Atrocious.

institutional misogyny

She was convicted of infanticide and sentenced to supervision and community work but then the conviction was cancelled for work/visa issues for her

In New Zealand (I think) all such cases result in charges being laid – because by laying charges the police and the court can ensure that the mother gets proper psychiatric care. I don't know for certain but I'm pretty…

I have never ever wanted a child.…

Sadly not true: Student, 20, charged over death of baby

This is a thread about abortion. Unwilling parents are conscripts too, and there are some horrible outcomes when that goes wrong. At least if you spread it around the population, the caring work and the learning people gain from…

By the way few of us choose to have a disabled child. But…

Caring for ill, disabled or infirm people is highly skilled work. I hate to think what would happen if carers were conscripted.

It would be really, really wonderful if all disabled people got the…

no

I really struggle with the idea that there's a group of people of any sort whose existence can place an obligation on an individual to carry a pregnancy to term. If we discovered the last male member of a unique ethnic group, would…

Where I am in NSW, I think the situation is pretty similar to NZ i.e.…

non-disabled people deserve our love too. :)

In New Zealand? Thought it wasn't allowed here.

with fair support and circumstances, many other impairments match that description.

Deafness is rather a special case I think, as given the right context/community, it makes relatively little difference to the opportunities for the child.

You are perfectly right. Overpopulation is one of those elephant-in-the-room issues. On a more personal level,…

I don't see too many people complaining about iodized salt.

The first time I heard now Disability Rights Commissioner Paul Gibson speak – several years ago – he mentioned that he would love his future children,…

This is certainly one argument for abortion, although obviously a stupid and laughable one.

However, it…

Yes, but that's also an argument for genocide, which makes it a less useful argument for…

Probably. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a pre-natal test that purports to meaningfully screen for ASD. That would be a whole other can of worms.

It seems increasingly likely that people can be moved around on the ASD spectrum, by for instance killing off chunks of their microbiome to push them further out on it. The possibility of a conclusive genetic test done around the time…

And it might also be worth asking all people whether they'd miss seeing wild birds or other native animals…

Well, more complicated. I certainly see a difference between a dietary supplement to reduce the chance of neural tube…

I really don’t think so. Surely we can value people with disabilities without valuing the disability itself?

Is society poorer for not having children with rickets or polio?

[ETA: oh snap, B.]

Last evidence I saw said over 90% of Down syndrome diagnoses result in an abortion.

Despite some improvements, the information available to parents making that difficult decision still does not…

Surely nobody actually thinks we should intentionally cause disability (either by action, or…

She is not the only person. The thoughts and emotions around these issues are not easy. And that's made even harder in the written word where tone of voice and the nod of the head are lost.

Education campaigns imply knowledge gaps; universal provision implies access gaps. See fluoride.

There's a long and messy history of women's bodily autonomy being considered less important than some greater good. Once upon a time that greater good was racial hygiene. It was a rubbish tool for achieving eugenics, and it's a rubbish tool for dismantling eugenics as well.

I think anyone who has the brass neck to tell a woman she needs to "reflect" on her insufficiently "profound" (for want of a better word) argument for being pro-choice is... probably going to come…

I mostly agree with you, but blindjackdog seemed to be more taking exception to the question of whether choice should extend as far as making particular choices about the nature…

I know a woman who's doing her PhD on that.

Here's what I think is pretty astonishing: that this is…

Ironically, Chelle was working on a post around these issues for Access, but hasn't been well enough to finish it.

That might have been a more comfortable place for this discussion, but we're having it here, so if everyone can carry on being civil I…

This is true. It's also true when they choose…

It's pretty astonishing that you simply assume that there's a self-evident hierarchy of interests here, coming down on the side of the individual woman. Doesn't that make you reflect…

It's too hard, for starters – here we are spending hours on it on one of the million threads about it.…

Yes. If it shows an imbalance then it should be examined. If it's practical, why not let the woman decide what happens to her health, her existence and her respect.

When it comes to disabilities, then if we worry about the extent to which aborting a foetus with disabilities is problematic for the sorts of reasons that Hilary is referring to, then in effect, we are making…

Yes I agree. I guess I am trying…

Thanks Bart. My situations were granted relatively easily.…

sadly very true

we has them

Most of all, I want a well-informed choice for parents about the reality they are choosing for their family – and better supports for them either way.

