Current campaign to stop abortion of Down’s syndrome after 24 weeks scares me *Content Warning edited by MNHQ*

[olivehater]

It’s seems to be gaining traction and support on social media. It terrifies my that women’s rights to autonomy over their own bodies could be eroded over so called discrimination of the disabled. Where does it end? Down’s syndrome is just one of Many anomalies picked up in screening tests. Why should it be singled out?
Women should be able to make their own choices as they will be the ones left raising these babies. I don’t think it will be entertained but it is worrying all the same the support it has on social media.

I’m with Sam.

Just another case of MN's thinking women's rights should trump everyone else's. Are you actually for real that babies with no issues should be terminated up to term? Like honestly? What's the difference between killing a baby in the womb at 36 weeks and killing a baby outside of the womb at 36 weeks? Tell me what the difference is? Just because no one can see the poor little thing being destroyed like an unwanted animal doesn't mean no suffering takes place.

If the baby is going to have a miserable life with little hope and of course if there's a wait for tests and the woman/parents need time to make a decision that terminations can take place after 24 weeks but babies with no issues being terminated up to term? Anyone that believes in this is cruel and disgusting. A womans right to choice should not involve killing fully formed babies. You take on a responsibility when you get pregnant and part of that responsibility is to make your decision and work with HCA's within a 24 week window and that should be it.

MN's has seriously lost it's mind and have gone too far on this women's rights crap. Yes when it doesn't involve suffering and harm. It's funny how the same people will say that trans rights are trumping those of women due to shared toilets etc but they are happy for their rights to trump those of an actual baby and deprive them of a healthy life. I think killing babies at term is a bit more dark and horrible than sharing a bloody toilet

Yes @YappityYapYap.

Can you honestly not tell the difference between a baby sleeping in a crib and one who's life depends on an independent woman.

And it's not a baby. It's a foetus it has no right.

Just another case of MN's thinking women's rights should trump everyone else's

Yappity, that is a massive over-reach, and quite disrespectful given the subject matter.

It's simply reducing it to the normal limit - 24 weeks. Testing has moved on from when the limits were last changed and diagnosis is typically around 16-18 weeks. If a foetus is not compatible with life then having no limit is ok but otherwise the decision to terminate should be made within a week or two of diagnosis, this is safer for the woman too as late abortion carries more risk and is more traumatic.

How exactly is it an over reach? A world where women have the choice to terminate viable, healthy and fully formed babies is a cruel one. What is so wrong with the 24 week limit? And how exactly is a woman giving birth to a dead baby going to help her mental health issues? The 24 week limit unless for medical reasons etc is there for a reason. There's so many things wrong with this thread and the way it has gone. Terminating a fully formed baby isn't going to just solve the issue and it may well cause issues for other people involved and since we don't actually know if a baby suffers in late termination, why do it unless there's an extreme cause for it like the woman or baby would be in serious danger?

This is what happens when rights are given out. They get pushed and pushed to the point that the people pushing are the only one's that seem to matter, fuck everyone else basically. It's just the double standards on this forum that amaze me. The plight of sharing toilets as it means someone else's rights are trumping yours but quite happy to kill a baby at full gestation to get your rights met.... yeah ok! The mind boggles

What a load of emotive claptrap on this thread.

This has nothing to do with bodily autonomy and the like. It has everything to do with the rights of the disabled being less than the rights of the non disabled.

Anyone can have a termination before 24 weeks. That is their choice. However only babies with disabilities can be terminated after 24 weeks and right up to birth. In fact the BBC article I read on this quoted a mother as having been told by an obstetrician that they have terminated pregnancies as high as 37 weeks. Anyone who can justify that is barbaric.

And no, it doesn’t matter whether there were only a small amount of pregnancies terminated after 24 weeks, one is already too many.

If people believe that the disabled should be allowed to be terminated after 24 weeks because of women’s rights then presumably you would campaign for the law to be changed to allow all pregnancies to be terminated up till term regardless of disability? I mean, if you’re making this a women’s rights argument then that stands regardless, no? So if you don’t agree that a “healthy” pregnancy should be allowed to be terminated up to term, why not?

