Today (right now in fact) is Margaret Thatcher's funeral. This event has locked down the centre of London. Four thousand police officers have been drafted in to keep the peace. Demonstrations are expected. Crowds lining the streets have been reported as booing. Big Ben has been silenced as a mark of respect. 2300 guests are attending the funeral itself, including the Queen, 32 MPs and many significant political and international figures. The funeral is costing £10 million. Ten. Million. Pounds. This is the key figure that is upsetting so many people (not just on the left wing, though i suspect many right wingers feel obliged to keep schtum). The last prime minister to be buried with anything like this level of pomp was Winston Churchill, who led the country twice: through World War 2, and again through the aftermath. He retired his position due to ill health, whereas Thatcher was ousted by her own party, in a wave of unpopularity. Churchill was given a full state funeral. Thatcher's own wishes was to not have a full state funeral, as it was a 'waste of money'. Her actual funeral is to be a state funeral in all but name - all it lacks is lying in state, and an RAF flypast.
Today is divisive, as was Thatcher.
Margaret Thatcher was struck with dementia in her last years, rarely
emerging except for the occasional official function. Her tenure as PM
ended over twenty years ago, and younger constituents have little idea who
she was, or why she stirs such strong feelings in their parents and
grandparents.
I was born in 1985, and my childhood and adolescence were shadowed by
the financial difficulty her policies put my parents into.Whole towns were put out of work during the 80s, the idea of community was destroyed, and a culture of individual responsibility, and blame, was implemented.On the other side, she did wonders for the economy. But what use is a strong economy when it is full of unemployed people, who remain impoverished and unhealthy because of government reluctance to invest in social structure? The lack of social investment during the Conservative government of the 80s and 90s is one of the reasons that the current government struggles with balancing the economy - unemployment begets unemployment begets benefit dependence.
When news of Thatcher's death hit social networks, there was widespread sorrow, cheering and anger. Parliament was recalled, at enormous cost, for what was essentially a memorial service. A longstanding campaign to get Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead to number one swung into action. Many people expressed disgust at the open joy others took in a sad, lonely death, regardless of political leaning.
Then things started to get a bit strange. Ken Livingstone was kicked off Sky News for saying Thatcher was fundamentally wrong. Glenda Jackson gave a candid speech in parliament about the social problems caused by Thatcher's government, and was booed and told to sit down by her fellow MPs. Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead was banned from playing on the Radio 1 chart show, despite getting to number 2 (the fact it didn't get to number 1 being held as a victory by the right). She has been vaunted as a feminist, when she loathed feminism. Death parties have been reviled, the Daily Mail have made calls for the arrest of peaceful protesters. A Falklands theme was announced for her funeral, which is somewhat disrespectful to the thousand people that died. David Cameron announced today that we are 'all Thatcherites', which is either a gross misjudgement of the national mood, or blind optimism.
Repeatedly, people have been told that their open hostility towards Thatcher's government, death and funeral is disrespectful, evil and uncouth; that Thatcher was simply an old lady who deserves a good send off.
It strikes me that Margaret Thatcher was two people. On the one hand, Margaret - elderly, estranged from her children, widowed and lonely in dementia. On the other, Thatcher - icon of the 80s, hate figure to some, glorious figurehead to others. It is Thatcher the Icon that people object to, and it is Thatcher the Icon that the current government are trying to deify through this cult of personality.
17 Apr 2013
6 Apr 2013
The rage
Hello, my name's Soph, and I'm on income support.
I can hear your gasp of dismay from here.
I am poor. I am workless. Somehow, this has evolved to mean that I am also degraded and depraved. I am without feeling, and stupid. I am not contributing the economy, I am not useful. I own some luxury items, proof (according to Katie Price, fount of all knowledge on degenerate lifestyles) that I am secretly rich. I spend all my benefit recklessly, on cigarettes, alcohol and drugs. My children are not as good as your children. My community is not as good as yours.
If only I would just get a job, society's problems would be eradicated.
Let's start with the most common bugbear of the media and facebook, when judging the poor. I have a plasma TV. I have a leather sofa. I even have an Xbox. How can this be? Who have I murdered to get such luxury items? How do I afford such things? Easy - I bought them years ago, before I had children when I was still working full time. These things don't need replacing annually and may last for years. They're not a mark of being a benefits cheat. The outrage at my possessing them seems to be a product of deep snobbery. These are aspirational products, beyond my income. Perhaps I should have sold them when I signed on, just to reassure the government that I was taking my newly poor status seriously.
Next up, I don't smoke. Never have; it's a filthy habit and I'm asthmatic. Even if I could afford to smoke 70 cigars a day, I wouldn't. I drink a bit, a couple of units a week, on average. I don't do drugs, they are beyond both desire and income.
Now, why don't I have a job? Well, I'm a single mother to two preschool children. Childcare is excruciatingly expensive. If I worked part time, about 70% of my wages would be sucked up by childcare. It is subsidised by the government, but that's a benefit. The government would give me working tax credits, but again, that's a benefit.
My children, already splitting their time between their parents, would see me less than they do now. I would achieve nothing much beyond not seeing my children. I'd still be claiming just as much money from the government as I do now, but with almost no gain financially, and at a definite loss personally.
Work makes absolutely no sense; getting a degree does. I think that one of the best investments I can make is in the upbringing of my children. So I give them my time and energy, and hope it pays off when they grow up.
Some of you know my circumstances. I did not choose to become a single mother. I really resent George Osborne saying benefits claimants have 'done the wrong thing'. I'm not sure what I could have done to make things different, personally or economically, unless I'd married a sheikh on the rebound.
Due to being in the lowest income bracket, I am automatically at a major social disadvantage. I don't drive, which saves me a fortune, but makes transport a headache, and restricts access to health services. I have to live where housing is cheap, so I don't live near good schools, for which my children will suffer. Luckily, I have the internet and can do my shopping online, or I'd be extremely restricted over where I could shop. In turn, this would limit my choice of food. When I return to work, I will be limited as to where I can go due to lack of transport. Poverty is about far more than a simple lack of money; it affects every area of your life.
Hundreds of thousands of families in this country are claiming some type of benefit. Many of them are working. George Osborne made a speech this week that demonised every single one of them. Iain Duncan Smith claimed he could live on £53 a week if he had to (he'd be dead in a year if he tried, it's starvation level income). The Daily Mail did not ascribe Mick Philpott's awful crimes to his abusive, sociopathic personality, but to the fact he was on benefits. Benefits make you a child killer, and don't forget it.
The government are eroding social equality - did you know legal aid for civil cases has now been cut? This means that the very poorest members of society can no longer get help in court in matters of divorce, child custody, clinical negligence, welfare, employment, immigration, housing, debt, benefit and education. So, no more funded appeals against benefit decisions - funny that. Civil justice is now the preserve of the rich, and they have criminal legal aid in their sights too.
