General Chat

RACH
thank you for adding your comments,i totally agree that there is no need to abort a child of the wrong sex,when so many woman cant have children,why oh why dont you give that child up for adoption?why destroy a childs right to life for your own selfish needs,i really cant get my head around it.children are a gift from god,and why were you jumped on about this subject on an earlier post?thats terrible, abortion is wrong in most cases,and so many woman now cant hae children,for whatever reason,its so wrong to terminate the life of a child when so many woman would take that child with open arms. :-) :-)

It seems to me that despite this being illegal, if you get someone who wants something and is willing to pay, there is always someone who will take the money.and make the situation *legal*.

I am glad this situation has been highliighted in the press but it is a sad reflection on some members of our society today.

Vera

Abortion for gender selection is totally wrong unless like others have mentioned there is a risk of genetic disease or terrible deformities that would mean the child has no quality of life.
Sadly some cultures favour boys and will always view girls as second best. Unbelievable in this day and age.
It seems to me that we live in a throwaway society and certain individuals think it is acceptable to maybe have a one night stand and then just get rid of the consequences. Babies are so precious and bring such joy and should never be considered a "mistake".
When I had my 3rd daughter (I already had 2 girls and a son) some asked if I was disappointed she wasn't a boy to even up the numbers :-S to which my reply was always "she's beautiful and healthy, how on earth could I be disappointed".

If everything written in history books is to be believed, this kind of action has been carried-out for thousands of years.

There is very little in our so-called modern society that has not previously been practiced.

I find the idea of aborting babies because of their sex (unless it's for genuine genetic reasons) deeply abhorrent ...anyone caught doing this should face a long time in jail.imho.

However...my views on abortion seem to differ from many of you on this thread...and some of the comments I've seen have frankly made my teeth itch.

There are so many unwanted and unloved children in this world...whose lives are made a misery ....in an ideal world they'd be put up for adoption and receive loving parents who are unable themselves to have children...but it's not an ideal world and that rarely, if ever happens.

Even aside from that....I'm pro choice to my bones. Having a child is a MASSIVE commitment and undertaking and should only be entered into if you can give that child every fibre of your energies love and time .it is THE WOMAN who has to carry the child and live with the consequences of the decision ...so it's HER RIGHT to choose as long as it's done within a reasonable time scale...it's not her right to choose the sex of course ..but it's for her to say what she does or doesn't want to do with her life and her body...no one has the right to dictate that .

In an ideal world all children conceived would be born healthy and into loving families but the world is far from perfect.

Society cannot force women to bear children that they don't want. If women can't get legal abortions then they will get illegal abortions. That has been the case for centuries.

To abort a healthy foetus of the "wrong" sex seems to most people unacceptable but women are put under pressure to have endless pregnancies until a child of the desired sex is born.

Adoption may be the answer in some cases but society cannot lock women up until the pregnancy has gone to term.

Edit - cross posting with Muffy with whom I agree totally.

Gwynne

I totally agree Muffy

I too am pro choice, I feel if the woman finds herself in the situation where she feels she does not want her newly conceived pregnancy, then making the decision to abort the pregnancy early is the right one.

Many unwanted pregnancies are due to contraception failure, or due to a good night out fuelled with a few bevvies then out of character losing all inhibitions :-(

When I see new born baby girls tossed by the road side to die in certain countries it sickens me. If the mother does not want the child then early abortion is right, not to choose one sex over another as cultural choice depicts :-|

Adoption is not for everyone, Once that baby has been carried 9 months it would be very difficult to give that child up. Also many adopted children do not always have happy upbringings although I know in many cases the opposite is true. Point is there are too many unwanted children in this country, in care still waiting for a family to love them, need we add to it further. For every new baby adopted means one older child does not get adopted with a family as people will always want babies if they can.. :-(

There are so many opinions here I agree with this, I also of course have my own, but the subject of the right to choose springs to mind but then I do not agree with others.

Women have the right to choose if she doesn’t want to continue with a pregnancy. But that is not the question here, as I understand it. When a woman is told she is carrying a baby that has a genetic condition that the chances of survival after birth or quality of life are low then she has the right to choose. The couples that choose to terminate, as the sex is not of their preferred choice, don’t! I think that couples that already have a child with an illness that breed another child to provide medical assistance to the child already have is wrong.

