laws – Just That Girl Kelly

Weekly Column of Crap: I ‘ALMOST’ argued with the scratchy lady at the supermarket kiosk and I ‘ALMOST’ stole a car.

My hate for supermarkets is made worse by stroppy trolley drivers, the social distancing police, cheap anti-bac that’s consistency is not unlike a certain bodily fluid and arrows and signs everywhere. It’s no fun. I also struggle to not buy into all the fancy new shit that’s methodically placed at the end of every aisle. Peri Peri Quinoa recommended by Jamie Oliver, Veggie ‘BOSH’ rubs, the same biscuits I eat every week BUT now they are available in miniature: double the fecking price! The same chocolate I buy every week BUT now it’s in fucking ORANGE flavour so… that’s in my basket too!

I am THAT fool that buys in to all the strategically planned marketing. My senses wooed by fresh flowers and baked items, the slow music inevitably slowing me down to a mere meander keeping me in the store for longer. Cleverly the healthy food is first. I assume it’s to lessen the guilt when I furtherly fill my trolley with ALL the cakes labelled ‘3 for £3’ when in actual fact the item when individually priced is a £1 anyway. Never-the-less nine of those little calorific bastards go in my basket.

Like a moth to light, I am drawn to the brightly coloured signs screaming ‘Top Deals’ … ‘Lowest Price Ever’ … ‘When it’s gone, its gone’ I know its total bullshit, but what if it’s not, and I’m about to miss out on 24 Kit Kats for £2 OR free strawberry lube with every packet of Baby-Wipes!

It is safe to say I spend far more than I allocate on groceries. AND. IT. IRKS. ME. EVERY. TIME. Online shopping is the only way forward for me but that requires a certain amount of organisation that I didn’t have on the day I argued with the scratchy lady at the kiosk.

Stressed and overspent on calories and cash. I make way to exchange some scratch cards I had won the grand amount of £17 on. I am flustered and struggling to speak with clarity. The masked lady behind the counter raises her voice to such a degree her mask was ballooned outwards and then immediately sucked back in like a vacuum as she inhaled deeply saying “WHAT NUMBERS DID YOU SAY – REPEAT THEM SLOWLY”. I glance over my shoulder to my daughter almost 15, and through gritted teeth, say to her “shout out some numbers to me”.

Eight …. She says….. eight I then repeat to the scratchy lady.

“I can’t serve you ‘eight’ now that SHE has said it, SHE needs to provide ID or YOU need to end your sale because it’s classed as a proxy purchase” waving her finger in my daughters’ direction.

Equally bemused and frustrated. I say calmly. “I’m the buyer, I’m the customer that’s just spent in excess of £150 in this store and I’m clearly ordering these cards with you, SHE is my daughter (I imitate her earlier wavy finger in my daughters direction) and THESE scratch cards are clearly for ME, for ME to scratch off as I so wish”

So everyone could hear, scratchy lady growls back “BUT I heard HER say eight … so for that reason its proxy”

“Well I won’t have ffffffnumber …fffffeight then…. gimme number 11 instead… PERLEASE”

Now I know ‘rules are rules’ and ‘laws are laws’ BUT surely there is a vast number of people that agree to the insanity behind this particular Camelot Camelshit!!!

Stressed and overspent on calories and cash and now my patience perpetually pissed. Ranting all the way back to the car, opening the boot and proceeding to put the shopping in. I then started up an entirely new rant about all the random shit that is in the boot. Asking my daughter if her dad was doing neighbourly tip runs but had forgotten to actually go to the fucking tip with it! She says “Mum you’re getting in someone else’s car” and darts off to our exact same make, model and colour car in the next row along…

Pass the gin – and who wants to bet that number eight was a million pound winner!!!!

Recently there has been ongoing debate with diverse and varied opinions about whether the existing laws on abortion should be changed to allow this procedure at ANY stage of pregnancy.

