Abortion Situation In The UK

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Stranger Mouse » Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:37 pm

Maybe, but I still don't see where those 25% who are fiercely anti-abortion are going to come from.
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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by dyqik » Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:38 pm

Stranger Mouse wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:37 pm
Maybe, but I still don't see where those 25% who are fiercely anti-abortion are going to come from.
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There are also plenty of evangelicals in the UK, and US evangelical influence within more mainstream Christianity.

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by purplehaze » Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:57 pm

dyqik wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:38 pm
Stranger Mouse wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:37 pm
Maybe, but I still don't see where those 25% who are fiercely anti-abortion are going to come from.
Old people
There are also plenty of evangelicals in the UK, and US evangelical influence within more mainstream Christianity.
100 MPs in 2019 voted to keep abortion illegal in Northern Ireland according to Evolve Politics.

https://twitter.com/evolvepolitics/stat ... gr%5Etweet

Of course the answer is to decriminalise abortion and make it a health issue. It's the only solution.

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by tom p » Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:58 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 6:55 am
Little waster wrote:
Sun Jun 26, 2022 10:50 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:33 pm


To be equivalent to the US it would need to be more like 30-40 per cent who were highly motivated and prioritized that issue over all others.
Perhaps in the US but in the UK for such a single-issue electoral block to make a difference they would only have to reliably deliver around 10% of the electorate.

Johnson's stonking 80 seat majority resulted from the support of only 26% of the registered electorate.

If someone like Stephen Green (in his fondest dreams) could cast himself as the British Falwell and weld UK evangelicals, Catholics etc. into a single coherent, motivated political movement then they could present someone unscrupulous like Johnson with half of a winning electoral coalition.

All some future "Britain Trump" would then need to do is bolt on a couple of other fellow travelling caucuses (say the libertarians and the English, read white, nationalists) to assemble a coalition simultaneously capable of winning handsome majorities under FPTP (with/without gerrymandering and voter suppression) while being completely unrepresentative of the majority of UK voters and light-years from any recognisable sensible middle-ground.

That is essentially what has happened to the Republicans since Reagan.

Now the good news in the UK is that such an unholy alliance looks way-off but then again who in 2016 saw the recent incarnation of the PFKATheConservatives?

A bad election loss for Johnson would necessitate whichever Tory comes next to reinvent the Conservatives once again; we have been told repeatedly that is their great strength. Perhaps it will be some reheated form of Cameroonism or turbo-Thatcherism or Red Toryism or whatever but if they have been doing their homework any number of them will look across the pond to see what lessons they can learn from the Republicans, with the likes of Crosby and Murdoch perfectly willing to hold their coats for them.

I remember having just this conversation with one of Osborne's pointy-heads at Policy Exchange in about 2012. That they haven't managed/attempted to enact this plan just yet doesn't mean they couldn't dust it off again if the next election leaves a hollowed-out Tory party in existential crisis desperately searching for a "Hail Mary", in this case literally.
Even if a social revolution by 10% of the population is plausible, which I don't think it is, where's that 10% going to come from?

As far as I can tell, only about 5% of the UK population regularly attended church services in 2015 (which is the best proxy for commitment to religious beliefs) and given the long term trend the proportion is likely to be lower now. Catholics only make up a quarter of those regular attenders, and pentecostalists about 10% (source). Even among Catholics, circa 60% agree that "the law should allow an abortion if a woman decides on her own she does not wish to have a child”.

To get to your 10%, there would need to be a huge increase in religious observance and a sea change in opinion among Catholics. This would need to happen after a long term decline in religious observance in Britain.
Doesn't need to be the religiously observant.
Sneaky fascists are already mixing anti-abortion stuff in with their literature. My mother-in-law's best friend is a yorkshire catholic (very lapsed in her behaviour over the decades, with multiple affairs & even helping her daughter to get an abortion), and like most old yorkies (it seems), is a devout racist. She's been sending fascist literature to my mother-in-law (herself a yorkshire catholic & a racist, so very receptive to these messages), and it includes all kinds of ant-abortion crap amongst the claims of no-go areas and screeds using every synonym for 'p.ki' they can think of.
MiL now has a standing order to the EDL.
There's a lot of ignorant and unpleasant old folk who have been re-radicalised by the likes of gbeebies. It's the whole point of it. To remind them why they voted for the BNP back in the 70s. Those c.nts (who, being old, all vote) know that they will soon met their maker & so are receptive to (seemingly) religious messages too, and want to get back in the good lord's good books & could easily be flipped into supporting bans on abortion as a way of seeming religious without doing the hard work of going to church or following jesus' teachings or any of that malarkey.
Also, one wouldn't need 10%. Just 10% in 30-40 marginal constituencies would be more than enough, as long as polling didn't show it would drive enough people away in the other 60-odd marginal constituencies.

