into servants and the fertile would be prized.

Sorry completely off track.

As Margaret Atwood pointed out USA is a Puritan founded land, Europe did not want them - what do we expect? Having observed their service officers, they are not given the right to free speech as us in the UK, circumspect is the best word that describes them. Gilead is coming true and not under Trump. Religious fundamentalists rule that land.