The government are making scapegoats of the poor, and they are doing this because they can. The poor depend on benefits, as they have for hundreds of years, and thus belong to the government. Our voice cannot be heard against the baying mob, screaming at us to get back to work. Unemployment is not at an all time high because of benefits being more desirable; it is at an all time high because there are No Jobs.
The government are making us hate each other, trying to distract us from the reality of the situation - the financial crash was caused by greed and gambling, not benefits spending. People are on benefits because there is no work, and being on benefits is depressing and demotivational. It gives me the rage.
I think the ConDems must be absolutely terrified of a united Britain, because the only "them and us" that really exists is between this government and the people.
I can hear your gasp of dismay from here.
I am poor. I am workless. Somehow, this has evolved to mean that I am also degraded and depraved. I am without feeling, and stupid. I am not contributing the economy, I am not useful. I own some luxury items, proof (according to Katie Price, fount of all knowledge on degenerate lifestyles) that I am secretly rich. I spend all my benefit recklessly, on cigarettes, alcohol and drugs. My children are not as good as your children. My community is not as good as yours.
If only I would just get a job, society's problems would be eradicated.
Let's start with the most common bugbear of the media and facebook, when judging the poor. I have a plasma TV. I have a leather sofa. I even have an Xbox. How can this be? Who have I murdered to get such luxury items? How do I afford such things? Easy - I bought them years ago, before I had children when I was still working full time. These things don't need replacing annually and may last for years. They're not a mark of being a benefits cheat. The outrage at my possessing them seems to be a product of deep snobbery. These are aspirational products, beyond my income. Perhaps I should have sold them when I signed on, just to reassure the government that I was taking my newly poor status seriously.
Next up, I don't smoke. Never have; it's a filthy habit and I'm asthmatic. Even if I could afford to smoke 70 cigars a day, I wouldn't. I drink a bit, a couple of units a week, on average. I don't do drugs, they are beyond both desire and income.
Now, why don't I have a job? Well, I'm a single mother to two preschool children. Childcare is excruciatingly expensive. If I worked part time, about 70% of my wages would be sucked up by childcare. It is subsidised by the government, but that's a benefit. The government would give me working tax credits, but again, that's a benefit.
My children, already splitting their time between their parents, would see me less than they do now. I would achieve nothing much beyond not seeing my children. I'd still be claiming just as much money from the government as I do now, but with almost no gain financially, and at a definite loss personally.
Work makes absolutely no sense; getting a degree does. I think that one of the best investments I can make is in the upbringing of my children. So I give them my time and energy, and hope it pays off when they grow up.
Some of you know my circumstances. I did not choose to become a single mother. I really resent George Osborne saying benefits claimants have 'done the wrong thing'. I'm not sure what I could have done to make things different, personally or economically, unless I'd married a sheikh on the rebound.
Due to being in the lowest income bracket, I am automatically at a major social disadvantage. I don't drive, which saves me a fortune, but makes transport a headache, and restricts access to health services. I have to live where housing is cheap, so I don't live near good schools, for which my children will suffer. Luckily, I have the internet and can do my shopping online, or I'd be extremely restricted over where I could shop. In turn, this would limit my choice of food. When I return to work, I will be limited as to where I can go due to lack of transport. Poverty is about far more than a simple lack of money; it affects every area of your life.
Hundreds of thousands of families in this country are claiming some type of benefit. Many of them are working. George Osborne made a speech this week that demonised every single one of them. Iain Duncan Smith claimed he could live on £53 a week if he had to (he'd be dead in a year if he tried, it's starvation level income). The Daily Mail did not ascribe Mick Philpott's awful crimes to his abusive, sociopathic personality, but to the fact he was on benefits. Benefits make you a child killer, and don't forget it.
The government are eroding social equality - did you know legal aid for civil cases has now been cut? This means that the very poorest members of society can no longer get help in court in matters of divorce, child custody, clinical negligence, welfare, employment, immigration, housing, debt, benefit and education. So, no more funded appeals against benefit decisions - funny that. Civil justice is now the preserve of the rich, and they have criminal legal aid in their sights too.
The government are making scapegoats of the poor, and they are doing this because they can. The poor depend on benefits, as they have for hundreds of years, and thus belong to the government. Our voice cannot be heard against the baying mob, screaming at us to get back to work. Unemployment is not at an all time high because of benefits being more desirable; it is at an all time high because there are No Jobs.
The government are making us hate each other, trying to distract us from the reality of the situation - the financial crash was caused by greed and gambling, not benefits spending. People are on benefits because there is no work, and being on benefits is depressing and demotivational. It gives me the rage.
I think the ConDems must be absolutely terrified of a united Britain, because the only "them and us" that really exists is between this government and the people.
6 Mar 2013
Labour pains
Once upon a time, there was no such thing as pain relief in labour. It didn't matter if your labour lasted an hour or three days: there was nothing to offer for the pain. As well as this, if your baby got stuck, it died and most of the time, so did you. This used to be considered part of the curse of womanhood - to punish Eve for her fall, God stated that women must bear their children in blood and pain. In our time, it is difficult to understand how absolute the word of the Bible was historically. Childbirth was a pain women had to bear.
Times have changed and obstetric practice has gone through various fashions. For example, twilight birth was first offered as a treatment for pain of childbirth in the 1860s, via chloroform (praised magnificently by Queen Victoria, who didn't have easy births despite her grand multiparity), and evolved to being normal practice in the US until the 1940s. Women were injected with a morphine based mixture in the early phases of labour, and then remained barely conscious and unaware of pain until after the birth. The side effect was a drowsy baby with decreased respiratory function.
In the 1970s, pethidine was given to labouring women in hospital, usually without consent. Our notion of informed consent is surprisingly modern - until the mid 1980s, women were shaved and subjected to enemas in early labour, monitored and confined to bed throughout the labour and then given an episiotomy during the birth without much explanation, as a matter of course, to keep things tidy and easy for the delivering doctor.
Radical midwifery began the change in obstetric practice in the 1980s, as a response to this overmedicalisation of childbirth. The radical midwifery movement saw childbirth as a natural and normal act, whereas the medical fraternity of the time saw it as fraught with risk.
Nowadays, obstetrics falls somewhere between the two extremes. Women are considered low risk, unless they fit one of a number of criteria which escalates them to high risk. Women now have a right to choose where to deliver their child, and have a choice of pain relieving medications. Some women are able to have a vaginal delivery, with minimal interference, at home or hospital. Other women have more technical deliveries, overseen by several clinicians. However, the assessment of who needs what kind of birth is done on a case by case basis, and the woman's needs are acknowledged in the process - or at least, they should be. As I've alluded to before, this isn't yet internalised procedure for all clinicians.