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by tom p » Mon Jun 27, 2022 3:04 pm

Little waster wrote:
Sun Jun 26, 2022 10:50 pm
Now the good news in the UK is that such an unholy alliance looks way-off but then again who in 2016 saw the recent incarnation of the PFKATheConservatives?
Anyone who was paying attention. It was the argument I used with all left-wingers who were pro-brexit. Sure, you'll get rid of Cameron, I would say, but then that won't mean a general election. There will be 4 years of extremist bastards determined to do all they can to destroy the UK before the next GE.
Admittedly I was wrong and it wasn't until 2019 that Johnson became PM, but it was the obvious outcome if leave won.

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Stranger Mouse » Mon Jun 27, 2022 7:48 pm

I’ve decided I should be on the pardon list if that’s still in the works

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Stranger Mouse » Tue Jun 28, 2022 8:26 am

A couple of opposing views

Dominic Sandbrook thinks everyone is being “hysterical” about the Roe decision having and ripples over here

https://unherd.com/2022/06/stop-pretend ... s-america/

This is what actually worries me. It isn’t that people think it’s not going to happen over here - I might think that myself in a month. It’s the absolute dismissal of any possibility and the constant strawman that all the people who are worried are expecting an exact duplication of the USA rather than our own less extreme version. Remember the very definite statements by Daniel Hannah that we weren’t going to leave the Single Market and that coronavirus wasn’t going to kill us (he was only wrong in a couple of hundred thousand cases to be fair).

FWIW I have found the far more reasoned and nuanced arguments by Woodchopper on this thread far more convincing.

Opposing views

ADF UK on the BBC https://twitter.com/_caitlogan/status/1 ... 0DJTBLtV-Q


Abortion clinic buffer zones in Scotland https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61918888

And the UK https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61624480

I can see buffer zones (or the lack of them) being a point of attack for the UK FREEZE PEACH crowd as things progress
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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Rich Scopie » Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:18 am

tom p wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:58 pm
...and like most old yorkies (it seems), is a devout racist.
Oi. No need for that kind of casual racism.
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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Rich Scopie » Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:25 am

Stranger Mouse wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 7:48 pm
Peter Boooooooone

https://twitter.com/avasantina/status/1 ... 901omrwC_g
peter bone.jpg
peter bone.jpg (37.44 KiB) Viewed 7852 times
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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by tom p » Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:53 am

Rich Scopie wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:18 am
tom p wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:58 pm
...and like most old yorkies (it seems), is a devout racist.
Oi. No need for that kind of casual racism.
It's true that I haven't met a statistically significant sample of them; but all the ones I've met and had the misfortune to be subjected to clearly are.
The fact that there's a backlash against YCCC finally doing something about the racism that's rife also strongly suggests that there's at least a strong seam of it.
And don't forget the racist rectangle that JDC was talking about.

There are many ignorant and ill-educated elderly yorkies who are profoundly racist. It's not only yorkshire, of course. There are ignorant and ill-educated old c.nts all over the place. It's why the red wall fell to the tories only when these people were offered an openly racist tory to vote for; despite him obviously despising them and everything else they stood for, their racism and his drew them together at the ballot box.

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Stranger Mouse » Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:32 pm

temptar wrote:
Sun Jun 26, 2022 11:12 am
Abortion is still on the books as illegal in the UK. Roll back the legislation that allows for life of mother and two doctors signing off and you are screwed. Offences Against the Person, 1861, I think.

Point of info, that provision was repealed in Ireland when the relevant constitutional amendment was written into law.