I support the current law. In practice not many disabled babies are aborted late term but I support the right for that to occur - them other's choice.

Any change removes mother's rights and is the start of eating away at abortion rights in the UK and should be resisted.

I also do understand a lot of people are against all abortion and also have children with disabilities and would be happy to carry a very disabled child to term and love it forever but that is their choice and I respect but do not want the law changed.

@YappityYapYap

That's not true all. I'd advocate for tfmr up to term, but I'm happy to share a toilet with a trans woman. You will find many women who will be unhappy to share female spaces but would be against abortion in any circumstance. They aren't related issues.

In many cases it wouldn't leave parents 4 weeks to make the decision. Not every abnormality is Downs. If you have your anomaly scan late (up to 22 weeks is possible), if a rescan is needed, if amniocentesis with complicated DNA analysis is needed these can all take a couple of weeks to go through (each). If the sample is unclear another may need to be taken. It's not as simple as getting clear, accurate information the exact day you turn 20 weeks pregnant.

If there is a time limit you risk rushing people into a decision before waiting until they have all the information. A termination at 20+ weeks must be horrific - nobody is choosing that without incredibly difficult and serious thought.

Let’s look at a hypothetical situation then.

A woman is pregnant and is told at the twenty week scan that the baby has a disability. She is told she can have a termination up to term, however for now she decides not to.

As time goes on however she does some research and reconsiders that perhaps she is not equipped to deal with bringing up a disabled child, so at 37 weeks she decides that she wants to have a termination after all.

So she is booked in for the termination to take place. However, the night before she is due to go in she goes into premature labour and the baby arrives quickly. Would you say that it should be ok to kill it given it was going to be terminated the next day anyway?

If people believe that the disabled should be allowed to be terminated after 24 weeks because of women’s rights then presumably you would campaign for the law to be changed to allow all pregnancies to be terminated up till term regardless of disability

There are a lot of ppl who would advocate exactly that, crazy as it sounds. See: this thread

I am not against abortion, but to say a baby that would survive outside of the womb is a foetus not a baby isn't really right is it. I have supported plenty of people with Down's syndrome who were well into their 60's and had no issues. There are plenty of supported living schemes around now to help people.
I just can't get my head around the fact that someone would abort just because of this. Disability can happen at any time of your life! My sons were premature and there was a high likelihood of brain damage from lack of oxygen when they were born, but once they were born I couldn't kill them so what's the difference! My oldest has autism, which like a lot of conditions isn't diagnosed until the child is older. You don't know what's going to happen to your healthy baby after it's born.

Medical professionals should not have to make decisions and witness full term healthy babies being delivered dead

But they do. The documentary After Tiller was very eye opening in this regard. They do listen to individual cases and have to make a decision whether that reason is ‘good enough’ for them.

Of course it has to be that way for the doctor’s mental health

If people believe that the disabled should be allowed to be terminated after 24 weeks because of women’s rights then presumably you would campaign for the law to be changed to allow all pregnancies to be terminated up till term regardless of disability?

Most women know they are pregnant by 6 weeks, so they have 18 weeks to arrange and have an abortion. If something is spotted at the anomaly scan after a rescan and fetal medicine referral you might only have a few days before the 24 week mark to make a huge decision, and then find a surgery slot. Having a disabled child is an enormous decision that should not be made in haste.

For many abnormilities or disabilities it's unclear how effected the foetus will be so they refer to fetal medicine with a plan for twice monthly scans to see how things develop. Sometimes it's ok, sometimes catastrophic. They don't know until later.

Well then A, the anomaly scan should be earlier, 18 weeks for instance. And b, if you reach a point where you are past the legal limit of 24 weeks then that’s sad but unfortunate.

If you give birth to a baby it could end up with catastrophic disabilities but you don’t get to kill it then.

If a healthy baby has rights after 24 weeks then so should a non disabled one.

But this is just the beginning of society’s view of the disabled.

And people need to stop dressing this one up as women’s rights. it has nothing to do with women’s rights.

In fact the BBC article I read on this quoted a mother as having been told by an obstetrician that they have terminated pregnancies as high as 37 weeks.