The issue of pain relief in childbirth is one that comes up, most often when women are in their first pregnancy and their midwife, family and friends ask them what they are planning to use. Midwives generally advise women not to plan their pain control too much, as it doesn't allow for adaptation in labour. Friends who have already had children, will often fall into one of two camps based on their experience - 'have ALL the pain relief because it's the worst pain ever and you'll DIE' or 'pain relief is for wusses'.
The red camp are scaremongerers, the blue camp are not being realistic. Nobody knows what they are capable of withstanding physically until they do it. No woman can predict how the length or intensity of their labour, whether it's their first child or ninth. There are women who have their children with no pain relief at all, and ones who have an epidural at 4cm because the pain is so vicious. Neither are wrong, or right, they're just doing what they need to do to get through it.
There are side effects of using pain relief - pethidine, diamorphine and meptid can lead to a dopey baby, or worse a baby in respiratory distress. Having an epidural contributes to birth interventions, because the woman cannot coordinate her physical pushing with the uterine contractions, and being confined to bed protracts labour as gravity cannot work. Gas and air is the safest form of pain relief, though it can lose it's effectiveness in the later stages of labour.
However, an excessively painful labour may lead to psychological problems postnatally. I had no pain relief in my first labour because it progressed so quickly that there wasn't time. For some time afterwards, I had vivid flashbacks to being in agony and terrified - pain is very frightening if you don't feel in control of it. The pain, and speed of delivery, alienated me from my baby to begin with. I simply couldn't comprehend that this child had come from me. I had been expecting a long first labour, mostly in hospital. Instead, I got two hours of agony on my toilet at home, an hour of trying not to push while I got to hospital, and then an hour of pushing. I don't know if my trauma would have been lessened if I had pain relief, but I probably would have felt more in control. It has been almost four years, and I can still feel my body trying not to push if I think about the half an hour or so before I was 'allowed' to push by a midwife.
Equally, a labour without pain relief can be extremely cathartic. I had my second child without pain relief, by choice, expecting a fast labour. I got a fast labour - 1 hour 50 minutes - and felt wholly in control throughout. The pain was awful, as labour pain is, but it never felt unmanageable. His birth was healing, both to the trauma of my first birth, and the trauma of my second pregnancy.
A drug-free labour can be extremely empowering, but a planned drug-free labour that goes awry for whatever reason can lead to feelings of failure and inadequacy. Some women consider using pain relief to be cheating, or an easy way out, rather than an advantage of modern medicine. Other women consider using pain relief as a normal part of life - after all, you take medication for a headache, why not for the worst pain you'll ever bear?
Labour pain requires management. Some women can manage it on their own, through sheer force of will, through breathing techniques or hypnosis. Some women need drugs to manage the pain. Pain thresholds vary from person to person, and people's perception of pain also varies. Most women are capable of giving birth vaginally, without pain relief, but not doing so, through choice or necessity, does not make them less of a woman, or less of a mother.
Times have changed and obstetric practice has gone through various fashions. For example, twilight birth was first offered as a treatment for pain of childbirth in the 1860s, via chloroform (praised magnificently by Queen Victoria, who didn't have easy births despite her grand multiparity), and evolved to being normal practice in the US until the 1940s. Women were injected with a morphine based mixture in the early phases of labour, and then remained barely conscious and unaware of pain until after the birth. The side effect was a drowsy baby with decreased respiratory function.
In the 1970s, pethidine was given to labouring women in hospital, usually without consent. Our notion of informed consent is surprisingly modern - until the mid 1980s, women were shaved and subjected to enemas in early labour, monitored and confined to bed throughout the labour and then given an episiotomy during the birth without much explanation, as a matter of course, to keep things tidy and easy for the delivering doctor.
Radical midwifery began the change in obstetric practice in the 1980s, as a response to this overmedicalisation of childbirth. The radical midwifery movement saw childbirth as a natural and normal act, whereas the medical fraternity of the time saw it as fraught with risk.
Nowadays, obstetrics falls somewhere between the two extremes. Women are considered low risk, unless they fit one of a number of criteria which escalates them to high risk. Women now have a right to choose where to deliver their child, and have a choice of pain relieving medications. Some women are able to have a vaginal delivery, with minimal interference, at home or hospital. Other women have more technical deliveries, overseen by several clinicians. However, the assessment of who needs what kind of birth is done on a case by case basis, and the woman's needs are acknowledged in the process - or at least, they should be. As I've alluded to before, this isn't yet internalised procedure for all clinicians.
The issue of pain relief in childbirth is one that comes up, most often when women are in their first pregnancy and their midwife, family and friends ask them what they are planning to use. Midwives generally advise women not to plan their pain control too much, as it doesn't allow for adaptation in labour. Friends who have already had children, will often fall into one of two camps based on their experience - 'have ALL the pain relief because it's the worst pain ever and you'll DIE' or 'pain relief is for wusses'.
The red camp are scaremongerers, the blue camp are not being realistic. Nobody knows what they are capable of withstanding physically until they do it. No woman can predict how the length or intensity of their labour, whether it's their first child or ninth. There are women who have their children with no pain relief at all, and ones who have an epidural at 4cm because the pain is so vicious. Neither are wrong, or right, they're just doing what they need to do to get through it.
There are side effects of using pain relief - pethidine, diamorphine and meptid can lead to a dopey baby, or worse a baby in respiratory distress. Having an epidural contributes to birth interventions, because the woman cannot coordinate her physical pushing with the uterine contractions, and being confined to bed protracts labour as gravity cannot work. Gas and air is the safest form of pain relief, though it can lose it's effectiveness in the later stages of labour.
However, an excessively painful labour may lead to psychological problems postnatally. I had no pain relief in my first labour because it progressed so quickly that there wasn't time. For some time afterwards, I had vivid flashbacks to being in agony and terrified - pain is very frightening if you don't feel in control of it. The pain, and speed of delivery, alienated me from my baby to begin with. I simply couldn't comprehend that this child had come from me. I had been expecting a long first labour, mostly in hospital. Instead, I got two hours of agony on my toilet at home, an hour of trying not to push while I got to hospital, and then an hour of pushing. I don't know if my trauma would have been lessened if I had pain relief, but I probably would have felt more in control. It has been almost four years, and I can still feel my body trying not to push if I think about the half an hour or so before I was 'allowed' to push by a midwife.
Equally, a labour without pain relief can be extremely cathartic. I had my second child without pain relief, by choice, expecting a fast labour. I got a fast labour - 1 hour 50 minutes - and felt wholly in control throughout. The pain was awful, as labour pain is, but it never felt unmanageable. His birth was healing, both to the trauma of my first birth, and the trauma of my second pregnancy.