So how many times have I contradicted myself there.

Edited as I have confused myself. :-0

Hitler & his mob had a go at getting rid of, in his opinion, the unwanted; the diseased - physical or mental & anyone else he didn’t particularly like.

The whole world rejected his philosophy then & has decried it ever since. Lessons learnt? I doubt it!

What point are you making, Dermot? Not sure I follow.

Are you equating women choosing abortions to concentration camp guards?

Gwynne

Gwynne, I'd 'think' that Dermot's point is that because someone is likely to be born with a disabilty is not strong enough a reason to deny them life? where they might have a quality of life, in spite of disabilty' and bring joy to others?

Watching yesterday, the house thing on Homes, young lad tetraplegic from an accident... no doubting that he is the inspiration for all his community...

that's a different subject to the thread though :-D

Morning Gwyneth,

I think he is saying as I read it, that you can't choose defect or not the world is made up of very different people, Hitler tried to produce and choosen race a perfect race and was deem a psychopath which he was, and now Dermot liking the parents that choose the same as Hitler.

In my day, and sorry to be cliched here, you accepted what God and nature had created.
If you heard of someone having an abortion, it was probably more rumour than fact.
Abortions where something done by some Gin addled old crone, down a back street, with a knitting needle, amonst other things.
I am not saying it was never done, because it was, but you were not aware of it in your everyday life. And, it was illegal.

Julia in Derbyshire

Well thank goodness it is no longer illegal and women are no longer dying from injuries associated with back street abortions that's all I can say.

If we just accepted everything that *god* willed(sorry I'm agnostic so it means nowt to me) so I'll go with nature on this one........we'd not be striving for cures for cancer or examining life on other universes.......we'd just accept our lot as the way things are supposed to be and move no further on.

***one could take this a step further and say that folk used to die from flu before antibiotics and that they went against nature....ok...it's not the same thing but the inherrent argument behind it is still the same x

Muffy, I'm afraid that was what is was like in those days, and you had no idea that anything was going to move on. You just accepted your lot in life.

Julia in Derbyshire

PS. And no, I am not a Bible thumper either.

Then I'm glad times have moved on Julia....for the better x

Muffy, I did not say that this was my opinion, just that was how it used to be.
You didn't question it, just as you didn't question other things that had gone on before. That was life and you just got on with it, because working class people where just interested, in putting a roof over there heads and feeding the family.
The finer points of life, were just beyond them. People having children in my era, had probably got parents that had lived and possible taken part in a war. Many memories were still in that era. They knew no better themselves, so how could they teach you any different.
Heavens above, it was not until my mid-teens that you could buy a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover, albiet in brown paper cover.
We knew no difference, and just accepted what there was.

Julia in Derbyshire

lol....Julia...I did take that on board hon when I replied...which is why I said thank goodness things had moved on.... I think we both agree that it's better that everyday folk have more options and opportunities nowadays?.

x

Yes Muffy, it is a good job the world of everyday folks have moved on. We only have to see this in medecine in general, to wonder what would have been done for these ;modern illness' in those days.

Julia in Derbyshire

In 1946 my mother became pregnant at the age of 39 and was asked by a neighbour whether she was' going to get rid of it'. My mum quite surprised said ' no' she was going to keep it. Early in 1947 I was born. I was told this story very late in my mothers life. My reaction was one of ambivalence. Had I not been born I wouldn't have known about it and on the lighter side there may be plenty of people who had wished I hadn't. What the story for me shows was the acceptance of illegal abortion by 'ordinary' women.

Having worked for the ambulance service in the 60's I have taken calls for what the drivers in those days called 'Knitting needle jobs'where a woman lost so much blood that their lives were in jeopardy. I have known of girls who have gone to a particular GP for a secret abortion and lost so much blood but daren't go to the hospital because the GP would get found out. The same GP ending up in jail because he tried to help the desperate women who came to him.

I would not like to go backwards but like all progress there is the 'pendulum factor' that abuses the very law that was designed to protect women from the back street illegal abortionists. If abortions have been carried out, purely for the child being of the wrong sex, then the person procuring the abortion should be jailed.-jl