The abortion debate is getting more confusing
Dear Nadine Dorries.
Firstly I would like to say that I fully respect your commitment to lobbying for the reduction of the abortion limit from 24 to 20 weeks, as shown HERE and HERE. You are clearly very passionate about the issue and you are pursuing it through all the right channels. That said, I’m struggling to get my head round the abortion debate for the simple reason that the scientific evidence keeps pulling in all kinds of strange directions.
When it comes to issues such as climate change and abortion, I’m only interested in the science. I don’t care how much pressure groups try to guilt-trip me into thinking or behaving in a certain way – I simply ignore them. You seem to have stuck to the science as much as possible, but the problems arise when science disagrees with itself. For example, when you read stories about new evidence suggesting that survival rates below 24 weeks are extremely low or how the figures in support of lowering the abortion limit might have been ‘massaged’, I suddenly become more sceptical. Admittedly, your support for lowering the limit isn’t just focussed on survival rates as you have frequently referred to the ability of a foetus to feel pain before 24 weeks, courtesy of research by Dr Sunny Anand – who you claimed was a world expert in the area of foetal pain, but even this assertion has been questioned.
To be honest, I’m getting more confused by the day. Above all else I think we should remember that abortion is a horrific act and should be avoided at all costs, but the question of whether the limit needs to be lowered is not so clear cut.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
You’re right, it is complex, especially when it comes to Sunny Anand’s work, of which I’ve read quite a bit more since writing that article.
Is he as good a doctor/researcher as Dorries makes out?
Actually, he is – his work is first rate and, in places, brilliant.
If anyone is unfortunate enough to find themselves in the position of their unborn foetus requiring correcting surgery in the womb and it all goes fine and they end up giving birth to a healthy neonate then parts of the thanks they should be giving should go to Dr Anand, whose work is leading to significant enhancements in clinical practice.
Is any of this relevant to the abortion debate?
No, and its a real shame that the value in his work is being overshadowed by its co-option by the anti-abortion lobby.
At best his work presents an argument for use of anaesthesia in abortions carried out after 16-18 weeks gestation and, even then, I would argue that the real benefit of such a practice rests in considerations of the psychological well-being of the mother – if we are to have legal abortions, and I fully support the retention of the current 24 week limit – then we should ensure that the procedures in use for terminating pregnancy are as humane as we can possibly make them.
I am a French webmaster of a website on abortion, following English news on the subject.
And I’m also a bit confused : the “scientific” reports tell us that survival is better for any baby over 24 weeks, but no improvement when we go down this limit.
This doesn’t seem very rational to me…
Indeed. It seems to me that keeping the limit at 24 weeks while improving the conditions under which abortions before 24 weeks take place (e.g. through anaesthesia) is a very reasonable compromise, but ‘being reasonable’ doesn’t often feature in debates on abortion.
Avortementivg.com:
So far as the disparity in improvement in survival rates before and after the 24 week boundary are concerned what you have to appreciate is that doctors are working here at what are the very boundaries of what is possible.
Its a question of how the foetus develops and at what point in the gestational process certain key physiological systems being to develop and maturity – its not a uniform process but one in which different things happen at different time.
The key issues are neurological development, the bulk of which takes place after 24 weeks including all the structure necessary for higher brain function and motor control, and the development of the lungs, which only begin to mature during the third trimester.
A week’s work of additional development in the womb, particularly when it comes to the maturation of the lungs, can make a massive difference to the chance of survival – so much so that when faced with a women who may into labour at 22-23 weeks, doctors will do everything they possibly can (without risking the life of the foetus) to delay the birth as long as possible in order to get over the 24 boundary, because they know that if they can hang on for that long then the chances of a live birth and neonate who survives to discharge is so much greater.
I am always skeptical when it comes to such so-called scientific reasons. Here you take the brain and the lungs. Fine. It suits you well indeed.
Why not the heart (beat within the first month). Why not the liver? Why not any other vital organ?
Why not agreing on the fact that there is no scientific proof at all on this subject? This is what I call “truth”.
“being reasonable doesn’t often feature in debates on abortion” said a clever Tory in a letter…
You’re missing my point completely.
I’m not trying to define the parameters of life by reference to cortical and pulmonary functions, I’m pointing out that at 22-23 weeks gestation, the vast majority of foetuses that are born prematurely will die, no matter how much effort is put in by doctors, simply because key organs and system are insufficiently developed to sustain life outside the environment of the womb.
The research published today suggests that any foetus born below 24 weeks has a very poor chance of survival:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/may/09/health.medicalresearch
Having said that, the survival statistics depend on whether ’survival’ is measured by the number of children that make it to the ICU alive versus making out of hospital for good, which really muddies the water:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/oct/27/1
It is very easy for Nadine Dorries to separate humans from the rest of animal kingdon due to her religious beliefs but any biologist (or rational person) will see that we are happy to cause much more pain to other animals, including our closest relatives.
Nadine suggests that a 20 week foetus will move away from a needle – i.e. a painful stimulus. A fully grown chimp on the other hand is much more developed, neurologically and in every other way. The chimp will not just move away from the stimulus but will shout and scream at you! And yet we are happy to to cause greater suffering to the great apes and every other species than to a mass of cells.
I agree that a woman should have made up her mind by this point and it is always her welfare that should be considered but the abortion limit is not a rational discussion when based on pain instead of morality.
You are all missing the Point completely, The Abortion debate needs to be looked at in the context of Empire Building.
I’ll spell it out, Jack Straw, John Prescott, Harriet Harmthem, Peter Mandelsson, John Reid are all Former British Communist Party Members.
Many other members of our Establishment are Socialist Sympathysers.
Now, Communists don’t much care who they rule over, but of Course the British themselves are never going to Vote for EU rule so they must be gotten rid of.
Jack Straw once said ‘The British are not worth saving as a race’
Parliament (The Lib Lab Con Leadership are ALL Pro EU ) has presided over 6 Million abortions, Dawn Primorolo is right now hoping to Push a Bill through Parliament to sterilise British schoolgirls.
Add to this Mass mass mass Immigration / emmigration and you can see that they are ‘creating a new race of People called Europeans’ which is typical Soviet Ideology.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/865
I can spell it out in one word, Genocide.
I know what you are thinking, but surely they will be wiping their own race out, no, they are the Elite in the EU, there are thousands of them free to intermingle and intermarry, we the Proles on the other hand, well, who cares.
You see, you just have to think on a bigger scale.
Demographic decline of the British and Europeans
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=q71iddDm_U4#
we can count on the Immigrant vote to keep us in.
http://www.bobpiper.co.uk/2008/05/not_more_bloody_initiatives.php#comments
I’m wondering why the scientific debate has to be a debate about will “it” survive out of the womb, and not is “it” human. It may be a mass of cells, but it’s a mass of human cells, with unique human DNA.
Scientifically the debate should not be about when life begins, because we know that. The human life begins at conception and grows into different stages from there – in and out of the womb.
The debate should be when is the human life okay to kill. When it has no brain? When it is a week away from heartbeat? When it is three weeks away from being able to survive out of the womb?
But let us not fool ourselves about killing a human life, it is just “at what stage do we want to kill it.”