A drug-free labour can be extremely empowering, but a planned drug-free labour that goes awry for whatever reason can lead to feelings of failure and inadequacy. Some women consider using pain relief to be cheating, or an easy way out, rather than an advantage of modern medicine. Other women consider using pain relief as a normal part of life - after all, you take medication for a headache, why not for the worst pain you'll ever bear?
Labour pain requires management. Some women can manage it on their own, through sheer force of will, through breathing techniques or hypnosis. Some women need drugs to manage the pain. Pain thresholds vary from person to person, and people's perception of pain also varies. Most women are capable of giving birth vaginally, without pain relief, but not doing so, through choice or necessity, does not make them less of a woman, or less of a mother.
1 Mar 2013
Self Harm Awareness Day
Trigger Warning: contains mild descriptions of self harm.
I first hurt myself around my 11th birthday. I was badly bullied at school, pretty much every day from the age of 5 until the age of 16. Some bullies took it too far, in a way that even candid I do not wish to share with the rest of the world. I began to pull my hair out, in direct reaction to this.
At first, it was merely a response to being stressed. I would feel stress and reach up and pull out a bit of hair. After a while, I was barely even aware I was doing it - it became like biting my nails. My parents noticed after a week, because I'd managed to pull out almost all the hair on the crown of my head - no mean feat considering the thickness of my hair.
They freaked out. They went to see doctors (I don't remember going myself), they asked me if I was being abused. They didn't know how to deal with it. I pulled my hair out intensively for three weeks, ish, and didn't even attempt to stop until my dad asked me to because it was upsetting my mum so much.
But I didn't really stop. I just stopped letting people see. I would pull out my eyebrows (still do, for that matter, it's a habit), my eyelashes, any hair I could get a hold on. My teachers were aware of the problem and would call me out on it at school, which would jolt me into stopping.
I was 11. I was partly bald. I was bullied already because of the way I looked, and this just made it worse. I went into hospital for emergency surgery on my back and the nurses commented on it in recovery, and I burned with shame. They didn't realise I could hear them. I knew I had to stop, but I didn't stop hurting myself. Starting secondary school was a whole new world of shame and bullying. I looked like a freak.
I would tighten plastic bag handles and elastic bands round my fingers until they went blue. I would use a compass to write all over my legs and arms. Nobody noticed. I was always careful that nobody would see.
I was 17 the first time I purposefully sat and tried to cut myself. Again, the reasons why are personal, but I felt such a deep seated rage, and I had nobody to take it out on. Nobody to scream at. If I was a different type of person, maybe I would have been aggressive, starting fights and punching walls, but I wasn't.
I fell into a rhythm of bruising and scratching my arms so badly that I couldn't move them the next day. I decided not to actually cut myself because it would be too difficult to conceal. I would hurt myself one day, to make the rage and pain stop. Then I would be so ashamed and nauseated at what I'd done, that I would begin to feel the rage again. And thus the circle continued. Most days for about a year, I would do it. Eventually, I escalated to using a razor, usually on my legs where nobody could see. I also headbutted walls, in rather fruitless attempts to knock myself out.
Nobody noticed. I didn't WANT anyone to notice. A GP once mentioned that he thought I might be depressed. I disagreed, went home and told nobody.
I joined a website called ruinyourlife.com (now http://www.recoveryourlife.com/) and for the first time, found other people with the same problem and nobody to tell. I had no idea We counted our self harm free days, then months, then years, with people there to support us when our count went back to 0. I was never suicidal, though others were. Suicidal urges came separately, quite apart from the need to hurt. Pain was a method of control, to take the rage out on myself, and crucially to calm me down.
As time went on, I stopped, but when things were hard, I would fall into destructive patterns - binge drinking, drug taking, restrictive eating.I suppose recovery came with maturity, with finding other outlets, with motherhood. I realised a lot of the things that had happened to me weren't my fault, that I wasn't the vile and ugly person I'd been made to feel like. I found self-worth.
But for 14 years, I could only count the self-harm-free time in months. I'm 27. I last hurt myself when I was 25, shortly before my marriage ended. I still get tempted, when I'm very upset, because it's a learned behaviour, but I distract myself and the feeling passes.
Self harm remains a taboo. Harming the self is something that society is programmed against - extreme body modification is looked down on for the same reason. I have known many people who self harmed regularly, who are covered in scars, who were simply too afraid of being categorised as suicidal or beyond help to tell anybody. Self harm does not happen in isolation - it is a reaction to events around the person. The more openly it can be discussed - without panic or labelling - the more help can be offered to those suffering.
Useful Links
Trichotillomania Support
Self-harm Information and Support
FRANK Drugs Advice
NHS Alcohol Abuse Advice
B-eat Eating Disorder Support
I first hurt myself around my 11th birthday. I was badly bullied at school, pretty much every day from the age of 5 until the age of 16. Some bullies took it too far, in a way that even candid I do not wish to share with the rest of the world. I began to pull my hair out, in direct reaction to this.
At first, it was merely a response to being stressed. I would feel stress and reach up and pull out a bit of hair. After a while, I was barely even aware I was doing it - it became like biting my nails. My parents noticed after a week, because I'd managed to pull out almost all the hair on the crown of my head - no mean feat considering the thickness of my hair.
They freaked out. They went to see doctors (I don't remember going myself), they asked me if I was being abused. They didn't know how to deal with it. I pulled my hair out intensively for three weeks, ish, and didn't even attempt to stop until my dad asked me to because it was upsetting my mum so much.
But I didn't really stop. I just stopped letting people see. I would pull out my eyebrows (still do, for that matter, it's a habit), my eyelashes, any hair I could get a hold on. My teachers were aware of the problem and would call me out on it at school, which would jolt me into stopping.
I was 11. I was partly bald. I was bullied already because of the way I looked, and this just made it worse. I went into hospital for emergency surgery on my back and the nurses commented on it in recovery, and I burned with shame. They didn't realise I could hear them. I knew I had to stop, but I didn't stop hurting myself. Starting secondary school was a whole new world of shame and bullying. I looked like a freak.
I would tighten plastic bag handles and elastic bands round my fingers until they went blue. I would use a compass to write all over my legs and arms. Nobody noticed. I was always careful that nobody would see.
I was 17 the first time I purposefully sat and tried to cut myself. Again, the reasons why are personal, but I felt such a deep seated rage, and I had nobody to take it out on. Nobody to scream at. If I was a different type of person, maybe I would have been aggressive, starting fights and punching walls, but I wasn't.
I fell into a rhythm of bruising and scratching my arms so badly that I couldn't move them the next day. I decided not to actually cut myself because it would be too difficult to conceal. I would hurt myself one day, to make the rage and pain stop. Then I would be so ashamed and nauseated at what I'd done, that I would begin to feel the rage again. And thus the circle continued. Most days for about a year, I would do it. Eventually, I escalated to using a razor, usually on my legs where nobody could see. I also headbutted walls, in rather fruitless attempts to knock myself out.
