Term Limit for Abortion

Sorry pal, that's not how analogies work.

Well, we are not talking about analogies.

You cannot even agree upon the simple point that a forced pregnancy has to override bodily autonomy.

Except we are. This whole argument rests upon an analogy which is horrendously flawed and thus not actually used to determine abortion laws anywhere.

I am quite firmly on the left politically, and I identify with many women's rights causes and would consider myself to be a feminist.

However, I struggle to morally justify the 24 week term limit on abortion. Abortion is a cause celebre for many of my fellows on the left - that if you support a shorter term limit, you are right-wing and anti-women. However, I will always stand with the oppressed, and in this case I think the unborn child is oppressed.

Many of the arguments that people make sound like libertarian/right-wing points. "Abortion is a women's decision" - I disagree with this because I think that decisions should be collectively taken by society and the unborn child has no choice to be aborted. I find it morally unjustifiable for it to be acceptable to abort a 24 week old baby still in the womb, while if that same baby was out, killing them would be murder.

Would like to get thoughts on this.

Agree with you there, 24 weeks is too extensive. If you're going to have any kind of consistency regarding this issue, you would want to ensure above all else that a fetus could not be aborted at any stage where it could potentially be viable. At 20-24 weeks fetuses do have a chance of viability and many have survived with medical assistance. The limit should be, at the absolute most, 20 weeks, if not even a little earlier. Since the vast majority of abortions happen well before this stage anyway, it wouldn't have much of a significant social impact either.

Feminists trying to frame this as a misogynist issue hurt their cause far more than anyone else.

While I am all for abortions, I do agree that the 24 weeks limit may be too much. It is reasonable in the case of sudden health decline in the mother etc. since those things can't be predicted, but those cases already taken as exceptions to the limit anyway. In all other cases where the woman just wants to abort the pregnancy, she shouldn't need 24 weeks to do it.

The decision of the mother takes precedence in this case because the foetus is not self-aware, and cannot reason, and therefore has no interest in continuing to live.

Oppression is generally defeined as prolonged cruel or unjust treatment. It's not, however, possible to inflict cruelty on a foetus by aborting it, because it is not sentient: it simply cannot object to being aborted.

You say it doesn't have a choice in the matter, but that's not because it's being denied a choice: it's because it cannot choose.

In my view, 24 weeks is too early a limit: people should be able to have abortions at any stage of pregnancy.

I think not bringing unwanted humans into unstable, dangerous and unloving homes is whats best for society. I find Most of the people who think like this would be the first to turn their back on a child that crackhead mummy n daddy cannot care for or support or love.

Pretty sure that abortions only happen at 24 weeks if there's a serious problem detected. Nobody waits until they're 6 months pregnant to abort their child out of choice - when you more than likely have to give birth to the foetus in the process. It would be incredibly traumatic.

It's also very rare,I read some stats somewhere from the NHS and very few are carried out this far along.

Surely adoption at birth to a lovely family is preferable to destruction of the life?

Do you think there are an abundance of people looking to adopt? There isn't!

Again, you choose to ignore the fact that in both cases, bodily autonomy is overridden.You are just choosing ignore the subject completely.We can talk about abortion being allow at birth and etc once this basic concept is agreed upon.

So you would ban abortion ?

So it's okay to destroy a life because of you've found a disability in it? Wow! I thought people learnt from the Nazis that life destroying eugenics was a really bad thing. Clearly not.

Babies don't get aborted at 24 weeks because they are unwanted, but because they are found in scans to have severe disabilities or cause a deadly risk to the mother. It is 24 weeks because that is when those scans are carried out.

There is no point carrying on with another 3 months of pregnancy to deliver a baby that won't survive on its own or with a quality of life so diminished it would be cruel to bring them into the world.

It's definitely not to give a woman 6 months to decide if she wants to keep the baby or not, get real.