Nadine Dorries loses the abortion debate
The Abortion Debate is over for another few years, and the status quo has been maintained. Leaving aside the merits of the issues for a moment, I always enjoy these non-partisan “conscience” debates. As Iain Dale reports here, and rightly so, the Government should learn some lessons about the merit of free debates.
In terms of the upper age limit, I would have favoured a reduction to 22 weeks. When I was doing neonatology, I spent many, many long hours trying to resuscitate 23 and 24 week babies. If a line has to be draw, and I think it does, I would be more comfortable with 22 weeks. But I am still strongly pro-choice. I have been trying to get Iain Dale to explain exactly where he stands. Today he says:
Has this issue been permanently put to bed? No. And nor should it be. It deserves periodic debate and review and I fully expect it to be revisited after a change of government. Iain DaleNadine Dorries will be disappointed. She only has herself to blame. Her views are so rabid, and so strongly put, that she antagonises people on both sides of the debate. Even now, she continues to plug the mawkish and uttlerly misleading story about the foetal hand. There is a good case for a 22 week limit but it was not properly heard in all the brouhaha of Nadine's extremism. Trouble with Nadine is that she is not truly pro-choice although she will purport to march under that banner when it suits her. Had she put her case in a more temperate manner and emphasised that a woman’s right to an abortion up to 22 weeks is absolute and must both be protected and facilitated more might have listened. Sadly, that is not what she believes and, in any case, Nadine does not “do” temperate.
I would be more interested to hear what Iain Dale believes. One can have a temperate discussion with him.
Labels: 22 weeks, 24 weeks, abortion, Iain Dale, Nadine Dorries
33 Comments:
From having a lot of recent personal experience in the area, I would still stick with the 24 week rule personally.
The vast majority of 24 weekers do very poorly and even if they survive until discharge, they have such a dismal quality of life that keeping them alive is more like torture than anything else.
Even with the current legislation we are producing a large cohort of severely disabled vegetables who simply sit in wheelchairs fitting while they are fed via a tube.
Is this progress?
Isn't the fact that they can be kept alive reason enough to change the limit to 22 weeks?
I hope the abortion debate does not go away.
I think that a foetus is a living human being, and should be given legal protection similar to that given to any other living human being.
Why do you consider it "extremism" to oppose killing living human beings?
The abortion debate of the late 20th century in the western world will be seen in future centuries as akin to the medieval debate on how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. So much hot air, so much emotion and all completely pointless. Western civilisation will not be around in two hundred years time a mere blink of the eye in world chronology. You can be sure its replacement will not value the womens right to choose so favourably!
I'd never heard of Nadine Dorries until watching this week's Dispatches on fundamentalist Christianity. I don't want to believe that the sort of irrational medieval hatemongers featured by Channel 4 are now 2 million strong in the UK. Are we regressing into the sort of infantilism associated with the Christian doomsday cult in the US(rapture-ready morons) ?
If this takes hold then western civilisation really is doomed. Maybe Dawkins is too strident, but I have to say someone needs to speak up against this alarming abdication of common sense.
It should go without saying that Islamic societies have never advanced out of medieval thinking. Although the fundamentalist Christians deem Islam to be a false religion, they actually have a lot in common with them. Both want to be able to dictate to others how to live.
As the UK has contraception which is free to all and easily obtained there is no need for unwanted pregnancy. If somebody is so utterly stupid as to have intercourse without protection then would you want them to be parents?
But conception equals life and who are you to say it can or cannot be a person once developed?
The adoption and fostering laws need to be changed so that these dear unwanted children conceived by people who are too young or too stupid to care for themselves let alone a baby can be adopted and loved by those who are unable to conceive naturally. There are thousands of these people so lets stop IVF etc until every other child has a home......once that occurs then we are in a position to tamper with nature and have people pushing tubes into wombs to grow a life.............
BTW prematurity does not always equal disability and disability does not mean useless to the world so until you know the facts why don't you go away and learn in the real world.
'There is a good case for a 22 week limit'
Disagree. Like Garth I also work in this field, and can see no reason for a reduction.
Mind you, Nadine is as mad as a box of frogs, ain't she?
The focus should be reducing the number of abortions long before 24 weeks because those are the ones that are due to bad sexual practice and a lack of education. The reason why the number of abortions is so low between 20 and 24 weeks (1.45% of the total) is because of the reasons why it has taken a woman so long to come to terms with her preganancy (if the abortion is not for medical reasons, which, as I understand it, would still have been allowed.)
You should look at some of the stories coming from the British Preganancy Advice Service: women who have abortions at this late stage are generally because they have been in denial, possibly because the coneption was so traumatic. Violent abuse from the father-to-be, rape and incest provide such examples.
