Quite apart from the issue of Ruth BG’s death this thread appears to have become a debate about abortion. For the most part men debating the morality, the legality and their opinions on the matter. It includes opinions by people who are openly anti female and those who prefer the idea of robots as well as having expressed distaste for children. For these people to become champions of female rights bestows a surreal tone to this thread
so I’ll have a go as a female. I can’t imagine ever wanting to have an abortion or feeling it’s the right thing to do. When you carry a baby it is very clearly an entity and I for one felt an obligation to do the best I could as the mother and to nurture that life. I didn’t ever face the dilemma but I think I would have found it hard to choose to have an abortion
however I have also known people who have become pregnant after being raped and the experience for them is entirely different. Every painful day that goes by is like reliving the trauma of rape. That child is a memory of what they endured.
I have known women who have been forced by their boyfriends or husbands to have an abortion simply because he does not want to take responsibility for his part in that child’s existence. The woman faces an unenviable choice at a time when they are very vulnerable.
I have known women who have been forced to carry a dead foetus to term. I have known women to carry a child so grossly deformed that child has no hope of life beyond a few minutes, hours or days. At some point they face the tragedy of death. There are the teenage mothers, still children themselves who carry huge health risks by carrying the baby to term and whose child also faces more disadvantages than others because of their birth circumstances
I could go on with the permutations and choices women must face. These are not the choices men make. If they do so they are making them for the woman. That is womb ownership. It is putting a noose around women and telling them that they must abide by the rules of others - do as they are told, no matter what the circumstances. For if abortion is wrong because it is taking life then it really has to be off the agenda all together.
Of course because there is a view that birth control somehow interferes with gods plan we don’t exercise control over men but for all those suggesting either that abortion is women’s right to choose or for those suggesting that women have no right to choose I’d say put a sock in it and contemplate whether you think you should be free to place your seed where you choose without constraint and whether you are also prepared to take steps to limit other men from their eager donations to women.
