Police in the United Kingdom are using data from period tracking apps and mass spectrometry tests conducted on blood, placenta, and urine to investigate patients who have had “unexplained” miscarriages.
Though abortion is legal in the UK, there are TRAP laws in place requiring certain conditions to be met first, paramount of which is that two separate doctors need to agree that the patient meets the criteria of the 1967 Abortion Act before any treatment can go ahead. Self-managed abortion is a criminal offense with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in the UK, as is any abortion performed after the pregnancy has progressed passed 23 weeks and six days, unless the patient is at risk of serious physical harm or death, or the fetus has severe developmental anomalies.
That’s already the case what are you on about.
I’m not terribly concerned what you think about fetuses being people: Not only are you wrong your arguments also are just as poor as the Roe vs. Wade reasoning.
Which would mean that personhood starts at the age of what, six or so? Certainly not before birth. Which means you’re arguing for severely late-term abortions.
See I don’t infantilise women like that, I don’t think that women take the better part of nine months to make up their mind.
No. She got lost. Don’t change my fucking argument. Getting lost in the desert and having a miscarriage both fall under “shit happens”: No blame. Moreover, saying “women with certain medical conditions are not allowed to get pregnant, they must be sterilised” is fucking inhumane. Nature doesn’t always follow our aesthetic preferences and the woman’s desire to have a kid is just as valid as everyone else’s, and murder isn’t about aesthetics but intent. A woman getting pregnant is not intent to kill that doesn’t even start to make sense.
The medical system, of course, would try to coax her into pre-implantation diagnostics, adoption, and whatnot. Which is where that particular problem belongs: In the medical and social, not legal, realm.
Counselling is meant to inform about all the medical stuff (if necessary), and show up possible paths forwards. If “having a bad day” means “got fired from job, partner got fired, too, and also the washing machine broke and flooded the apartment” then yes that’s very much a thing that counselling is meant to address: Physical and financial security won’t be an issue for the kid. The state got your back.
…that’s an America problem. We don’t have American conditions in Germany so don’t try to make them an argument.
Helping pregnant women is not task of the justice system, that’s responsibility of the health and social services. No court is getting involved.
In fact side note: The constitutional court considered resolving the rights conflict between growing and existing life on a case-by-case basis before court, they very quickly and emphatically dismissed that notion as being a privacy nightmare and thus the final call – whether the rights conflict can be resolved in favour of the woman – is up to the woman. Counselling makes sure that she’s got all the relevant information to make that call, and the three days cooldown provide time to make it as well as bring heart and mind into alignment.
And before you think otherwise: It is illegal to pressure women during counselling.
If you’re starving and walk into a bakery and steal bread you’ll also get sentenced – to a slap on the wrist, and the court is going to make sure that you’ll get the help necessary for that to not occur again, help that was available to you and you should have accepted before you got into that situation. Likewise, states are required to make abortions accessible so women not having ready access to them doesn’t occur. (Hence also my railing about Bavaria, our local backwater. Though the situation there is probably still better than in random blue US states).
On the flipside, if a woman goes ahead and says “I don’t like the way Germany regulates abortions, I’m going to spend two weeks educating myself about abortions and another two to get the supplies, then do it myself just to show them who’s boss” – that is what the upper end of the punishment range is for. In that time span you could’ve gotten that abortion using regular channels, easily.
Oh and just for completeness’ sake: All this is about at-will abortions, abortions for medical or criminal reasons are covered by self-defence,