Quote:
Originally Posted by Vicky.
Late abortions tend to only be done when there is a serious risk to the mothers health though, or massive problems with the child. You cant chose to have a late abortion, and the huge majority are done within the first few weeks of pregnancy.. ( http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Abortio...t-be-done.aspx )
However I think the limit should be lowered a LOT. Its extremely unlikely someone wouldnt know that they were pregnant by like..6 weeks or so. I think the date for 'choice' should be then. However medical complications should be set later..as you dont tend to find serious problems until your 12 week scan.
In answer to the OP, I think they are two totally different things. So yeah, opposing views on both do make sense really. |
I'm not massively convinced by the 90% stat for a start, especially with the increasing NHS cuts, the
waiting list for an abortion can be 6+ weeks. So that's 6+ weeks on top of how long it takes to realise that you're pregnant (usually at least 5 weeks) plus a week of "thinking time" (and doesn't it deserve more than that anyway?) and you're already at 12+ weeks. Some people don't realise they're pregnant until 8 or 9 weeks, and so NHS abortions of healthy babies can and do regularly take place at 15 or 16 weeks.
In my opinion, if we MUST have the abortion of healthy pregnancies as a possibility, there should be a hard cap of 9 weeks. Up until that point, the "bundle of cells" excuse is just about valid. A combination of the NHS cutting the wait time to as close to zero as possible plus better education for the identification of pregnancy symptoms should be able to achieve that. And if people miss that cut off... well, **** happens - they can consider adoption or maybe even consider just doing the responsible thing, and be a parent to their "mistake". Like you said, very few people wouldn't notice a pregnancy by 6 weeks, and 3 weeks from then until a final cut off should be enough. 9 weeks is also the latest date at which simple medical abortion (using pills to trigger miscarriage) is possible and that should be the ONLY legal form of healthy-baby abortion. Surgical abortions should be strictly for medical reasons only.