So first thing you need to do is get that repealed on your side too.
Stella Creasey https://twitter.com/stellacreasy/status ... 4cGzSrEe_Q
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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Stranger Mouse » Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:38 pm

I’ve decided I should be on the pardon list if that’s still in the works

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by temptar » Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:57 pm

Frustratingly Twitter is down in Ireland atm so while I would like to see those two last links, I can’t

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Little waster » Tue Jun 28, 2022 4:45 pm

temptar wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:57 pm
Frustratingly Twitter is down in Ireland atm so while I would like to see those two last links, I can’t
Fortunately the feeling of watching the Dunning Danny Kruger video can be easily replicated at home by getting a men's rights activist to repeatedly beat you in the uterus with a hard bound copy of the Bible, while quoting Jordan Peterson, for approximately ... 2000 years.

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Fishnut » Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:12 pm

temptar wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:57 pm
Frustratingly Twitter is down in Ireland atm so while I would like to see those two last links, I can’t
This is a HuffPo article on his comments. He says that abortion is a "political question". And while Stella Creasy told him it was a human rights issue, we know what the Tories think of them.
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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by temptar » Tue Jun 28, 2022 11:38 pm

By his logic, we can compel him to donate a kidney, right?

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Fishnut » Wed Jun 29, 2022 6:01 am

It could be entirely coincidental, but Stella Creasy's office has been vandalised after she said she would table an amendment to make access to abortion a fundamental right in the UK.
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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Stranger Mouse » Fri Jul 01, 2022 4:12 pm

Fishnut wrote:
Wed Jun 29, 2022 6:01 am
It could be entirely coincidental, but Stella Creasy's office has been vandalised after she said she would table an amendment to make access to abortion a fundamental right in the UK.
It may be coincidental but the timing does seem curious

Anti abortion group proving MPs with staff

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/c ... -roe-wade/
Christian Action, Research, and Education (CARE) has provided free researchers to 20 MPs as part of its Leadership Programme, which offers 11-month placements in Westminster – and all-access Commons passes – to recent university graduates.

Of those, 13 continued to take the interns despite revelations about the charity’s position on LGBTQ+ rights in 2012. It emerged that CARE had sponsored a conference about homosexuality that promoted gay ‘conversion therapy’ and included sessions on “mentoring the sexually broken”.

The group has said its internship scheme puts participants in “real positions of responsibility”, and boasts that former interns have gone on to become cabinet ministers and senior civil servants. Tory MP Stephen Crabb, an alumni of the scheme, credits it with giving him “a grounding of the Commons, politically”.
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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by raven » Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:25 pm

Allo V Psycho wrote:
Sun Jun 26, 2022 2:01 pm
Some women do not realise they are pregnant at all until as late as 20 weeks, or even till birth, and this cannot be ascribed simply to pregnancy denial.
I have two close friends who didn't realise they were pregnant for 4 months or so. They were both on the pill. One was the classic case of GP prescribing antibiotics that interfered and forgetting to give a warning. The other straight failure.

You tend to get lighter periods on the pill, and iirc the gaps in taking it can mimic periods even if you're pregnant. This makes it easier to miss.

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by raven » Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:55 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:08 pm

Little waster wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 8:49 am
The status quo in the UK is something like 5% are very strongly anti-abortion, 5% are very strongly pro-choice and the other 90% ... haven't really thought about it all that much.
I disagree. That might apply to men, but I expect that most women have thought about it.
That was my exact reaction, only more sweary.

If you asked a 100 women, particularly 100 women in their twenties when both the risk and hazards of pregnancy are probably highest I think you'd find most of them have thought about it. Maybe not in terms of legislation, but in terms of what they'd do if the worst happened.

(Oh, and my elderly relatives in Yorkshire must be the exception. They're lovely. Where I am now in the rural south though....)

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Little waster » Fri Jul 01, 2022 9:18 pm

raven wrote:
Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:55 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:08 pm

Little waster wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 8:49 am
The status quo in the UK is something like 5% are very strongly anti-abortion, 5% are very strongly pro-choice and the other 90% ... haven't really thought about it all that much.
I disagree. That might apply to men, but I expect that most women have thought about it.
That was my exact reaction, only more sweary.

If you asked a 100 women, particularly 100 women in their twenties when both the risk and hazards of pregnancy are probably highest I think you'd find most of them have thought about it. Maybe not in terms of legislation, but in terms of what they'd do if the worst happened.

(Oh, and my elderly relatives in Yorkshire must be the exception. They're lovely. Where I am now in the rural south though....)
Apologies.

