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Channel 4 to screen abortion

(April 2004)

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RT
rts Founding member
The Observer posted:
An abortion is to be shown on British television for the first time. A Channel 4 programme will also use previously banned images of aborted foetuses in one of the most controversial television programmes broadcast in Britain.
My Foetus, to be screened at the end of this month, will show a woman who is four weeks pregnant having a 'vacuum pump' abortion. The results of the procedure are then placed on a petri dish and shown to viewers.

They will also see pictures of foetuses aborted at 10 weeks and 21 weeks, when limbs and a face can clearly be seen. Similar images were banned by broadcasters, who were backed by the courts, as being 'offensive' when the Pro-life Alliance tried to show them as part of a general election broadcast in 2001.

Channel 4 said the programme, which has been seen by The Observer, only uses the images in the context of a wider discussion about the battle between the pro-choice and pro-life sides of the abortion debate.


The full article, front-page news on last Sunday's Observer, can be read in full here.

Well this is not the first time C4 have broadcast something so controversial. I myself watched the post-mortem broadcast by the channel last year. I had also been to Van Hagen's exhibition of plastersised corpses in London.

But are Channel 4 going too far. Whatever your opinion on abortion, is C4 correct to broadcast such a terminal and grim programme?

On a personal note, I am against abortion being used as a form of contraception, but believe in extreme circumstances abortion could be the best option for both mother and child. I also think that such a programme could even help the "anti-abortion" front - although I think C4 are doing this more to educate, inform, shock, and feed the nations morbid curiosity.

Will you be watching.
JO
Johnny83
Another Taboo that Channel4 have done first.
CW
cwathen Founding member
I see no reason not to show it - it's hardly like they're planning to show it at 4PM in the afternoon.

Without bringing the abortion issue into this post (and I'd like to stay categorically that I'm by no means a pro-life extremist - I do believe there are cases when aborting a foetus is the kindest thing to do for both the mother and the unborn child) what at all is 'offensive' about showing just what happens when a pregnancy is aborted?

It might be nice for 'mothers' to think that when having an abortion, that it's a simple medical procedure and nothing more, but at the end of the day (and again, I'd like to state that I am *NOT* anti-abortion) you are terminating a potential life by doing this. What is wrong with seeing the true effects of just what abortion means?

I do believe in bringning stronger regulation and standards to TV, but not showing this type of programme isn't upholding standards or preventing 'offence' - it's just trying to hide the truth. I welcome C4 for comissioning this programme and hope that no budding Mary Whitehouse prat tries to stop it's transmission.
DE
deejay
This is just another terrific example of how Channel Four maintains its position as a public service broadcaster. Regardless of your personal position on Abortion as an issue, it is certainly in the public interest for a broadcaster to show such a thing in the spirit of encouraging debate. Uncomfortable viewing it may be, contraversial it may be, but brave, though provoking television it certainly is.
DE
deejay
And, I should have added, one wonders what kind of reaction from the TV Executives a producer would have receievd had he suggested this for US Television.
JO
Johnny83
cwathen posted:
I see no reason not to show it - it's hardly like they're planning to show it at 4PM in the afternoon.

Without bringing the abortion issue into this post (and I'd like to stay categorically that I'm by no means a pro-life extremist - I do believe there are cases when aborting a foetus is the kindest thing to do for both the mother and the unborn child) what at all is 'offensive' about showing just what happens when a pregnancy is aborted?

It might be nice for 'mothers' to think that when having an abortion, that it's a simple medical procedure and nothing more, but at the end of the day (and again, I'd like to state that I am *NOT* anti-abortion) you are terminating a potential life by doing this. What is wrong with seeing the true effects of just what abortion means?

I do believe in bringning stronger regulation and standards to TV, but not showing this type of programme isn't upholding standards or preventing 'offence' - it's just trying to hide the truth. I welcome C4 for comissioning this programme and hope that no budding Mary Whitehouse prat tries to stop it's transmission.


