Oh god twitter feminists don’t you realise all your blather about baybeees confers – like it or not – personhood on pregnancies you are not carrying.
Only a pregnant woman can decide if her foetus is “a baby”
Think about it, if a foetus is only a person if it’s normal and healthy, then what are you saying?
And if a foetus is always a baybeee – thus legally a person – then what are the implications for choice, what are the implications for women carrying the desperately unwell and doomed?
A pregnant woman is the only person who can confer personhood. She does not – beyond the control of her own body and pregnancy- do this with legal standing.
Whilst she cannot be forced to carry or abort against her will, the law is clear.
A foetus becomes a baby – a person- upon parturition. Not before.
This has worked well in the U.K. , and the desperate act of self induced abortion we have just seen prosecuted did NOT involve a more than one person, legally or in any other way.
She did not abort a “baybee” no matter how we personally feel about it.
And I am speaking about the subject as one who has been pregnant and birthed, and who has had ethical constraints.
Women who’ve been prosecuted under the OAPA/1861[*which, as far as I’m aware, has not been repealed, thus certain provisions such as against poisoning will likely stand] as inflictors, not as victims.
Just the same way as attempted suicides were prosecuted as inflictors (as in self murder).
In both cases, their victims deserve mercy. If she hand forced RU486 down another’s throat, stealthed it or acted as a back street butcher, that is one thing.
Just as going up to a third party and stabbing them.
But when victim and perp are the same person, we have mercy for **suicide attempts, but not this.
But – as with suicide- no material third person acted here.
Inflicting unsupervised self abortion in such a dangerous manner is akin to attempted suicide, and we can create merciful laws which not only recognise this, but retain the parts of OAPA/1861, which protect women and their foeti against the third party.
If this is impossible, then how did we manage to separate suicide from murder, without decriminalising murder?
And if it is impossible because baby – AKA person – is involved, then you either dehumanise another’s foetus on her behalf – a dangerous thing – or you confer personhood on all foeti, regardless of the choices of ALL pregnant women.
Which is why we do not have foetal personhood in U.K. law. It cannot be arbitrarily granted in law, it has to apply to all. Thus it cannot apply to any.
And forced abortion – whether inflicted by poison, bodily harm, or even consentingly administered by any unqualified third party – will remain illegal regardless. It does not require foetal personhood.
There was no third party here. Just as with **suicide .
What quality has mercy?
- Unconsented medical procedures are illegal,people. This will be no different.
- * And I mean suicide, not “assisted dying” which is an oxymoron within the actual definition of suicide.