Just to make it clear I never wanted to suggest that abortion is a minor issue or that many women haven't seriously considered what they would do/have done under the circumstances.

I was just suggesting that abortion hasn't been the all-dominating political topic in the UK that it is in the US; the thing people would allow to determine their vote irrespective of the other policies the candidates may have.

In the UK (mainland at least) politically it has been a dead topic for two generations, and this is a good thing, that most people were happy with the broadly pro-choice status quo and nobody was seriously talking about changing that, a moderate majority facing off against a highly-motivated but tiny fringe. Now in the aftermath of Roe v Wade being overturned the concern is this might change and for the first time since our parents/grandparents were young the pro-choice movement are going to have to start properly mobilising themselves as the anti-choice ghouls aren't going to hang about.
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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by raven » Fri Jul 01, 2022 10:33 pm

Little waster wrote:
Fri Jul 01, 2022 9:18 pm
Apologies.

Just to make it clear I never wanted to suggest that abortion is a minor issue or that many women haven't seriously considered what they would do/have done under the circumstances.

I was just suggesting that abortion hasn't been the all-dominating political topic in the UK that it is in the US; the thing people would allow to determine their vote irrespective of the other policies the candidates may have.

In the UK (mainland at least) politically it has been a dead topic for two generations, and this is a good thing, that most people were happy with the broadly pro-choice status quo and nobody was seriously talking about changing that, a moderate majority facing off against a highly-motivated but tiny fringe. Now in the aftermath of Roe v Wade being overturned the concern is this might change and for the first time since our parents/grandparents were young the pro-choice movement are going to have to start properly mobilising themselves as the anti-choice ghouls aren't going to hang about.
No worries, waster. I wouldn't quibble with the 5% at both extremes, and I agree that it's not an active political issue for most people in the UK. Well, England & Wales anyway.

It worries me slightly that the UK hasn't stopped demonstrators outside clinics, but I can't really see it following the US on all this. In the US, this is bound up with a lot of pro-state/anti-federal sentiment that has its roots in diversity of belief/culture across the US and the feeling that national government doesn't represent 'local' people. We've seen that kind of resentment in the UK expressed along Brexit/left-behind fault lines, but I don't think those areas coincide with high anti-abortion sentiment.

OTOH, I suppose the UK equivalent to states is devolution and you could argue that what the supreme court has done in allowing states to go their own way is exactly the situation we've been in with NI all along.

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Fishnut » Sat Jul 02, 2022 1:52 pm

The Guardian has an article highlighting just how confusing the UK law is on abortion and how it is still being used to punish women. The 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, which says it is unlawful to procure a miscarriage using “poison”, “an instrument” or “other means whatsoever”, and that those found guilty can be jailed for life is still law and women are still at risk of being prosecuted under it. As the article reminds us,
The 1967 Abortion Act transformed women’s healthcare by legalising terminations in England, Wales and Scotland up to 28 weeks, with the legal limit since reduced to 24 weeks. But abortions are only lawful in circumstances where two doctors agree that continuing the pregnancy would be risky for the physical or mental health of the woman.
Abortion is the only medical procedure that requires two doctors to agree that it is necessary before it can go ahead. Doctors have been known to pre-sign the forms but are at risk of prosecution if they are caught and the chilling effect of the law around abortions means that few doctors train the field.

It would be very easy for the government to give even more scrutiny to abortions, to require the risks to the physical or mental health of the woman to be over a particular threshold for the abortion to be granted, to require that they both see them in person, and so on. Groups with the aims of removing hard-won rights are used to working on decades-long time-frames. The right to an abortion in the UK is very much a qualified right and ultimately it is two doctors who make the decision, not the person who will live with its consequences.
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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by dyqik » Sat Jul 02, 2022 3:42 pm

And it's worth noting that Nadine Dorries has reportedly recently (post Dobbs) made statements about banning clinics etc. from giving advice about abortions. So there's at least some will to do that in the current government, and it probably wouldn't require primary legislation.

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Re: Abortion Situation In The UK

Post by Gfamily » Sat Jul 02, 2022 5:04 pm

Not a recent development, but it seems that UK Police forces have made multiple accusations against women who have experienced miscarriages or failed pregnancies.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... tillbirths
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