[derail]
"Mind you, Nadine is as mad as a box of frogs, ain't she?"
- quote of the day! :-)
[/derail]
Just a comment to Ben Stevenson. I don't think the abortion debate will ever 'go away'. I have come down on the side of supporting choice for pregnant women but in my view the whole subject ought to cause everyone to think deeply because the issues concerned are so very fundamental. Indeed I would say that anyone who thinks the abortion debate is clear and simple probably hasn't thought about it properly.
It's not, however, unfair to describe those opposed to abortion in principle as being on the extreme of the debate. That's purely descriptive. The problem is 'extremist' has become a pejorative term. One should not reject a proposition merely because it is on the extreme end of possibilities.
Why limit it at all Dr. Crippen? I thought you were "pro-choice"?
Seems there is a time when you consider the fetus to have humanity, and be invested with legal rights.
So the argument is just where that is. The extremists are conception on one side, and something just sort of infanticide on the other.
Despite the "hillbilly" slur from a previous post, USA opinion on abortion pretty much marches across the country by region.
That's why I would actually favor the legal overturn of Roe v. Wade. Contrary to stereotype, overturn of Roe would not ban abortion, it would return the matter to the states, which is where it belongs under our Constitution.
Going back to the opinion polls
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States
you find opinion pretty much the same everywhere. So the "blue" states would find more opposition to abortion than they think. Ethnic Catholics. Not to mention religious blacks who notice that far more blacks get abortions than whites. And the original founders of Planned Parenthood favored eugenics to get rid of blacks.
The "red" state leaders would find your basic small town women are not as anti-abortion as they like to think.
The very existence of Roe in the USA allows politicians to take extreme positions, while hiding behind the law to give them political power. So they can pass these laws about mandatory ultrasound, knowing that in the end, Roe prevents them from actually banning abortion, no matter how much they say they want to get rid of it.
And in the end, if abortion went back to the states, our abortion laws would be like Europe. Some countries allow it, some restrict it, and you can travel to another state (or country) if you want abortion services contrary to local law.
Like the hospital boat off the coast of Portugal, doing abortions a few years ago, or the "medical tourism".
My own attitude does not come from personal feelings about abortion Dr. Crippen, it's actually about the Constitution. It would actually be good for the country. Eliminate some of the extremism you see in our politics and our press.
..........arf
http://armchairnews.co.uk/2008/05/19/womens-bodies-become-a-political-football/
Why set 22 or 24 weeks as the boundary? Why not 38 weeks, or two years? If killing babies is acceptable, the time of death is just a detail.
Actually, 38 weeks is permissible if there is a diagnosis of minor defect such as cleft palate. This is what Rev Joanne Jepson objected to.
Interesting debate so far. Yes why 22 weeks or 24 or 38 weeks or 4 years? A severely mentally disabled foetus/child is much the same at these stages. What is the difference between aborting a foetus at 38 weeks for severe abnormality and humanely euthanaseing a mentally deformed child at 3 years?....you got hanged for the latter at Nuremburg of course! interesting debate.. .
I am mystified that you don't know where I stand. I have been quite explicit on my blog!
I would vote to bring UK abortion laws more in line with those of other European countries. I am not a dogmatic pro-lifer in the sense that I am not guided by religious views on this. I am a pragmatist. My heart tells me that abortion is wrong but my head tells me we cannot go back to the bad old days of back street abortions. So therefore it must be managed in as sensitive a way as possible, balancing the rights of the unborn child with those of the mother.
So had I had a vote yesterday I would definitely have voted for 20 or 22 weeks, and most likely 16 weeks too.
Nadine doesn't do temperate? Come off it, John Crippen, you're normally a chap with a reasonable amount of psychological and social insight. Campaigns are led by the committed. Nadine's failure wasn't a lack of temperance but a lack of experience and - above all - a lack of focus. I suspect she wasn't fighting the battle to cut the limit but - dare one say this - the battle to get into heaven?
20 or 22 weeks is all very well, but what about those pre-natal foetal tests which can only be done at 15 weeks or later? If a woman has the tests at 15 weeks, results come back a week later, grounds for concern, more tests done, results come back a week later - it can easily be past 20 or 22 weeks by the time she knows what she's dealing with and has made a decision she wants an abortion.
Kirsten,
I could be wrong about this, but I think that abortion for foetal abnormality (which can be done anytime up to full term) was not being debated. The 24 week limit did not apply to cases of foetal abnormality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_Kingdom#Later_laws
I don't think that foetal abnormality is a good justification for abortion. Down's syndrome is one of the reasons why people get abortions. It is compatible with a good quality of life - so I don't see why it could be acceptable to kill foetuses with Down's syndrome.