Nobody noticed. I didn't WANT anyone to notice. A GP once mentioned that he thought I might be depressed. I disagreed, went home and told nobody.
I joined a website called ruinyourlife.com (now http://www.recoveryourlife.com/) and for the first time, found other people with the same problem and nobody to tell. I had no idea We counted our self harm free days, then months, then years, with people there to support us when our count went back to 0. I was never suicidal, though others were. Suicidal urges came separately, quite apart from the need to hurt. Pain was a method of control, to take the rage out on myself, and crucially to calm me down.
As time went on, I stopped, but when things were hard, I would fall into destructive patterns - binge drinking, drug taking, restrictive eating.I suppose recovery came with maturity, with finding other outlets, with motherhood. I realised a lot of the things that had happened to me weren't my fault, that I wasn't the vile and ugly person I'd been made to feel like. I found self-worth.
But for 14 years, I could only count the self-harm-free time in months. I'm 27. I last hurt myself when I was 25, shortly before my marriage ended. I still get tempted, when I'm very upset, because it's a learned behaviour, but I distract myself and the feeling passes.
Self harm remains a taboo. Harming the self is something that society is programmed against - extreme body modification is looked down on for the same reason. I have known many people who self harmed regularly, who are covered in scars, who were simply too afraid of being categorised as suicidal or beyond help to tell anybody. Self harm does not happen in isolation - it is a reaction to events around the person. The more openly it can be discussed - without panic or labelling - the more help can be offered to those suffering.
Useful Links
Trichotillomania Support
Self-harm Information and Support
FRANK Drugs Advice
NHS Alcohol Abuse Advice
B-eat Eating Disorder Support
15 Feb 2013
Chickenpox - a study of frontline care in action
The NHS relies on patients being able to self-diagnose. If every patient went to their GP, or a walk in centre or A+E with a sniffle (and some do), the service would be swamped. So, the NHS expects individuals to be able to decide when they are ill enough to need a professional opinion.
My eldest son has chickenpox. Chickenpox is the last remaining widespread childhood disease. In the USA and other countries, a vaccination is offered, but the NHS does not offer it as it's largely harmless and short lived. Some parents, in an effort to expose their child to the disease young, hold chickenpox parties to spread infection. Varicella infection is dangerous in non-immune pregnant women as unborn babies can die from it, so I think a chickenpox party is a bit daft. However, most children will have it before they leave primary school.
Parents expect it, they recognise it and they treat it largely without professional help.
So, I phoned my doctor's surgery to ask them to record it on his notes. After all, doctors aren't psychic. The receptionist was astonished that I'd done this and told me only a doctor could record a diagnosis. So, I sighed a deep and heavy sigh, pointed out that I didn't want to infect her waiting room or waste an appointment, and my son isn't particularly unwell, just incredibly spotty and grumpy. Eventually, she agreed to put it on his notes.
Then I wandered up to my local chemist. There is a service called Pharmacy First that allows your chemist to diagnose and prescribe medications for children in the chemist. It's only really for over-the-counter medications, so parents can have them for free without using a GP appointment. They prescribe for conjunctivitis, hayfever and mild analgesia. I asked for piriton, if it was available, after asking for calamine. I didn't take my son with me, because he's INCREDIBLY spotty and likely INCREDIBLY contagious. After some argument about whether or not chickenpox is contagious after the spots come out (they said no, I said yes), they ummed and ahhed over whether to give me the medication without seeing the child. Eventually they agreed to - I use the chemist on a very regular basis, for all kinds of minor illness, so they're well acquainted with me and my kids.
But what else would I want free piriton for? I could buy it easily. I'm not going to sell it on the black market, or use it to drug my poor defenceless children. Their argument was that they had to be sure, and it wasn't a 'remote' service.
And you know, I understand that. It seems that the more the NHS tries to give patients additional autonomy, the more bureaucracy needs to be fulfilled, the more patients are put off. Why bother going through rigmarole and form filling at your pharmacy when you can go direct to your GP? I have eight years experience in general practice, as a receptionist, administrator and nursing assistant, I'm pretty confident I know how the system works and how to diagnose chickenpox, and everything I've done this morning has been aimed at saving GP time. My motives for doing so have been scrutinised. Is it that impossible to imagine a patient might genuinely want to avoid wasting resources? Is it impossible for a person to diagnose the most easily recognised rash without formal medical training?
The NHS relies on self-care and self-diagnosis. However, there seems to be another force at work trying to keep diagnostics firmly in the hands of professionals. Front line care is flooded by people who are anxious about minor symptoms, who need reassurance and OTC medication. The NHS needs to give people confidence in their autonomy.
My eldest son has chickenpox. Chickenpox is the last remaining widespread childhood disease. In the USA and other countries, a vaccination is offered, but the NHS does not offer it as it's largely harmless and short lived. Some parents, in an effort to expose their child to the disease young, hold chickenpox parties to spread infection. Varicella infection is dangerous in non-immune pregnant women as unborn babies can die from it, so I think a chickenpox party is a bit daft. However, most children will have it before they leave primary school.
Parents expect it, they recognise it and they treat it largely without professional help.
So, I phoned my doctor's surgery to ask them to record it on his notes. After all, doctors aren't psychic. The receptionist was astonished that I'd done this and told me only a doctor could record a diagnosis. So, I sighed a deep and heavy sigh, pointed out that I didn't want to infect her waiting room or waste an appointment, and my son isn't particularly unwell, just incredibly spotty and grumpy. Eventually, she agreed to put it on his notes.
Then I wandered up to my local chemist. There is a service called Pharmacy First that allows your chemist to diagnose and prescribe medications for children in the chemist. It's only really for over-the-counter medications, so parents can have them for free without using a GP appointment. They prescribe for conjunctivitis, hayfever and mild analgesia. I asked for piriton, if it was available, after asking for calamine. I didn't take my son with me, because he's INCREDIBLY spotty and likely INCREDIBLY contagious. After some argument about whether or not chickenpox is contagious after the spots come out (they said no, I said yes), they ummed and ahhed over whether to give me the medication without seeing the child. Eventually they agreed to - I use the chemist on a very regular basis, for all kinds of minor illness, so they're well acquainted with me and my kids.
But what else would I want free piriton for? I could buy it easily. I'm not going to sell it on the black market, or use it to drug my poor defenceless children. Their argument was that they had to be sure, and it wasn't a 'remote' service.
And you know, I understand that. It seems that the more the NHS tries to give patients additional autonomy, the more bureaucracy needs to be fulfilled, the more patients are put off. Why bother going through rigmarole and form filling at your pharmacy when you can go direct to your GP? I have eight years experience in general practice, as a receptionist, administrator and nursing assistant, I'm pretty confident I know how the system works and how to diagnose chickenpox, and everything I've done this morning has been aimed at saving GP time. My motives for doing so have been scrutinised. Is it that impossible to imagine a patient might genuinely want to avoid wasting resources? Is it impossible for a person to diagnose the most easily recognised rash without formal medical training?
