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 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"

How?? You do understand this is a worldwide problem due to the limitations in science and diagnostics, not just an NHS scheduling problem? It is quite a recent and advanced thing to even be able to know these things by 20(ish) weeks, let alone earlier.

Again, it's not usually a case of having the 20 week scan and immediately knowing everything - for most issues further, more delicate and complicated testing is needed.

So maybe equalising the abortion limit is the ‘best’ compromise?

At term then because I don't believe 24 weeks is good enough when it comes to things which may not be picked up until 20 weeks

Why at term? Why not at 1 month old to make sure all disabilities that couldn’t be screened for in utero were picked up?

There’s no material difference between an almost full term baby that’s unborn and one a few weeks old. Pretending an unborn baby is somehow different because it’s a foetus is a mental contortion many people struggle with - more so when that foetus is theoretically able to survive outside the womb.

I feel very uneasy about abortions being offered at 38 weeks or thereabouts. That's almost like murder to me - that baby is (probably) able to survive outside the womb with no medical intervention.
I think the abortion limit for fetus' with identified disabilities should be reduced to 30 weeks. This allows plenty of time for the relevant tests to be done and the mother to make a choice based on these. It's highly unlikely a 30week fetus could survive without medical intervention anyway. 38 weeks imo is too late.

Some UK stats: less than 2% of 2018 abortions were performed because of fetal anomaly.

Less than 2% were performed after 20 weeks.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/808556/Abortion_Statistics__England_and_Wales_2018__1_.pdf

The current UK law is good (except NI!)

I completely understand that women should be offered the choice. Their body, their life, their choice, and any consequences that may follow.

I was just simply stating that I personally am against it (unless due to definitive lethal condition as previously stated). Who am I to say whether a child deserves a chance at life because of a disability. My partner and I created that child, and she just so happens to have been born with a disability. In my eyes she, and other children with manageable conditions, have as much right to life as those who are not born with such conditions. That is just my personal opinion, but what others decide to do is their choice. I don't know them and I have no right to tell others what to do, I can only share my personal experience.

There isn't an ante-natal test for ASD, but if there were I would have had it and I would have had an abortion at any stage. I love my DS dearly but I am an older parent now and he is not able to look after himself.

I chose poorly in his father, my exH who ran off with one of his OW and is NC with my DS. His sister has made it clear she won't be doing the caring when I am gone and resents the time and attention he has had whilst she was growing up.

DS is too high functioning for benefits and supported housing but too vulnerable to live alone. He knows he is different and now he has finished school he is alone all the time apart from me. We have never had any support (and yes we have done the whole EHCP, SALT etc - ultimately all a load of platitudinous bollocks) and in the current climate that is not going to change.

I made a grave mistake bringing him into the world, one which gave him a fairly shitty life which is likely to get worse after I am gone. If I had had a choice before he was born damn right I would have had an abortion. Life at any price does not trump quality of life.

It's not just DS where abortions are offered late.

My dd was born missing her hand. Nothing else wrong, but her left hand didn't form. It was spotted at the 20 week scan. They can't guarantee nothing else is wrong (there are some syndromes that can be associated with missing a hand) but it about 99+% of the time it is just the missing hand.
Yes, it's a disability, but certainly not a life limiting one, and actually a pretty minor one.

Yet the majority of people who see it on the scan are offered a termination. And yes, they are offered late terminations-I know someone who was offered one at 37 weeks and a number who were offered after 30 weeks. I know the people who didn't accept one.
I was in a group discussing it when the lady who'd been offered one at 37 weeks talked about it. She'd felt under a lot of pressure to accept, and was told that it was "almost certain" that the missing arm was only the tip of the iceberg, which wasn't true at all. She actually felt guilty carrying on with the pregnancy.

One of the other mums said "when I should have been 37 weeks, I took my 1 month old home from hospital".