To be able to kill a child that has Down's syndrome at a time when it is not acceptable to kill a child without, is unfair discrimination on the basis of disability. It seems that our country protects disabled people from disability in employment, but not the right to life.
The last sentence of my previous post should say...
It seems that our country protects disabled people from discrimination in employment, but not the right to life.
anonymous 7.59pm said, Interesting debate so far. Yes why 22 weeks or 24 or 38 weeks or 4 years? A severely mentally disabled foetus/child is much the same at these stages.
Well presumably you said this to shock, but it probably does happen. My friend's child had various health issues involving lots of operations during their first year and frequent episodes of apnoea (10+ times a day, navy blue all over, requiring resuscitation with an oxygen cylinder and bag). They were repeatedly asked if they were sure they wanted the hospital to resuscitate their child next time. They were told at the time that she would be a vegetable. Incidentally, she's 3 now, and still has some episodes of apnoea but doesn't go navy blue any longer and can be brought out of it with a gentle shake or by blowing on her face and despite continued physical problems and the prospect of more operations is as bright as a button.
interesting.
I don't think emotion is a particularly useful way to have this debate, 'feeling in one's heart' isn't a way to argue something strongly.
Irrelevant to the specifics of this abortion debate and the weeks concerned, it seems to be that some people see taking a 'life' as plain wrong whatever the age or circumstances.
It's fair enough to have that opinion, I just wish those who had it would admit it, and then try to justify it.
Nothing is absolute, a tiny minority of 24 weekers survive and aren't vegetables, however the vast majority do awfully and their short lives are effectively periods of torture.
It's very easy to sit and say life is precious and should be preserved at all costs, but this attitude is detached from reality as if we have this absolutist view then a lot of very preventable suffering occurs.
Sometimes it is more humane to do nothing and let an elderly person die, sometimes it is more humane to do the same for a very sick premature baby.
People who have no experience of medicine and health care have never seen this suffering first hand, and they frequently do not understand the statistical side of things, meaning that their opinion is easily manipulated by one off emotional tales.
In reality there are many more emotional tales that tell the other side of the story, but these are never told in the media, so people will not feel pro-abortion in their hearts to the same way.
How many times have you seen a tiny 22 weeker flogged with numerous invasive interventions for days on end, watch them slowly collapse and die after weeks of prolonging the rather inevitable?
You won't read about that in the Mail.
The heart strings can be tugged both ways.
There is no perfect solution, we have to try to muddle our way to the best possible practical solution.
That's why the 24 week limit should stay, and the arguments used against it are fragile and fall down in my eyes at every step.
The danger of succumbing to those who want all life to be preserved at all costs is very real, as if we give them any more inches, they will carry on taking, and the overall suffering will rise and rise, all in the name of the feelings in people's hearts.
People who have no experience of medicine and health care have never seen this suffering first hand, and they frequently do not understand the statistical side of things, meaning that their opinion is easily manipulated by one off emotional tales.
True, and my example wasn't a call for reducing the abortion time limit, it was just a comment on the use of the idea of 'killing/allowing a disabled child to die' to shock by anonymous 7.59pm. I think the thing the parents found upsetting was not so much that they were asked if they wanted their child to be resuscitated, but more the repeated asking after making it clear that they did. I'm happy that the abortion limit hasn't changed. The child in my example was born at term but was diagnosed with problems at 21 weeks. With more efficiency it could have been diagnosed sooner and the parents would probably have seriously considered an abortion. The difference between 16 weeks and 21 weeks for an expectant mother are huge.
They would never be without their child now that they have them, but if they were in the same situation again, they think they would choose termination. The stress it has put their family under is massive and it's so difficult to see their child in pain and distress. Parents of disabled children are more likely to separate and it's obviously that it affect everyone in the family (though not all of the effects are necessarily negative).
As you say, there is no perfect solution, but a good start would be to make more effort to diagnose problems earlier in the pregnancy, to generally make it easier to obtain early abortions (ie reduce waiting times for appointments) and, of course, work at reducing unplanned pregnancy rates with education, easily available birth control and the 'morning after' pill.
I agree, well said.
Good points anon 1.21, esp re.
the effect on families.
When we were discussing the Joanna Jepson case a while back I looked up the figures and some references. First off, many cleft lip babies may have other abnormalities, and even multiple tests cannot definitively rule this out, something almost unmentioned in media coverage of Jepson.
Another stat that stood out came from a paper which was a US survey study of parents of kids who had been born with cleft lip only, i.e. a surgically correctable defect (though often requiring several ops) and no other more serious neuro-developmental problems.