I'm not anti abortion as well but have always wondered how some women with ease will have an abortion after become accidently pregnant because they weren't on the pill or their boyfriend couldn't be ar*e to wear a condom. I can understand it more if the child has terrible deformities which would mean a bad quality of life for the baby when born, or if somebody was raped against their own free will.

Like cwathen said some of these teenagers & even older women think " doesn't matter if I'm pregnant I'll just have an abortion"

If I was a woman I would find it very hard to have an abortion even if the child did have terrible deformities

I am not a Pro Lifer & sorry if what I have written is not clear but I hope people understand what I mean
CO
Corin
Johnny83 posted:
I can understand it more if the child has terrible deformities which would mean a bad quality of life for the baby when born

Did not the NASDP government of Germany have a policy of eradicating babies, and later adults, with deformtities?

<http://www.iearn.ORG/hgp/aeti/aeti-1998-no-frames/handicapped.htm>

<http://tfn.NET/holocaust/2002/finkelstein.html#anchor65339>
GM
nodnirG kraM
Corin posted:
Johnny83 posted:
I can understand it more if the child has terrible deformities which would mean a bad quality of life for the baby when born

Did not the NASDP government of Germany have a policy of eradicating babies, and later adults, with deformtities?

<http://www.iearn.ORG/hgp/aeti/aeti-1998-no-frames/handicapped.htm>

<http://tfn.NET/holocaust/2002/finkelstein.html#anchor65339>

Are you suggesting abortion is a Nazi technique?
:-(
A former member
:-(
A former member
KI
Kikrokos
Well, as I cannot recieve Channel 4 I won't watch the programme... But if I had, I probably would. I think it's quite interesting to see, or does that sound... crazy?
CO
Corin
ChrisB posted:
I think Corin means that the idea of terminating the 'undesirable' people from society would be similar to the ideas of the Nazis.

Yes, but being a Nazi is by no means a requirement.

Do not think that it was just the NADSP who considered or acted upon these ideas. The UK government of the late 1920s and 1930s toyed with eugenics at the prompting of Aldous Huxley, the great promoter of evolutionary philosophy and eugenic theories. These ideas were even for a while considered by the UK Labour party, but latter abandoned.

The euphemistic phrase frequently used to describe undesirables was "the feeble minded".

Marie Stopes took it upon herself to put these ideas into practice, and far from bring motivated to liberate women, acted upon the prinicple that introducing methods of birth control to the working classes would lead to a decrease in the reproduction of the undesirable elements of society -- those of low intelligence (or rather lack of education), low income earners, and those who actually had the highest birth rates.

The policies of eugenics were however taken up and implemented in other countries, including parts of the English empire.

From <http://www.lee-town.freeserve.co.UK/web1/eugenics/eugenics.htm>
Quote:
By 1931 twenty seven of the American states followed Galtons ideals and had sterilisation laws in place in order to prevent undesirables from reproducing. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany followed suit before 1935. Sweden continued a policy of enforced separation or sterilisation for those of mixed race, low intelligence or with physical defects in order to prevent such qualities from being passed on right up until 1976.


The province of Alberta was at the forefront of "tackling the problem" of the reproduction of the feeble minded.

<http://collections.ic.gc.CA/famous5/excerpts/pages/sterilization1.html>

In the US, the implementation of eugenics policies served well the racist philosophies left over after the emancipation of the slaves.

<http://www.medinfo.ufl.EDU/other/histmed/stoyan/index.html>

Even Proctor & Gamble got into the act.

<http://www.trunkerton.fsnet.co.UK/Eugenics.htm>

Interesting to note on that page
Quote:
The First International Congress of Eugenics was held in London in 1912 and was attended by a certain Winston Churchill.


The following could be a useful book to read more about the history of eugenics and contemporary ideas concerning gene therapy.

<http://www.newclarionpress.co.UK/genetic.html>

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