The NHS relies on self-care and self-diagnosis. However, there seems to be another force at work trying to keep diagnostics firmly in the hands of professionals. Front line care is flooded by people who are anxious about minor symptoms, who need reassurance and OTC medication. The NHS needs to give people confidence in their autonomy.
8 Feb 2013
Immunisation
Immunisation and cancer screening are the two of the leading forms of healthcare prevention practiced by the NHS. Most women will have smear tests regularly during their pre-menopausal years, and then breast screening when they are older. Men are increasingly offered prostate checks, and both genders are being offered bowel cancer screening. These screening tests are designed to catch early neoplasms, and in doing so, save lives.
Immunisation is routinely practised on children, from 8 weeks old until approximately 16 years. Immunisations carried out after that point are either for holiday/employment means or immunologically compromised patients.
In cancer screening, patients have the right to refuse. They might be exhorted to attend, for QOF measures and for their personal health, but they're under no obligation to go.
However, families who choose not to immunise their children are denounced.
Childhood immunisation has been part of the NHS since it's inception, and was part of public health schemes long before that. The Diphtheria/tetanus/polio vaccine was administered regularly from the early 1960s, and as more vaccines have been developed, more have been offered. My children are immune to diphtheria, tetanus, polio, meningitis C, haemophilius influenzae type B, whooping cough, pneumonia, measles, mumps and rubella.
Pre-immunisation, these diseases killed millions. My grandmother suffered diphtheria in the days before the NHS, immunisation and penicillin. She was in an isolation hospital for months, forced to lie down constantly and kept away from her family (except her sister who was in with her). She watched other children on the ward die. This was not uncommon. Families who couldn't afford to send their children to hospital, if their child was suffering from a notifiable disease, were legally culpable. The child would usually die without good nursing. In my days working for the NHS, we had several patients suffering from ongoing disabilities from polio infections in their childhood, some dating from as late as the 1950s. For these families, a simple immunisation would have been a lifesaver.When I summarised patient notes, it was rare to find a patient growing up pre-1965 who didn't suffer from one of the childhood diseases that we now consider rare.
The MMR jab was not developed until the 80s. I suffered from mumps in 1988, and my brother suffered measles around the same time - neither of us were immunised, as we were too old when the vaccine became available. Cases of measles are now on the rise, as the herd immunity offered by mass vaccination wanes. This is largely due to the Wakefield Report, which linked autism to MMR vaccination, a report that has since been deemed false, and fraudulent.
There are many reasons that parents do not vaccinate their children. There are worries of autism/neurological illness, or a distrust of vaccination ingredients. Others do not believe the theory of vaccination. The common thread, from what I've seen on the internet, is fear inspired by ignorance. In one story I read, a woman refused to vaccinate because the immunisation contained ingredients she didn't know. This reminds me of the time my dad went through his PC and deleted every file he didn't recognise, and then wondered why his computer didn't work.
However, more common is the reluctance to introduce drugs to a newborn's baby. From conception, pregnant women are told not to smoke, not to drink, not to take medication unless it's necessary, not to eat raw fish, to cook meat properly, to avoid cheeses, with the clear message being "If you do, and something happens to your baby, it is YOUR FAULT."
Then, almost as soon as the baby is born, women are enjoined to take their precious newborn to a clinic to have an enormous needle stuck in it's leg, full of chemicals.
And if parents refuse to vaccinate their child, through fear, or ignorance, or cultural belief, or just because they don't want to, society vilifies them. They are called child abusers. Their friends are reluctant to let them play with their children, schools and nurseries are reluctant to take them on. The child and it's parents are punished for failing to conform to the biomedical patriachy. "The NHS has these lovely vaccinations, that could save your child's life, and you don't want it? You ungrateful swine, we hope you get diphtheria, just to prove how amazing we are!"
I remember telling a nurse, who I was friends with, that I wanted my eldest to have his first MMR and HIB/Men C booster separately. She looked at me askance and immediately started having a go about there being no proven link to autism. She could see no other reason why I didn't want my son exposed to two lots of vaccine at once. Nonetheless, after ranting at me like I was an idiot for a few minutes, she accepted my request. My reasons had nothing to do with fear of vaccination - I think vaccination is a wonderful thing - but because my son (like me) reacts badly to immunisation. He gets poorly, and has a localised reaction every time. I didn't want him to have to suffer a double lot of ouch if he didn't need to, and if he was allergic to the MMR, I wanted a clear cause. As it was, he had classic measles-type rash ten days after immunisation and was poorly for a day or so. I knew what had caused it, and didn't worry or panic. My younger son has the constitution of a horse, so there was no need to space out his immunisations. He also had the post-MMR rash.
There is definitely a feeling within the NHS that immunisation is not a parental choice, but a duty. Although a parent needs to give signed consent for administration, it is assumed that they will give this, and any questions are construed as dissent.
There are now a generation of parents and grandparents who do not remember life pre-vaccination. They do not remember fearing that an URTI would mutate into diphtheria. They do not remember worrying that a viral rash would be early measles.Parents are now able to look after their children without worrying about deadly childhood disease, meningitis excepted. There is very little education available on the components and benefits of immunisation, to the average first parent, because consent is assumed - some cursory leaflets and a bit of information in the 0-5 year book. Infectious childhood diseases, which are still rife in certain parts of the world, are assumed eradicated, the need to immunise questionable.
It does nobody any good to call anti-vaccination parents stupid, to act as though they are single handedly ruining the NHS and all it has striven for. Instead, the NHS needs encourage questions on how vaccines work, their ingredients and their necessity, with practitioners able to give answers there and then. An informed choice is better than blind conformity.
Immunisation is routinely practised on children, from 8 weeks old until approximately 16 years. Immunisations carried out after that point are either for holiday/employment means or immunologically compromised patients.
In cancer screening, patients have the right to refuse. They might be exhorted to attend, for QOF measures and for their personal health, but they're under no obligation to go.
However, families who choose not to immunise their children are denounced.
Childhood immunisation has been part of the NHS since it's inception, and was part of public health schemes long before that. The Diphtheria/tetanus/polio vaccine was administered regularly from the early 1960s, and as more vaccines have been developed, more have been offered. My children are immune to diphtheria, tetanus, polio, meningitis C, haemophilius influenzae type B, whooping cough, pneumonia, measles, mumps and rubella.
