Abortion

Shockability is a primal quality. Lose that, and you lose all humanity. Latest figures say there have been 93,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK. I am trying to imagine how high 93,000 stacked coffins would reach, or how deep a plague pit would be to hold 93,000 bodies. Because they are disposed of decorously out of sight, there are no such gruesome pictures to jolt the senses.

Would it be a taller pile, or a deeper pit, than the 8 million abortions since legalisation?

A Roman Catholic pro-life midwifery student who was banned from her hospital placement has won an apology and payout from her university.

Julia Rynkiewicz, 25, faced suspension from midwifery studies and a four-month fitness-to-practise investigation as a result of her involvement in pro-life society

They tried to throw her off her course because she’d joined SPUC or whatever it’s called these days.

Despite the NHS rules saying that you don’t have to do abortions if you think they’re wrong.

One more brick in that wall of argument about university. It’s, more often than not these days, a method of insisting upon a set of beliefs than anything else.

You know, the idea that people not part of the state could take state money to provide health care. Disgusting, isn’t it?

Last week Marie Stopes International, one of Britain’s biggest providers of NHS-funded abortions,

Ban this now!

It can feel uncomfortable to keep telling our abortion stories – but it is still essential
Emma Beddington

Depends what the stories are perhaps:

So: I had two abortions. In neither case was my life in danger; there were no foetal abnormalities; I could have supported another child. It was simply the right thing to do for me both times and I’m eternally grateful it was possible. They were not “good” abortions; they should not need to be. Many abortion stories are like mine: unexceptional, not “deserving” or “worthy”.

Because that’s not how a rather large number of people do feel about it. Put my vehement opposition aside. Take, say, Bill’s “Safe, legal and rare” thing. Pure lifestyle abortions aren’t quite what is meant there…..there are even some who might describe such actions as being, well, selfish….

Global feminism is like a tangle of cables, intertwined in complex knots. Those cables bind us to one another, transmitting our struggles in fractions of seconds. I have female friends who are Polish and Irish and American, and how they are treated by their home countries matters to me. But my solidarity stretches further than that, and is underpinned by a sort of simmering anger. I cried for American women when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and I applauded with joy for Irish women (and later, thank God, for Northern Irish women too) when abortion was legalised there. I stand with Polish women, because their fight is also our fight: it’s a fight to be recognised as fully human, and to obtain the rights that come with that.

The entire conversation is about what is a human – is a fetus? At which point in development is it? – that accrues rights. It is, of course, entirely possible to differ over what that answer is. But you do have to have an exceptionally tin ear to put it the way Rhiannon just has done.

Poland abortion: Top court backs almost all terminations

Err, no:

Poland’s top court has ruled that abortions in cases of foetal defects are unconstitutional.

Poland’s abortion laws were already among the strictest in Europe but the Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling will mean an almost total ban.

“Backs” should read “blocks”.

The BBC gets £3.8 billion a year of taxdayers’ money.

“The policy basically says that it’s normal for a baby with Down’s syndrome to be terminated right up until birth.
“The reason why this is important to me is because I have Down’s syndrome, I know what it is to have it, and my husband has it.”
Asked how she feels to have been given the go-ahead with her landmark legal battle, she added: “I feel amazing knowing that the case is going to be heard in the High Court.”

We’ve a certain contradiction in the law here.

Abortion is legal up until birth in cases of severe deformity. But only to 24 weeks in cases without deformity.

We have strict anti-discrimination legislation against the disabled. Hmm, perhaps in favour of the disabled.

So, abortion law is different for the disabled and the not so. This is discrimination that we have laws against.

Dunno about this specific case or any other but there is that contradiction there all the same.

Barrett’s body of rulings is not that large, making it difficult to extrapolate how she would rule on important issues if elevated to the supreme court. But we have ample reason to believe that Barrett, a conservative Catholic, is hostile to abortion rights and might overturn Roe v Wade when she had a chance. In addition to being a conservative Catholic, Barrett is a self-described legal “originalist” who almost certainly believes Roe was a legally shoddy opinion. (Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not that confident in the legal grounds for the ruling.)

The thing is, when considering constitutional law, what is being decided is whether abortion is a right. Rights stemming from the constitution and the bill of rights etc. Which is something that a judge on a constitutional court should have a view upon.

In the absence of rights as declared by said court then abortion becomes a thing of politics which is where it probably should be in my biased and unimportant view. Like it is all over Europe for example.

The very shouting about abortion rights and Roe is begging the question. Because the Roe question is whether it’s a right or not.

What will they do if that 6-3 court overturns Roe v Wade and bans abortion across the entire country?

Roe v Wade doesn’t make abortion legal and its absence wouldn’t make it illegal. The case makes abortion a constitutional right based upon a rather weird reading of the right to privacy.

You’ll note that here in the UK we do not have a constitutional right to abortion. We do have abortion. The French constitution does not announce a right to abortion – they have it too. And so on.

Abortion was legal in some parts of the US before Roe v Wade and becoming so in more of them.

If Roe v Wade were overturned – unlikely but it should happen because it was a shockingly bad piece of law even if excellent politics and possibly, dependent upon views, civil rights – then the legality or not of abortion would become a matter of democratic (no, not Democratic) politics in each state. Which is almost certainly where it should be too.

The legislatures – the mini-parliaments of each state – have the power to choose

Quite so. And why shouldn’t this be a matter of democracy?

‘Women always take the brunt’: India sees surge in unsafe abortion

There’s someone – OK, if you prefer, something – else which takes rather more of the brunt.

They’re coming for the eugenicists now:

Eugenics was the study of the selective breeding of humans to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.

