UK – Abortion should be a medical matter, not a criminal one. The law needs to change

Abortion should be a medical matter, not a criminal one. The law needs to change
Manifesto promises by Labour and the Liberal Democrats to decriminalise abortion are welcome news for women

Hilary Freeman
Sun 1 Dec 2019

There has been a predictably overwrought response to the election manifesto promises of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats to decriminalise abortion. Rightwing and Catholic commentators alike imagined hordes of heavily pregnant women at abortion clinics, demanding their fully formed foetuses be evacuated from their uteruses. Just because the law said that they now could.

I, unfortunately, know far more than I want to about what utter nonsense this emotive, anti-abortion rhetoric is. On 26 September 2012 I ended the life of my much-wanted daughter, Elodie, at 24 weeks’ gestation. It’s the hardest and most painful thing I’ve ever done. One thing I now know, with certainty, following this traumatic experience, is that no woman would choose to terminate a pregnancy that late on unless she felt there wasn’t any other option. And no doctor would countenance it, whatever the law said.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/01/uk-abortion-criminal-offence-24-week-time-limit


What explains Donald Trump’s war on late-term abortions?

What explains Donald Trump’s war on late-term abortions?
Attacks on the rare but controversial procedures are designed to please more than evangelicals

Aug 22nd 2019

WHILE LEROY CARHART, a doctor who specialises in late-term abortions, was finishing his most recent termination, the manager of his clinic in Bethesda, Maryland, outlined the procedure. Abortions in the second half of pregnancy take between two and four days, said Christine Spiegoski, a nurse wearing a T-shirt that read: “Don’t like abortion? Prevent pregnancy by f**king yourself!” First, the doctor injects potassium chloride or digoxin into the fetus’s heart, killing it within minutes. If he is unable to reach the heart and instead pumps the drug into the amniotic sac, death can take up to 24 hours. Dr Carhart euthanises the fetus at the beginning of the procedure because its tissue and skull then soften and contract, easing removal. At 25 weeks a fetus weighs around a pound and a half and is over a foot long; some of those Dr Carhart aborts are older.

Continued: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/08/22/what-explains-donald-trumps-war-on-late-term-abortions


A Texas abortion procedure ban is unnecessary, full of theatrics and harmful to women

A Texas abortion procedure ban is unnecessary, full of theatrics and harmful to women

By The Times Editorial Board
Nov 12, 2018

No matter how often a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion is upheld by federal courts, there’s a state legislature somewhere trying to make it impossible for her to have one. The assaults on abortion rights have come in waves, as state legislatures dominated by anti-abortion lawmakers simultaneously pursue the same new legal gambits until blocked by a federal judge, at which point they change tactics and try again.

Most recently, abortion opponents have shifted from seeking restrictions ostensibly designed to protect the health of a pregnant woman — such as requiring abortion clinics to be outfitted like outpatient surgery centers, or requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital — to ones that focus on the fetus. For example, Texas and a number of other states slapped tough new restrictions on the dilation and evacuation procedure, or D&E, the safest and most common second-trimester abortion, calling it a “dismemberment abortion” and describing the procedure in ghoulish detail.

Continued: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-texas-ban-second-trimester-abortion-20181112-story.html