Pre-immunisation, these diseases killed millions. My grandmother suffered diphtheria in the days before the NHS, immunisation and penicillin. She was in an isolation hospital for months, forced to lie down constantly and kept away from her family (except her sister who was in with her). She watched other children on the ward die. This was not uncommon. Families who couldn't afford to send their children to hospital, if their child was suffering from a notifiable disease, were legally culpable. The child would usually die without good nursing. In my days working for the NHS, we had several patients suffering from ongoing disabilities from polio infections in their childhood, some dating from as late as the 1950s. For these families, a simple immunisation would have been a lifesaver.When I summarised patient notes, it was rare to find a patient growing up pre-1965 who didn't suffer from one of the childhood diseases that we now consider rare.
The MMR jab was not developed until the 80s. I suffered from mumps in 1988, and my brother suffered measles around the same time - neither of us were immunised, as we were too old when the vaccine became available. Cases of measles are now on the rise, as the herd immunity offered by mass vaccination wanes. This is largely due to the Wakefield Report, which linked autism to MMR vaccination, a report that has since been deemed false, and fraudulent.
There are many reasons that parents do not vaccinate their children. There are worries of autism/neurological illness, or a distrust of vaccination ingredients. Others do not believe the theory of vaccination. The common thread, from what I've seen on the internet, is fear inspired by ignorance. In one story I read, a woman refused to vaccinate because the immunisation contained ingredients she didn't know. This reminds me of the time my dad went through his PC and deleted every file he didn't recognise, and then wondered why his computer didn't work.
However, more common is the reluctance to introduce drugs to a newborn's baby. From conception, pregnant women are told not to smoke, not to drink, not to take medication unless it's necessary, not to eat raw fish, to cook meat properly, to avoid cheeses, with the clear message being "If you do, and something happens to your baby, it is YOUR FAULT."
Then, almost as soon as the baby is born, women are enjoined to take their precious newborn to a clinic to have an enormous needle stuck in it's leg, full of chemicals.
And if parents refuse to vaccinate their child, through fear, or ignorance, or cultural belief, or just because they don't want to, society vilifies them. They are called child abusers. Their friends are reluctant to let them play with their children, schools and nurseries are reluctant to take them on. The child and it's parents are punished for failing to conform to the biomedical patriachy. "The NHS has these lovely vaccinations, that could save your child's life, and you don't want it? You ungrateful swine, we hope you get diphtheria, just to prove how amazing we are!"
I remember telling a nurse, who I was friends with, that I wanted my eldest to have his first MMR and HIB/Men C booster separately. She looked at me askance and immediately started having a go about there being no proven link to autism. She could see no other reason why I didn't want my son exposed to two lots of vaccine at once. Nonetheless, after ranting at me like I was an idiot for a few minutes, she accepted my request. My reasons had nothing to do with fear of vaccination - I think vaccination is a wonderful thing - but because my son (like me) reacts badly to immunisation. He gets poorly, and has a localised reaction every time. I didn't want him to have to suffer a double lot of ouch if he didn't need to, and if he was allergic to the MMR, I wanted a clear cause. As it was, he had classic measles-type rash ten days after immunisation and was poorly for a day or so. I knew what had caused it, and didn't worry or panic. My younger son has the constitution of a horse, so there was no need to space out his immunisations. He also had the post-MMR rash.
There is definitely a feeling within the NHS that immunisation is not a parental choice, but a duty. Although a parent needs to give signed consent for administration, it is assumed that they will give this, and any questions are construed as dissent.
There are now a generation of parents and grandparents who do not remember life pre-vaccination. They do not remember fearing that an URTI would mutate into diphtheria. They do not remember worrying that a viral rash would be early measles.Parents are now able to look after their children without worrying about deadly childhood disease, meningitis excepted. There is very little education available on the components and benefits of immunisation, to the average first parent, because consent is assumed - some cursory leaflets and a bit of information in the 0-5 year book. Infectious childhood diseases, which are still rife in certain parts of the world, are assumed eradicated, the need to immunise questionable.
It does nobody any good to call anti-vaccination parents stupid, to act as though they are single handedly ruining the NHS and all it has striven for. Instead, the NHS needs encourage questions on how vaccines work, their ingredients and their necessity, with practitioners able to give answers there and then. An informed choice is better than blind conformity.
4 Feb 2013
Abortion
There has been a call to revise the Abortion Act 1967, on the basis that it is being abused.Under current law, a woman may have an abortion if A)her life is at risk, B) if there is grave risk of damage to her mental or physical wellbeing, C) if there is a greater risk of harm to her mental/physical wellbeing than if she does not continue the pregnancy, D) if there is a greater risk of harm to the existing children of the woman than if she does not continue the pregnancy, or E) if the foetus will be severely disabled.
Under clause A, B and E, the termination may be carried out at any time, up to 40 weeks (although the woman may struggle to find a doctor willing to certify a termination at such an advanced gestation). Under clause C and D, abortion is legal until 24 weeks.
The argument to revise the abortion act chiefly centres on Clause C. 98% of terminations are carried out under this clause. A Royal College of Psychiatry study has shown that for women with unwanted pregnancies, rates of mental health problems were the same whether they had a termination or gave birth. . There are calls to either tighten up legislation on under what circumstances abortions are permitted, or to reduce the gestational age limit.
24 weeks is the limit because that is considered the age at which a foetus becomes viable - i.e. it can survive outside the womb. Originally, the limit was 28 weeks, but as more technology enabled those babies to survive, it was reduced. Very few babies born at 24 weeks survive, and those that do usually suffer from disability of some type, even with modern neonatal technology. Under British law, a baby stillborn before 24 weeks is technically a miscarriage, even though the mother usually gives birth. This, again, is due to the legal definition of viability. An abortion is done before 24 weeks, ideally, because there is no duty of care for the doctors performing the procedure to attempt to save the foetus. Indeed, in terminations carried out after 20 weeks, foetocide is usually performed to ensure there is no conflict of duty.
The ethics of abortion are undoubtedly a tangled and emotive web. There is no consensus on when life begins: there are arguments to call a pregnancy 'live' from ovulation (preconception), conception (within days of ovulation), implantation (4 weeks), the development of the placenta and heartbeat (8 weeks), from when it looks human (approximately 12-14 weeks), or from when kicks can be felt (approximately 16-20 weeks). From very early on in pregnancy, a woman's whole body and mind is taken over by this bunch of undifferentiated cells within. No mother, feeling her baby move, would tell you that it is not alive. However, legally, an unborn baby is not a citizen. It has no rights. It does not exist. It is an abstract concept, in matters of law.
For the purposes of this particular debate, the concern seems to be women recklessly getting pregnant and then having a termination for social reasons. I would argue that this is not a medical debate, or even an ethical debate. It is a moral judgement. Women should not get pregnant with babies they do not want, and in threatening to withdraw their right to terminate, women who act so recklessly in future, will be punished.The decision to terminate is rarely taken lightly. The idea that women use termination as contraception is largely wrong. Some women feel no emotional or moral burden over their decision, but that is their prerogative. Abortion is not painless, and there are hormonal side effects.The later the abortion takes place, the more invasive the procedure.