We could do a post..

But isn't that another way of saying a woman should not be in charge of her own body ... because, reasons.

I…

This sounds like a variation on Whatever Mums Do Is Wrong.

Oof. Yeah, I reckon he's going to want to take that one back.

But on either side of the implantation line, an embryo is a small cluster of cells, a long way from being a person.

When late pregnancies endanger the life of the mother, babies are often induced as early as it's considered safe, then cared for in a neonatal ward. Late term abortions are more often about discovering an…

I greatly prefer his satirical work.

Exactly my point.

Citation? The thing is, it's really really difficult to reliably tell when a fertilised egg is created but does not implant, so it's hard to tell if it's happening that way. People who emphasis the implantation mechanism tend to be of the…

Yeah, and I don't even think the rights analysis makes sense so I'll leave off here. I think it leads with implacable logic to hair splitting about the sentience of…

I agree with Hillary Stace that women deciding about abortion needs way more, and ongoing, support, to make the decision and to live with the consequences of their choice. Arohanui.…

I was meaning the non-hormonal IUDs. Even the hormonal ones don’t reliably stop ovulation. They may help prevent conception by providing a hostile environment for sperm; they definitely prevent implantation (they have a 99% rate of…

It is a statement that assumes it was nothing in the first place. I'll give you for sure that it becomes "nothing" from a rights…

Yup, although we could find it to be such a weak wrong as to not outweigh wanting to avoid pregnancy.…

I don't either. Legal positivism suffers from the problem that it means there can be no such thing as an immoral law. It would, in this context, quite literally mean that what all us pro-choicers think is irrelevant – abortion is wrong…

What I am saying very simply is that when weighing rights you should weigh the rights of the being that actually exists as…

I fundamentally believe a woman should not be forced to bear a…

Nope. Everything humans do on this planet shows that the "right to life" is meaningless.

Also you miss the key point. It isn't a fetus, it isn't a human, it is the possibility (not certainty) of a human. They are assigning a right to a…

It's even more complicated than that, though, because the rights being compared are not the…

Heh, I deliberately framed the argument so it focused on people, which eliminates people's favourite bullshit debate points, like arguing about whether it's Life or not, and what you're…

We’ve been re-watching The West Wing over the last year or so. (It’s depressing how little has changed in everything but LGBT rights.) Abortion is a big issue in the last series. Santos has an argument with a Pro-Choice…

Although I kinda think the fun focussed postings often communicate serious issues very elegantly.

hmmm where are the "blatant suckup" tags.

Embryos frequently fail to develop into humans, there is no guarantee of survival to birth…

First, I’d like to extend a sincere apology to Hillary (and everyone else) for coming across like that. It’s really…

Yes. Even here, we've been talking about distinctions between pregnancy as a result…

I'm sure I'm not alone in mistakenly remembering the 1977 Abortion, Contraception and Sterilisation Act as a victory, when in fact it actually made abortion more difficult to access. But its almighty fudge did seem to draw…

Although this is not about termination, it is about a disabled woman giving birth. I remember Shelly was in that situation and I know…

Yes, I have never wanted kids, never wanted the huge responsibility. That's probably why I became a nanny. I never wanted to get…

The people in the system are generally decent and caring, but it's still the wrong system.

Word.

Second, thank you for posting this. No matter what, this law MUST be changed. Kia kaha.

I'd say less silly than I was for relying on only a condom. We did actually get the abortion (this was in Oz, where it's legal). It was traumatic as hell even then, I can hardly imagine what it's like here.

That's actually an almost unrelated debate, and in the minds of many it is completely disjunct. Killing babies who might grow up to be terrorists, for example, is seen by…

But this one time he got all earnest and confronted the “A-bomb issue”,…

With the proviso that a woman who has had a pregnancy terminate for whatever reason, gets to refer to that pregnancy using whatever fucking language she wants.

Man, can we display this as a disclaimer before every abortion debate? It seems to be entirely ignored. You can be against killing babies but for making abortion not as farcical and painful as it…

Oh, Sue. I think that's one of the hardest things to say, that it sucked and it was awful, and we'd still do it over again.

(We drove from the small town, and I was the support person, but going…

A previous partner forgot to take the pill on two occasions. We had agreed, perhaps naively, that the pill was what we…