@AlternativePerspective so this person is claiming that an obstetrician has terminated at pregnancy at 37 weeks. I think it is very likely that this never happened. Either this person is lying or exaggerating. If an actual medical professional said this first hand, I would think differently.

Anyway if it did happen, we don't know what the circumstances were. Maybe the woman's life was in danger.

Some women are induced late in pregnancy to save the baby. So it’s ok to have one woman labouring in one room to save her baby, while next door another woman is labouring to deliver the baby which has just been killed.

Even if you could argue that there could be some leeway to allow for referrals, there is absolutely no justification to allow the termination of pregnancies at full term.

Anyway if it did happen, we don't know what the circumstances were. Maybe the woman's life was in danger. well if the delivery was because her life was in danger the baby wouldn’t have needed to be terminated would it?

And people claim that “he must have been lying” so that they don’t have to admit that actually yes, it does happen.

It’s very easy to support something when you’re doing it on the basis that “well it never happens anyway,” until it does. And then the people who were saying that it never happened stick with that and start to make justifications or even to claim that it must be lies.

Far easier to assume that an obstitrician was lying than to face the fact that babies are sometimes terminated at 37 weeks. Even if that is only one baby.

I think if you applied a 24 week limit for TFMR, rates would rise. With no chance for further follow up or to see how things develop and to evaluate the degree of impairment people cannot make an informed choice, and many will make that choice based on a reasonable worst case scenario.

I would terminate a foetus with a disability. That's my right. Because I would not inflict that life and the catastrophic changes onto me or my children. It wouldn't be fair to those of us who exist. They absolutely have more rights than a foetus.

I would probably abort any pregnancy at this point. 3 x DC is more than enough. But there is a slither of a chance I would potentially consider keeping a healthy pregnancy.

I didn't say I agreed with any termination to term, only that I understood that disabilities and anomalies tend to be picked up around the 20 week scan so it can be hard pushed to get a termination in place for 24 weeks but I also did say the NHS should be doing more to sort this out and ensure women are well informed about any issues as soon as possible so that we don't have to have this terminations to term thing in place at all, for any pregnancy, disability or not. It seems more moral to allow a woman to terminate a maybe 28 week pregnancy on the basis of the baby not surviving post birth or even to birth to limit the amount of stress and upset to the mother and baby.

A woman carrying a healthy baby has 24 weeks to make a decision. Here's the difference. Anyone waiting a full 24 weeks then deciding hmmm, I don't think I want this baby well tough. Sorry but that's life. Terminating a fully formed baby is not going to solve a serious mental health issue. I don't believe anyone that has such a serious mental health issue that they'd be ok with terminating their pregnancy very late on would manage to go to all their appointments and it not be picked up on. I don't think there would be a single case of a woman being totally mentally healthy then getting to say 35 weeks and suddenly being so mentally ill that a termination is the only option. Can you not see how silly that argument is? People with mental health issues are given options through out the pregnancy and up to 24 weeks. If it's the actual birth that is causing them anxiety/mental health issues that has suddenly came on in late pregnancy, they will have to give birth regardless of whether the baby is terminated or not so it seems a stupid idea to take away a chance at life so late on to solve, well, nothing really.

This is why terminations beyond 24 weeks are for medical reasons only, both to the mother and baby. This law is right and I don't believe extending terminations to birth for any reason is the way for society to go.

We paid for a Harmony Scan (10 week blood test) for both of our children as we have always said we would abort any type of disability. If it wasn't picked up until much later in pregnancy, I would abort up until point of birth. I wouldn't want to be responsible for a disabled child IF I had the choice. If the child came out and had disabilities, and it wasn't picked up, of course they would be loved and we would care for them! However, given a choice, I would abort! I'm also aware how selfish and horrendous that makes me.

The only reference I can see to a viable pregnancy being aborted at term is that BBC article. I think she's lying or that the obstetrician was wrong.

In any case, two doctors would need to agree it, and then you'd need a clinical team willing to offer it. I don't think a "I changed my mind" would suffice, you would need cogent reasons.

But I actually think this is just a straw man, really campaigners are against abortions at 26 weeks after women have been seen by fetal medicine and have had much needed weighing up time.