-ish. -ish-ish.

Even if that’s a possible definition it did very rapidly become the selective breeding of humans to decrease the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as undesirable.

Like stopping the inform the disabled, the weak, actually the proles, from breeding. And if we’re going after the eugenicists then where is this going to end. Marie Stopes? How about abortion of the handicapped? And the Fabian Society is gonna have some ‘splainin’ to do as well…….

But there’s more than just a fragment of amusement to it as well.

As phillip notes.

The UK’s current number of daily deaths from coronavirus is lower than the UK’s current average daily number of deaths from abortion.

Discuss

A man who stabbed to death 19 residents at a care home in Japan for people with disabilities has been sentenced to death.

Satoshi Uematsu, a former employee of the Tsukui Yamayuri En (Tsukui Lily Garden) facility in Sagamihara, south-west of Tokyo, carried out the attack in 2016, in which residents were targeted as they slept.

Twenty-four other residents and two care workers were injured in what is one of post-war Japan’s worst mass killings.

The 30-year-old admitted to the rampage during hearings at Yokohama district court but pleaded not guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility, with his lawyers claiming he was suffering from a psychiatric disorder at the time of the attack.

He was sentenced to death by hanging.

Uematsu told the court last month he would not appeal against his sentence, no matter what it may be, newspaper Mainichi reported.

Police said Uematsu, described by neighbours as polite and helpful, was motivated by a deep-seated hatred of people with disabilities. He told police after his arrest that society would be better off if disabled people “disappeared”.

Certain of the Fabians – the Webbs perhaps – would be arguing for a medal for such actions.

The percentage of conceptions leading to a legal abortion among all women resident in England and Wales increased from 22.7% in 2017 to 24.0% in 2018, the highest percentage since records began in 1990.

In 2018, the conception rate for women under 18 years was higher in the 50% most deprived areas in England, while the percentage of conceptions leading to a legal abortion was higher in the 50% least deprived areas in England.

On the front page

Abortion Argentina set to become first major Latin American country to legalise termination

The article:

Argentina is on track to become the first major Latin American country to legalise abortion.

Argentina has had an on/off relationship with termination for decades. Sometimes from helicopters.

This week, one old and discredited technological fix has reared its head: eugenics, the pseudoscientific belief that humans can be bred to “perfection” in the same way we breed cattle or domestic pets for particular traits. Developed by Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, in the 19th century, it was promoted by politicians and intellectuals in Britain, before becoming the justification for millions of involuntary sterilisations globally, mainly of the poor and disabled, and the Nazis’ devastating programme of “racial hygiene” that culminated in the Holocaust.

One might think that such a morally and scientifically vacuous ideology would be behind us by now,

Leave aside whatever opinions you might have over the moral worth of abortion. Think about it just for a moment. The current system states that a foetus (gob of meiotic cells, human being, whatever) with an extra chromosome 21 may – and in many places should – be killed at a much later stage of development than one not so blessed with genetic abundance.

Whatever we might call this, a slaughter of the innocents, just common and garden good sense, this is quite clearly eugenics and it’s a common, even cornerstone, part of our current society.

That is, we’ve not really left it behind, have we?

However, a recent paper takes a different perspective, examining instead the financial impact of women seeking abortions but being denied them. Looking at those seeking abortions in the US close to a gestation limit after which abortions are not allowed, the study considered years of detailed credit reports of two groups of women – one that had abortions because they were under the gestation limit and the other made up of women who were denied one because they were just over it.

The effects were huge. Those denied an abortion were 81% more likely to face bankruptcies or evictions than before being denied an abortion, and 78% more likely to be in arrears on debt. Giving birth is of itself a cause of financial distress but the research shows it is greater for women denied an abortion, possibly highlighting the economic impact on women of being able to control the timing of when they give birth.

Maybe those who can’t count can’t count?

Possible a correlation between those who cannot count 3 or 6 months from conception with those who cannot the months of rent to be paid, the credit card bills piling up?

Not that I say it must be this. But we would expect a correlation between those who cannot organise life and those who cannot organise life…..

I don’t think Trump believes this for a moment but:

And to all of the moms here today: We celebrate you, and we declare that mothers are heroes. (Applause.) That’s true. Your strength, devotion, and drive is what powers our nation. And, because of you, our country has been blessed with amazing souls who have changed the course of human history.

We cannot know what our citizens yet unborn will achieve, the dreams they will imagine, the masterpieces they will create, the discoveries they will make. But we know this: Every life brings love into this world. Every child brings joy to a family. Every person is worth protecting. (Applause.) And above all, we know that every human soul is divine, and every human life –- born and unborn –- is made in the holy image of Almighty God. (Applause.)

Together, we will defend this truth all across our magnificent land. We will set free the dreams of our people. And with determined hope, we look forward to all of the blessings that will come from the beauty, talent, purpose, nobility, and grace of every American child.

That’s a solid chunk of the electorate locked down for the autumn.

Rebecca Long-Bailey’s Labour leadership bid risked being derailed by a row on abortion, as it emerged that she objected to the current law on late terminations.

Labour MPs accused the pro-Corbyn candidate of holding “absolutely toxic” views after she said she disagreed with the exemption allowing abortions on disability grounds after the 24 week limit for healthy foetuses.

Quite apart from anything else it seems to breach the Disabilities Act*.

We’re not allowed to discriminate – either for or against – those in wheelchairs for example. Except we can kill those who might need a wheelchair because of spina bifida when we can’t kill those who might not. Sure sounds like discrimination to me.

*Or whatever it’s called.