There’s no material difference between an almost full term baby that’s unborn and one a few weeks old

Well there is in the eyes of the law. A line has to be drawn somewhere and it is 'inside womb= foetus, outside womb = baby'

Thanks for the stats @dozer.
0.1% of abortions are conducted after 24 weeks.
Around a sixth of those 289 late abortions related to Downs, but we don't know if the fetus had other medical issues as well.

What doesn't appear to be recorded is whether the fetus had a condition incompatible with life, or which would lead to a very short possibly painful life. The majority of those late abortions would have been such.

A family member had an abortion around 32 weeks. The baby had total anencephaly, ie no big parts of the brain, so nothing to enable any thinking, memory, sight, hearing, etc. The hindbrain was intact so it might have been able to breathe.

I think a lot of people against abortion on medical grounds don't realise how disabled it's possible to be, thanks to such people either dying or being kept in institutions in previous years (and still not getting out much now).

I totally agree with you, Butter and would have done the same.

Same Butter. It’s why we need to be genuinely pro-life (and be able to care and support everyone to the full extent they need for their whole lives) before people can even start to be pro-birth.

There’s no material difference between an almost full term baby that’s unborn and one a few weeks old

A baby can be looked after by someone else. That's a big difference.

I don't see how anyone can be an advocate of forced birth unless they are willing to take on the responsibility of the unwanted children and the potentially catastrophic effects on the mental health of the mothers who have been forced into that situation. Of course nobody would be willing or able to take that responsibly on so why should a woman be left in that position when there is another option.

We can never solve these issues on these threads as people have such different views. The current abortion law in England is a reasonable compromise including in relation to disabled babies and I think we should just leave it alone.

Most parents do distinguish between carrying a child with disabilities and not and will use that in part to determine if they have an abortion or not at any stage including for those rare cases where a problem arises late on. There are so few having late abortions it is best to lave it open as a possibility for mothers with a disabled potential child than take away that right.

I have had two Tmfr one at 13 weeks and one at 25+4 it was not an easy decision to make but for me it was the right decision.
I will never be made to feel guilty for the choices I have made because they were the right choices for me
My TFMR were not for DS but for a life limiting condition that I am a carrier for
So obviously in some people’s eyes I should either have children who would have died early or had none at all.

There’s no material difference between an almost full term baby that’s unborn and one a few weeks old

A baby can be looked after by someone else. That's a big difference

Well so could the full term baby when it is born (induced or naturally). A full term baby has to come out somehow and killing it first won't make it any less painful to deliver.

I suppose that DS is often used for the not terminating disabilities campaigns
is that there is mild side of it which most people have seen in normal life. People don't normally see DS children/adults at the severe end of the spectrum. It's much easier to make people be against terminating disabilities if they know Karen with DS who works in the local supermarket and mostly is independent but not to Graeme with DS who can be violent and cannot be left unattended even for 5 mins.

@Butterfingers64 ... I agree with you too as much as I adore my son his life without mean is very frightening . Given my time again I would not have had him.. ironically we had a cvs and they told me he was fine but he isn't .

Your reply to my mental health argument made no sense. So if mental health teams will ensure that a woman goes to all her antenatal appointments, why can't the fact she doesn't want to be a mum or carry on with the pregnancy be picked up before 24 weeks?

You said anyone who attends antenatal appointments can't have a severe MH problem due to the organisation involved in attending. This is untrue.

There are a number of clinical and personal reasons why investigations/decision making may go beyond the 24 week mark which have been outlined repeatedly in this thread.

That's exactly what I said, that there's a slim chance someone so mentally ill that they get to get full term and not possibly be able to cope and a termination being the only option would slip through the net and just be left to get to full term with an unwanted pregnancy. I'm sure if they expressed even once to a midwife that they couldn't cope that a termination would be offered before 24 weeks

Late term abortion deals with the slim chances. There are enough pregnant women that if a scenario can happen it will, but it is far from routine or planned care.

