MISS SCORPIO
Age: 124
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'Still hard to discuss abortion'
Ms Elliott already had four children when she fell pregnant Most people are in favour of a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion, according to a survey. But it is still not an easy subject to talk about, says one woman.
Cath Elliott was 32 years old and already had four children when she fell pregnant for a fifth time in 1997.
"We didn't expect it," she said.
"All our children were planned and then to find out we were pregnant came as a complete surprise.
"I discussed it with my husband and we just decided it was not feasible to have another child and so we decided to have an abortion."
When I had an abortion I hardly told anyone. It is not the sort of thing that is discussed
Cath Elliott: Most 'favour abortion right'
But Ms Elliott, now 41, from Norwich, added: "We found out a couple of weeks in, but did not have the abortion until 12 weeks. That was wrong.
"My GP in Milton Keynes, where I was living at the time, was not helpful at all. He kept saying he had lost my results and it took a long time until we were referred to hospital.
"Even though he didn't say it, it was clear he did not agree with abortion.
"We then found out that that hospital did not do abortions so had to be referred to an abortion provider. It should not have been so hard."
However, she now believes there is scope to relax the law so other won't have to go through what she did.
"There is the abortion pill which could be administered by nurses. Why should women who want abortions have to see a doctor at all when it is in the early stages?"
But Ms Elliott also acknowledges there is still a lot of stigma over abortion - despite the fact that one in three women will have one in their life time.
"When I had an abortion I hardly told anyone. It is not the sort of thing that is discussed. But when I did start mentioning it, I realised so many others had also had one.
"It was like this big secret that no one mentioned. I suppose the thing is, is that there is no middle ground - you are either strongly for or strong against."
MISS SCORPIO
Age: 124
7976 days old here
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"Abortions 'crisis' threatens NHS"
Many doctors are opting out of providing abortions An increasing number of doctors are refusing to carry out abortions, leading to a crisis in NHS services, experts have warned. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says there has been a big rise in the number of doctors who are "conscientious objectors".
About 190,000 abortions take place in England and Wales annually.
The NHS pays for four out of five - but half of these are carried out by private sector providers.
If abortions are not available safely, women will turn to unsafe ways of procuring abortion
Kate Guthrie, RCOG
This is double the proportion performed in the private sector 10 years ago.
Abortion is legal in Britain up to 24 weeks, however it can occur later if doctors believe the baby has a severe disability or if the mother's life is at risk.
Experts say the decline in the number of NHS doctors willing to perform abortions has also declined because they are able to "pick and choose" the areas they train and specialise in - and very few opt to carry out terminations when they can choose other areas such as fertility medicine.
'Essential service'
Kate Guthrie, head of abortion services in Hull and a spokeswoman for the RCOG, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We have always had conscientious objectors, but more doctors now are just wanting to something different and don't see abortion care as attractive."
But she said it was a necessary service.
"The Abortion Act came in because women were prepared to do anything rather than have unplanned pregnancies. Nothing has changed.
We should be working together to make abortions rare
Josephine Quintavalle, Alive and Kicking
"If abortions are not available safely, women will turn to unsafe ways of procuring abortion."
She suggested a solution to the current crisis might be to increase the involvement of nurses in providing abortion.
Ann Furedi, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which is a leading provider of abortions, said: "It is increasingly difficult to recruit doctors to abortion services.
"It is the case, that within five to seven years, a woman's ability to get an abortion will be more shaped by the service's ability to provide them rather than the state of the law."
She said doctors failed to realise how essential the abortion service was.
'Sensitivity'
But Josephine Quintavalle, of the anti-abortion group Alive and Kicking, said: "We welcome this development.
"There is a sensitivity in this country that there are too many abortions, and this obviously will impact on doctors.
"We should be working together to make abortions rare."
And Julia Millington of the ProLife Alliance said: "We have been hearing for some time now that young doctors, in particular, do not want to work in this field.
"Those choosing to go into medicine presumably do so because they want to cure sickness and disease not end the lives of innocent human beings."
The Department of Health said it was aware a minority of NHS doctors chose to opt out of providing abortions, but added this did not prevent women obtaining a termination.