Until I was 25, I was relatively pro-life. I didn't care what other people did with their bodies (though, God knows, I judged them), but I was under the impression that I would never want an abortion. Then my husband left me when I was 14 weeks pregnant. My gut reaction was to terminate. I could not fathom how I would cope, as a single mother, with my existing toddler and being pregnant, let alone with a new baby. My ex withdrew and offered no support throughout the pregnancy. I was completely alone, at least to begin with, and it was harrowing. I did not want my baby. I considered terminating in secret and telling everyone I'd miscarried through stress. I considered terminating to punish my ex. I considered terminating for the benefit of my existing son, who needed me more than ever. I had overwhelming family pressure to keep the baby, and most others simply assumed I would. After the 24 week mark passed, my mental health deteriorated, because I no longer had the comfort blanket of termination. My decision to keep my baby was not easy, but the idea of abortion was also not easy. Adoption was simply not an option, as it so frequently isn't for women with families. My baby's birth was immensely cathartic and I have never once regretted my decision to keep him.
I cannot adequately describe the emotional pain my second pregnancy caused me. I was physically attached to my ex. There could be no closure until the baby was out, and either I killed him or I let him be born and struggle as a single mother of two. I wanted to die, so I no longer had to live with the consequences - emotional, physical and economical - of what was happening.
I have suffered no lasting mental illness, but that does not negate the fact that I was suicidal intermittently throughout the third trimester. A termination on account of the risks to my mental health would have been justified, I may even have been able to get one under Clause B, as grave risk to mental health.Not so, if the law is changed to reflect the study by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Women should not have to jump through psychiatric hoops to be granted an termination, within the legal time limit. Whether a woman should abort or not is an individual, subjective decision. Doctors have a right to refuse to authorise, or perform abortions, on personal ethical grounds. Nobody is forcing anybody to have or perform a termination.
Any alteration to abortion law is eroding the rights of women to dictate what happens within their own body, a right women did not even get until 1967.There does not seem to be a great deal of evidence in favour of changing the law as it currently stands, just a lot of hand-wringing moralising, from people who have likely never been in the unenviable position of carrying an unwanted pregnancy.
Under clause A, B and E, the termination may be carried out at any time, up to 40 weeks (although the woman may struggle to find a doctor willing to certify a termination at such an advanced gestation). Under clause C and D, abortion is legal until 24 weeks.
The argument to revise the abortion act chiefly centres on Clause C. 98% of terminations are carried out under this clause. A Royal College of Psychiatry study has shown that for women with unwanted pregnancies, rates of mental health problems were the same whether they had a termination or gave birth. . There are calls to either tighten up legislation on under what circumstances abortions are permitted, or to reduce the gestational age limit.
24 weeks is the limit because that is considered the age at which a foetus becomes viable - i.e. it can survive outside the womb. Originally, the limit was 28 weeks, but as more technology enabled those babies to survive, it was reduced. Very few babies born at 24 weeks survive, and those that do usually suffer from disability of some type, even with modern neonatal technology. Under British law, a baby stillborn before 24 weeks is technically a miscarriage, even though the mother usually gives birth. This, again, is due to the legal definition of viability. An abortion is done before 24 weeks, ideally, because there is no duty of care for the doctors performing the procedure to attempt to save the foetus. Indeed, in terminations carried out after 20 weeks, foetocide is usually performed to ensure there is no conflict of duty.
The ethics of abortion are undoubtedly a tangled and emotive web. There is no consensus on when life begins: there are arguments to call a pregnancy 'live' from ovulation (preconception), conception (within days of ovulation), implantation (4 weeks), the development of the placenta and heartbeat (8 weeks), from when it looks human (approximately 12-14 weeks), or from when kicks can be felt (approximately 16-20 weeks). From very early on in pregnancy, a woman's whole body and mind is taken over by this bunch of undifferentiated cells within. No mother, feeling her baby move, would tell you that it is not alive. However, legally, an unborn baby is not a citizen. It has no rights. It does not exist. It is an abstract concept, in matters of law.
For the purposes of this particular debate, the concern seems to be women recklessly getting pregnant and then having a termination for social reasons. I would argue that this is not a medical debate, or even an ethical debate. It is a moral judgement. Women should not get pregnant with babies they do not want, and in threatening to withdraw their right to terminate, women who act so recklessly in future, will be punished.The decision to terminate is rarely taken lightly. The idea that women use termination as contraception is largely wrong. Some women feel no emotional or moral burden over their decision, but that is their prerogative. Abortion is not painless, and there are hormonal side effects.The later the abortion takes place, the more invasive the procedure.
Until I was 25, I was relatively pro-life. I didn't care what other people did with their bodies (though, God knows, I judged them), but I was under the impression that I would never want an abortion. Then my husband left me when I was 14 weeks pregnant. My gut reaction was to terminate. I could not fathom how I would cope, as a single mother, with my existing toddler and being pregnant, let alone with a new baby. My ex withdrew and offered no support throughout the pregnancy. I was completely alone, at least to begin with, and it was harrowing. I did not want my baby. I considered terminating in secret and telling everyone I'd miscarried through stress. I considered terminating to punish my ex. I considered terminating for the benefit of my existing son, who needed me more than ever. I had overwhelming family pressure to keep the baby, and most others simply assumed I would. After the 24 week mark passed, my mental health deteriorated, because I no longer had the comfort blanket of termination. My decision to keep my baby was not easy, but the idea of abortion was also not easy. Adoption was simply not an option, as it so frequently isn't for women with families. My baby's birth was immensely cathartic and I have never once regretted my decision to keep him.
I cannot adequately describe the emotional pain my second pregnancy caused me. I was physically attached to my ex. There could be no closure until the baby was out, and either I killed him or I let him be born and struggle as a single mother of two. I wanted to die, so I no longer had to live with the consequences - emotional, physical and economical - of what was happening.
I have suffered no lasting mental illness, but that does not negate the fact that I was suicidal intermittently throughout the third trimester. A termination on account of the risks to my mental health would have been justified, I may even have been able to get one under Clause B, as grave risk to mental health.Not so, if the law is changed to reflect the study by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Women should not have to jump through psychiatric hoops to be granted an termination, within the legal time limit. Whether a woman should abort or not is an individual, subjective decision. Doctors have a right to refuse to authorise, or perform abortions, on personal ethical grounds. Nobody is forcing anybody to have or perform a termination.
Any alteration to abortion law is eroding the rights of women to dictate what happens within their own body, a right women did not even get until 1967.There does not seem to be a great deal of evidence in favour of changing the law as it currently stands, just a lot of hand-wringing moralising, from people who have likely never been in the unenviable position of carrying an unwanted pregnancy.
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