I can’t see it happening. Downs Syndrome is a wide spectrum, some people live relatively independent lives, some are need 24hr care and indeed sadly a lot of babies did shortly after birth due to complex cardiac conditions. Not to mention it’s a slippery slope when you start to take away some of a woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body. It can also take much longer to diagnose Downs and other disabilities. Some of the most catastrophic manifestations is Downs and other disabilities don’t appear until well into the 3rd trimester.

Well there is in the eyes of the law. A line has to be drawn somewhere and it is 'inside womb= foetus, outside womb = baby'

Right - but my point was that that line is arbitrary.

A baby can be looked after by someone else. That’s a big difference

That doesn’t make sense. A close to term aborted baby could also have been looked after by somebody else if it’s life hadn’t been ended prior to delivery. I said there was no material difference between a late-term foetus and a very young baby - and there isn’t.

The difference is that currently womeh have the right to choose and I suspect most women in the England want to preserve their current rights rather than take rights away from other women. Even if a woman would never have an abortion a lot of them would still support the righgts of others to have one. Of course there are also lots of women including those in many religions who think life begins at the moment of conception and the moral worng is as bad killing it at 2 weeks of gestation as at 39 weeks.

I find it quite alarming that there's someone working in a maternity position at a hospital that is fine with late term abortions because women's rights prevail or whatever

Why?

Personally, I agree that it should not be legal after 24 weeks.

Just to share my experience last year: I had the anomaly scan at 20+3. An anomaly was found, but there could have been any one of a number of reasons for the anomaly, including Down Syndrome. I had an amnio at 21+3. I received the full results at 23+3. That’s pretty close to 24 weeks and quite a quick turnaround for the full results. There was talk of an MRI. That would have been at 28 weeks. In addition, the nature of the anomaly could have worsened greatly over the course of the pregnancy. So not everyone is in a position to make a decision by 24 weeks.

Also there will always be someone who is in denial about being pregnant or keeping it secret from family until about 7 or even 8 months in some cases. We just need to keep the law open for those cases too.

Anyone who believes life begins at conception whch is about 26 million Catholics in the UK for a start will want this law (and the rest of it) changed as they will be savings lives/souls and I respect their right to express those views but I do not think we should start chipping away at women's rights to abortion. MPs will jjust find it is a huge can of worms. Some voters vote solely on the basis of the abortion issue because they think all abortion is wrong and it is so important to them. There are about 200,000 abortions in the UK, about the same as the net migration figures currently. About 3000 are due to abnormalities.

"Legal abortions performed under ground E

2.17 Ground E abortions are those performed because of fetal abnormality at any gestation. There were a total of 3,314 ground E abortions in 2017. The medical diagnoses are coded to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD10). For more information on issues with the reporting of ground E abortions see the Guide to Abortion Statistics (page vi).

2.18 In 2017, 74% of ground E abortions were performed medically compared to 66% of all abortions (Tables 9c and 7a). The methods used for abortions performed under ground E are of importance to those working in fetal anomaly screening and medicine.

2.19 The age group with the highest proportion of abortions performed under ground E is 35 and over (4% of abortions for this age group were for ground E, 1,281 abortions), compared to 0.3% of abortions performed for women aged under 20 (75 abortions). (Table 2).

2.20 Congenital malformations were reported as the principal medical condition in nearly half (49%; 1,632) of the 3,314 cases undertaken under ground E. The most commonly reported malformations were of the nervous system (22% of all ground E cases; 743) and the cardiovascular system (9%; 305). Chromosomal abnormalities were reported as the principal medical condition for just over a third (34%; 1,131) of ground E cases.

Down’s syndrome was the most commonly reported chromosomal abnormality (20%; 655). Other conditions account for 17% of ground E abortions, this includes cases where the fetus was affected by maternal factors, hydrops fetalis, family history of heritable disorders, and Cystic Hygroma. (Full details in table 9a and Figure 4). "

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/763174/2017-abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-revised.pdf