Now I am not a ‘Just that girl’ having a feminist pro-life rant, I have actually looked into recent statistics before jumping on my ‘Soap Box’ and to be honest I did find that a good proportion are carried out very early indeed so this allowed my face to relax a little from the sour grimace it had been in since watching various television debates and reading articles about this absurdity, but when I allow myself to think about the current laws being changed to allow such ‘flexibility’ and ‘choice’ succeeding this 24 week period of gestation it just sends cold chills down my spine and I realised that I want there to be a law that states up to 12 weeks or not at all unless their is serious medical grounding.

At 24 weeks your baby will now be around a foot long. It will weigh around 600g and will be gaining more every week. At 24 weeks your baby is considered viable and with a good chance of survival if to be born prematurely. Their little lungs are maturing gradually day by day preparing for birth so that they can breathe air rather than fluid, the organs in their ears are developing and are beginning to detect sound – mainly your heartbeat and voice!

Their face will now be fully formed with eyelashes, eyebrows and hair. This will still be white due to lack of pigment. At 24 weeks you are carrying a baby, a remarkably tiny, vulnerable and extremely premature baby. A baby which has a right of survival, a right to a chance of life. If we are able to abort (with out justification or good reason) a baby at 24wk or after it should be deemed as MURDER!

Now I have personally had an abortion prior to 12wks, it haunts me to this day, I have miscarried at around 14wks, I have experienced the horror of a stillbirth at 38wks, and also the trauma of neonatal death; twice! at 24wks which is why I want to share these images with you….

Allow me to introduce you to Louis and Corey Harris they were born at 24 weeks, although extremely premature they were perfectly formed tiny babies and deserved every chance of survival.

The road to motherhood can be a bumpy one; we should be working to soften the path not making it even more potholed.

Secondly my views are ‘only my own opinions’ based on my personal experiences and existing knowledge surrounding abortions.

The current regulations on abortion law within the UK are:

Under UK law, an abortion can usually only be carried out during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy as long as certain criteria are met (see below).

The Abortion Act 1967 covers England, Scotland and Wales but not Northern Ireland, and states:

Abortions must be carried out in a hospital or a specialist licensed clinic
Two doctors must agree that an abortion would cause less damage to a woman’s physical or mental health than continuing with the pregnancy

There are also a number of rarer situations when the law states an abortion may be carried out after 24 weeks. These include:

If it’s necessary to save the woman’s life
To prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman
If there is substantial risk that the child would be born with serious physical or mental disabilities

Generally, an abortion should be carried out as early in the pregnancy as possible, usually before 12 weeks and ideally before 9 weeks where possible.

Dare I put my head on the chopping-block and share my opinion that I believe and would like to see abortion laws reduced to a 12 week limit, at this stage of early intervention a ‘medical abortion’ can be carried out and although still very traumatic it is a relatively simple and safe procedure.

Counselling should also be offered after every abortion, an abortion affects a woman physically but also can have long term mental effects and if you have not been counselled to a point of ‘acceptance’ then this may affect your mental health later down the line in some way or another. The guilt a woman can feel can be enormous; it’s a massively overwhelming decision to make, even if the decision to terminate came as an ‘easy’ one.

I do however think that there has to be an allowance to allow later terminations BUT ONLY IF continuing with the pregnancy would cause significant risk to the mother’s life or if the baby had a serious life limiting health condition or disabilities that were severe enough that it was almost cruel to continue with the pregnancy to be dealt a life of existence within a shell but NOT and NEVER for gender selection, selective reduction, marital split,

Recent statistics reveal 184,571 abortions took place to UK residents and there were 2,399 abortions to girls aged under 16. 698 of these were to girls under 15 and 100 of these were to girls aged under 14.

Shocked? So surely the greater emphasis should be applied to education and educating the children about the consequences and the repercussions of unprotected sex. I know we touch on STI’s and unplanned or unwanted pregnancy in the ‘Sex Ed’ lessons but are we teaching them enough, should we be disclosing the hard facts of reality surrounding abortion?

Pregnancy is the creation of a life. To create and grow a life is the most amazing and beautiful gift given to us by mother nature. Contrary to this, is abortion and this is a horrible thing to have to go through and it should not be taken lightly or used as a method of ‘birth control’. I worry terribly that ‘loosening’ the law around this subject will see this slowly decreasing number of abortions begin to slowly creep up again.

Corey 2