When these parents were asked "what would you do if you had a 2nd pregnancy like this, i.e. simple cleft lip no other issues?" they overwhelmingly said "opt for termination". The main reason was "we wouldn't want to put another child and the rest of the family through this again." I was very struck by this study, which backs up what you and Garth have been saying.
To my mind much of what the pro-life lobby do is prioritize their own sense of moral superiority and mission over the lives of the people who actually have to live with the consequences. If a pro-lifer is faced with the decision themself, their faith may point them to a choice they are comfortable with. But their faith should not be the basis of law telling other people they MUST make the same choice. It is utterly presumptious.
How many of you believe that abortion for sex selection is acceptable?
Anonymous (at 4:43am) - it is estimated that 10million females have been illegally aborted in India (over the last 20yrs).
If we permit 200,000 abortions in the UK largely because of the impact on a mothers life (perhaps because of disability, economic hardship, relationship impasse, sexual assault, etc) then it is difficult to argue that gender (for some mothers) is not an equally valid concern.
As we have seen in other cultures (India, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Pakistan) this reason is certainly important enough for millions of mothers to opt for termination, even though the female foetus may be entirely healthy.
http://student.bmj.com/issues/08/05/life/190.php
I am not anti-abortion but isn't it time to give up the pretense that a reason has to be good enough before a termination takes place in the UK ?
Others on these threads have already pointed out that a foetus has no legal rights and is merely a collection of cells incapable of sustaining independent life (at least up until 20+ weeks gestation) - correct, scientifically and legally perhaps, but a definition that might not sit well with everybody ?
And thinking of Ferrets & phd scientists thoughtful observations I wonder if either had a view on Dr Munro, who by his own definition has taken paediatric palliative care to the very edge of acceptability ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/6273528.stm
no anonymous 12.22 a.m.Ididnt write my comment to shock at all . I just wanted to know the moral difference between aborting a SEVERELY/physically handicapped baby which is legal in this country to a late stage of pregancy and humanely euthananaseing a severely handicapped child before the age of three. Yes and i have seen the children i am talking about and no i am not talking about cleft palates! I am talking about the doubly incontinent child with gross physical deformities and marked mental retardation.As i said the doctors who engaged in the latter program were rightly or wrongly hanged at Nuremberg in 1947.
The Nazi euthanasia programme, anonymous, was a lot broader than you suggest -- not that I approve it in even its weakest form; also I strongly doubt that any doctors were hanged for participation in the programme (I have read that all the 23 accused in the 'Doctors' Trial' had engaged in 'Nazi Human Experimentation').
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-euthanasia.htm
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation
jayann , You need to read a little bit more about history step outside " the history channel".The winners write the history the loosers tend to dangle at the end of ropes.One of those who had his neck stretched at Nuremburg was Karl Brandt...check him out in that very reliable! source of information wikipedia.I am sure he never saw himself as an evil or bad person .He was the originator of the T4 law signed by Hitler in 1939 which authorised the euthanasia of children with incurable mental conditions in institutions upto the age of three.He was also a keen abortionist before the war, although that wasnt part of the indictment against him.He would have said there isnt much difference between aborting a severely deformed child at 36 weeks and euthanasing a severely deformed child at 2 years. However he had his odontoid peg broken by the good old US of A government.Personally i just like to expose hypocrisy and have not got strong views for or against late abortion for physical deformity.
no anonymous 12.22 a.m.Ididnt write my comment to shock at all . I just wanted to know the moral difference between aborting a SEVERELY/physically handicapped baby which is legal in this country to a late stage of pregancy and humanely euthananaseing a severely handicapped child before the age of three...
I am talking about the doubly incontinent child with gross physical deformities and marked mental retardation.
Sorry if I misunderstood your intentions, but you're still talking as though you don't think this already happens in the UK. The child I spoke about had far fewer problems than your example above and the parents were given the choice of allowing them to die several times over a few months. You often don't have to actively kill these children, just stop trying to resuscitate them. I've no idea how common this is and if it's just 'not attempting resuscitation' or stopping other types of care.
I checked Brandt. As you say, carrying out abortions was no part of the charge/s against him though indeed planning and carrying out the T4 programme was.
The winners write the history the loosers tend to dangle at the end of ropes.
Indeed. But that is not IMO relevant in this instance though if you could prove to me that Nazi doctors who had carried out abortions that would be legal in the UK now had been hanged at Nuremberg for carrying them out,I'd be prepared to consider it relevant.
I've never found anyone who resorts to Wikipedia to support their argument has much to say.
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