It added that a "stable" number of abortions was being performed each year, and that the number of terminations performed before the 10th week of pregnancy had increased from 51% in 2002 to 64%.
MISS SCORPIO
Age: 124
7976 days old here
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This is another artical:
Late abortions reasons revealed
Many women failed to realise they were pregnant in the early weeks Many women who have late abortions had not realised they were pregnant, a study has found. Southampton and Kent University experts asked 883 women why they had abortions in the second trimester - between 13 and 24 weeks into the pregnancy.
The researchers say women need more information so that they realise they are pregnant much earlier.
But anti-abortion campaigners said the rights of the unborn child should take precedence.
The most significant finding in this study is that 41% of women indicated that the delay was due to indecision
Alive and Kicking spokeswoman
Around 11% of abortions take place after the 12th week of pregnancy. Just over 1% of those occur after a woman is 20 weeks pregnant.
Most abortions are permitted until the 24th week, although they can be carried out later if doctors believe the baby has a severe disability or if the mother's life is at risk
The time-limit for abortions is proving increasingly controversial, as medical advances mean even very premature babies can survive.
About 190,000 abortions take place in England and Wales annually.
Concerns
This study, which allowed women to give more than one reason for opting to have a late abortion, found women had not realised they were pregnant for two main reasons.
Just under 40% of women had not realised they were pregnant because they had irregular periods.
Another 31% had been using contraception, and so had not thought they could be pregnant.
And 41% said they had taken time to come to a decision about whether or not to have an abortion, delaying the procedure.
But 30% had simply not done anything once they suspected they were pregnant, with many waiting weeks to do a pregnancy test.
Half of those questioned were at least seven weeks pregnant when they were aware of their situation - a quarter were over 11 weeks pregnant.
Forty-two per cent said they had waited more than two weeks between requesting and having an abortion, and 23% waited more than three weeks, the maximum recommended by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
And many women said they had concerns about what was actually involved in an abortion, which had led to them waiting before going ahead.
Dr Ellie Lee, senior lecturer in social policy at the University of Kent, who worked on the study, said: "There has been a great deal of media and public debate recently about second-trimester abortions, especially those performed at 20 weeks and over.
Dr Lee, who is also a member of the Pro-Choice Forum, said: "What has been lacking in this discussion so far is an understanding of why women have abortions at this stage.
"This means few have sought to properly address how women can be helped to terminate pregnancies earlier, and how policy makers and service providers might best think about the relevant issues for those women who seek second-trimester abortion."
She added: "If you were to reduce the upper time limit on abortion, it's arguable some women may feel rushed into a decision and may go ahead with an abortion when they would otherwise have had the baby."
Lack of knowledge
Ann Furedi, chief executive of British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which provides abortions, said: "'We frequently see women who did not know enough about their own bodies to recognise the early symptoms of pregnancy, especially if they have irregular or continuing periods, as many women do."
But a spokeswoman for the anti-abortion Alive and Kicking Campaign said: "The most significant finding in this study is that 41% of women indicated that the delay was due to indecision.
"We believe that the rights of the unborn child should take precedence over the uncertainty of the mother, an opinion that is shared by the vast majority of the public who are particularly concerned about late abortion."
MISS SCORPIO
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Abortion and eugenics Abortion has been used in the past to stop the growth of population groups, or racial groups regarded as genetically 'inferior'. This is now regarded as a most serious breach of human rights and a criminal act.
Abortion has been used in the past to stop people with various genetic defects from having children. When this is done as a matter of public policy it is now regarded as a most serious breach of human rights and a criminal act.
Abortion and gender selection In some countries, particularly India there is a major problem with 'female foeticide' - deliberately aborting foetuses that would be born as girls.
For sociological and economic reasons parents in some cultures prefer to have boy babies. When parents can discover the gender of the foetus in advance, they sometimes request the termination of a pregnancy solely because the foetus is female.
While selective abortion for gender preference is illegal in India, the low proportion of female births relative to male births, together with other evidence, makes it certain that female foeticide is practised on a large scale.
