Sim-O

Kelly Osborne:

“I go three, maybe four times a year to get tested for sexually transmitted infections and most of the time I don’t even need to. I just go for peace of mind.”

Most of the time…

Moving swiftley on…

Via

Sign the petition to try to extend UK abortion rights to the women of Northern Ireland.

The complete text of the petition is below.
Via
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We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to extend the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland, and grant women there the same rights to abortion as women in the rest of the United Kingdom.

More details from petition creator
We believe that the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly should extend the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland, and grant women there the same rights to abortion as women in the rest of the United Kingdom.

As the law currently stands, no woman in Northern Ireland with an unwanted pregnancy (including women who’ve been raped, victims of incest, diagnosed with fetal abnormality/disability) has the automatic right to abortion.

Consequently, Northern Irish women:

• Pay the emotional and financial costs (up to £2,500) and travel to England or overseas for a private abortion.

• Have babies they have already decided they don’t want.

• Buy illegal and unsafe abortion pills on the internet in desperation.

fpa believes Parliament should change the law to end the discrimination against Northern Ireland women and give them the right to choose.

The Telegraph:

Lady Warnock said: “If you’re demented, you’re wasting people’s lives – your family’s lives – and you’re wasting the resources of the National Health Service.

“I’m absolutely, fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there’s a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they’re a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die.

“Actually I’ve just written an article called ‘A Duty to Die?’ for a Norwegian periodical. I wrote it really suggesting that there’s nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so for the sake of others as well as yourself.”

No one should feel they ought to end their life, for the sake of anyone, their family or society as a whole. What a dispicable thing to say.
Feeling you ought to die means that it is not your decision. Someone else is putting the pressure on you to go, because you are inconveniencing them in some way, you’re not wanted, worthless.

Nobody has a duty to die, even in war, it could be argued that you had a duty to fight, but not die. When someone else is telling you, explicitly or otherwise, when to die, a value is put on life and then it just becomes a numbers game. When that’s the case, the accountants win.

I tried to find a good snappy short excerpt from the following article, but couldn’t so I’ve quoted a lot.

The Times:

Women do not put their mental health at risk by having an abortion, according to an authoritative study that will undermine the campaign to tighten the UK’s abortion laws.

A comprehensive review of research by the American Psychological Association (APA), one of the world’s most influential mental health bodies, found no evidence that the majority of abortions cause psychiatric problems.

By challenging a key scientific argument for reform, the findings will hinder the latest effort to make it harder for British women to obtain terminations, which is to be debated by the House of Commons in October.

Anti-abortion MPs have tabled an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that would require all women to be counselled about psychiatric risks before they can be cleared to have a termination. They cite research suggesting that mental health issues such as depression and anxiety are more common among women who have had abortions.

The APA report said that the findings of such studies were unreliable because they either failed to distinguish between abortions of wanted and unwanted pregnancies, or they did not consider factors such as poverty and drug use that raise the likelihood both of having an abortion and suffering mental illness.

The APA found “no credible evidence” that single abortions could directly cause mental health problems among adults with unwanted pregnancies. It called for more well-designed studies to investigate the issue.

Even the evidence for adverse psychiatric effects of multiple abortions was equivocal, it found. Higher rates of mental illness among such women could be explained by social factors, such as poverty or drug use that also put them at higher risk of unplanned and unwanted pregnancy
…
Supporters [of mandatory counselling and a ‘cooling off’ period for abortions] pointed to research such as a New Zealand study led by David Ferguson, of Christchurch School of Medicine, which found in 2006 that women who had had abortions had an elevated risk of mental health problems.
…
The Ferguson study was among those whose design was criticised by the APA review, in this case because it did not distinguish between abortions of wanted and unwanted pregnancies.

So, now we have evidence that voluntary abortions do not have any long term psychologically detrimental effects. This I would presume is because the person having the abortion has had a little time time square the decision withthemselves about what they are doing with an unwanted pregnancy, whereas the people who experience miscarriages or have to terminate for medical reasons do so out of choice and losing as it is generally a wanted pregenancy.

Oh, hi Nadine.

Mrs Dorries said: “If this rehashed, inconclusive and dated research is being used to deny women in the UK who seek an abortion the right to counselling, then it’s a fairly desperate act on behalf of the abortion industry and those who wish to deny women the right to make a fully informed decision.”

FFS, Nadine. First of all, there’s a pot here that wants to meet your kettle. %This report isn’t trying to deny women counselling, it is just saying that mandatory counselling isn’t neccessary. I’m sure a doctor isn’t going to deny counselling if it is needed.
It is also pointless making counselling mandatory as those that do not want it will not participate properly and it will just end up a waste of time for the patient and time and money for the health service.

BBC:

Some women in countries where abortion is restricted are using the internet to buy medication enabling them to abort a pregnancy at home, the BBC has learned.

Women in Northern Ireland and over 70 countries with restrictions have used one of the main websites, Women on Web.

This is one of the best examples of why we do not need stricy abortion laws.
Women, if they want/need and abortion will have one. One way or another. By making the criteria and time limit stricter all that is happening is that these women go outside the system to back street abortionists or to these websites where the pills are of unknown provinence*.

But anti-abortion campaigners called the development of such sites “very worrying indeed”.

Yes, it is very worrying. But women are going to get an abortion, would you rather they had one in the proper surroundings, supervised by properly trained people, so that if anything did go wrong it can be dealt with properly, or women ended up bleeding to death or with kidney failure from drugs not being what they should be or other complications that otherwise wouldn’t be a cause for concern?

*That is not a direct comment against Women on Web. I do not know of them in either a good or bad way.

The Telegraph:

Britain’s traditional stiff upper lip may be a better strategy for dealing with shock than letting your feelings spill out, a new study claims.
The popular assumption is that talking about a terrifying experience, such as a terrorist attack or natural disaster, can be therapeutic and helpful.

But new evidence suggests “getting it off your chest” may not be the right thing to do.

Being the emotional retard that I am, being unable to talk about my emotions and keeping everything bottled up, it sounds like I have the taken teh correct path to mental stability (although Mrs -O might say different).

Via Mental Nurse

Dr Crippen:

I refer to David Kirby. You have never heard of him. You are about to. He is an American who has “reservations” about immunisations. Reservations that are not scientifically sustainable. In fairness, I should say he is not wicked. It would be much easier if he were. He is far more dangerous than “wicked”. He is sincere, articulate and persuasive. He writes well, he speaks well, he believes what he says (I assume) and he is on a mission. He is utterly, totally wrong. He deserves as much credence as a representative of the Flat Earth Society. Yes, the society really does exist. You can join here if you wish. Safer to join them than JABS. But, as a member of the Flat Earth Society, do not expect to be asked to speak in the Houses of Parliament.