MISS SCORPIO
Age: 124
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A substitute for contraception Some methods of contraception in fact amount to abortion during the very earliest stage of a pregnancy. The section below only deals with abortion after the first week of pregnancy.
Some societies have used abortion as a substitute for adequate provision of contraception, or quite deliberately to regulate population size.
In 1965, a United Nations Conference on World Population in Belgrade said that abortion was the chief method of birth control in the world at that time.
Most western supporters of abortion rights do not support abortions carried out for such reasons - or at least not as explicit public policy.
However some doctors do argue that abortion should be part of a country's contraception policy.
They say that a society that believes that people should plan their families must allow women to end unwanted pregnancies, in order to deal with failures of birth control.
Abortion and disability Some ethicists dislike the argument that abortion should be allowed where the baby, if born, would suffer from physical or mental handicaps.
They say that allowing this as a reason for abortion is offensive to disabled people; because it implies that they, and their lives, are less worthwhile than the lives of 'normal' people.
And some people with disabilities that could be put forward as grounds for abortion argue that they would much rather be alive than have been killed in the womb.
Section 1(1)d of the UK's 1967 Abortion Act allowed termination of a pregnancy at any time if there was a significant risk of the baby being born seriously disabled. Under other circumstances abortion has to take place during the first 6 months of the pregnancy.
The Disability Rights Commission criticised this section in the following words:
The Section is offensive to many people; it reinforces negative stereotypes of disability and there is substantial support for the view that to permit terminations at any point during a pregnancy on the ground of risk of disability, while time limits apply to other grounds set out in the Abortion Act, is incompatible with valuing disability and non-disability equally.
In common with a wide range of disability and other organisations, the DRC believes the context in which parents choose whether to have a child should be one in which disability and non-disability are valued equally. Other ethicists argue that whether or not people with disabilities are upset by this argument is irrelevant.
They say that the argument is wrong because it attacks the principle that all human beings are equally valuable in their own ways. They say that it is just plain wrong to say that one life is less valuable than another.
Other, pro-life, campaigners have objected to this argument on the grounds that it permits eugenic abortion - abortion to eliminate disabling genes from the human race.
MISS SCORPIO
Age: 124
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Some societies ban abortion almost completely while others permit it in certain cases.
Such societies usually lay down a maximum age after which the foetus must not be aborted, regardless of the circumstances.
At various times some of the following have been allowed in some societies:
Abortion for the sake of the mother's health including her mental health
Abortion where a pregnancy is the result of a crime such as crimes like rape, incest, or child abuse
Abortion where the child of the pregnancy would have an 'unacceptable quality of life' such as cases where the child would have:
serious physical handicaps,
serious genetic problems,
serious mental defects abortion for social reasons,including: poverty;
The mother unable to cope with a child (or another child),
The mother being too young to cope with a child abortion as a matter of government policy
as a way of regulating population size
as a way of regulating groups within a population
as a way of improving the population
Most opponents of abortion agree that abortion for the sake of the mother's health can be morally acceptable if there is a real risk of serious damage to the mother.
Abortion for social reasons is usually least acceptable to opponents.
MISS SCORPIO
Age: 124
7976 days old here
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shahrukh khan said:
this forum needs
new look some new forums new emotions
Joined: 12-May-2003- 3-03-2008...kuch bhi nahi badla sab same hai aur i m bored seeing all this...there is no fun...dont say u will see one day...heard this b4 hopeeeeeee something will happen
I'll have to agree with you SK, there should be some major changes to the forums.
Something new will keep this place more appealing that way.
MISS SCORPIO
Age: 124
7976 days old here
Total Posts: 22358
Points: 0
Location:
United Kingdom, United Kingdom
You can't really say whatever you want without consequences.
Before people could speak their minds the way they'd have wanted to, now it's not like that, even if you try & get your point across in a slightly vociferous manner your posts will still get deleted or moved to the trash bin.
This place used to have that edge about it & now it's all 'fluffed up'
Damn forums.
So much has changed, it's supposed to be a family site yet on the main page you get idiots putting up semi-naked models/pics.
What is up with that?
How is it there can be more freedom for one thing & less for another?
Just missing loved ones who have passed away. 
hopeeeeeee something will happen
