to have had an abortion and feel ZERO shame or regret

[GetOrfMoiCase]

In AIBU because it is a popular topic. I know I am not being unreasonable.

Thread is in response to a report I heard on the news yesterday which was shamefully presented, regarding abortion access.

There is a thread on MN currently about it www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1222273-Chipping-away-at-abortion-rights-govt-appoints-Life-as-sexual-health-adviser

Apparently there is a twitter thingummy going around 'I had an abortion' for people to discuss guilt free abortions.

Just thought it would be appropriate to have a thread on here for people put a positive side of abortion.

My story: got pregnant 5 years ago. My dd was 10. I was in a relationship of 6 months duration and had recently started a new job. Condom failure. My partner and I agreed that we didn't want a baby, I booked an abortion and had it without a backward glance. No emotional fall out afterwards. No guilt.

indeed 89% of abortions are prior to 13 weeks.

As i posted above, the reported rate of post-termination trauma is the same as that for PND....so in actual fact severe emotioal consequences are less likely than continuation (as those women who consider abortions may be judged to be more likely than most to get PND if they continue with the pregnancy)

I do not think making abortion more difficult to obtain does anyone any favours.

When a woman knows she wants an abortion, putting barriers in the way is an insult to her competence to make her own decision. It is a feminist isse, becuase it treats women as incapable of making rational choices without the aid of a doctor (read: man)

Mrswhiskerson "It would be much worse bringing an unwanted child into the world , parenthood is hard for those whoare ready for it , for someone who is not ready and geniunely did not want a child it is much worse on the child and parent." I'll ask my 21 yr old DD if she would rather i had an abortion then shall i? I was 19, unprepared and my child was unplanned, obviously not unwanted. In what way would it have been better for me to abort her? I am not opposed to abortion but you will never ever convince me that it is better to abort simply because a child is "unwanted". There are of coures situations where abortion is the better option, but im here to tell you that my life was turned around by my "unwanted" pregnancy and i couldnt be more relieved than i am now that actually, through circumstances, the option of abortion was never available to me, in fact the thought of it makes me feel weak. I personally could never have lived with it, another woman makes her own decisions as to how objective she can be.

I was over 16 weeks pregnant when i found out i was pregnant with DD1 (young mum and not unusual for me to go 7 months without AF). - My GP told me it wouldnt be straightforward for me to have an abortion but it could be arranged, simply on the grounds that i was 19 and a single parent

Eggy, do you only get male doctors then?

escapeartist
That is not what the study you cite says.
Nowhere will you find a definitive pronouncement on fetal pain.

Many years ago I assisted with a circumcision on a newborn, no anaesthetic. I had to hold him still as he struggled like someone being tortured.
I was assured that he felt no pain because the neocortex hadn't formed, and that he was simply not liking being held down
This is now widely recognised to be bullshit.

The study you cite also claims that NEWBORNS are not pain perceptive!
Tell that to any mother or father who accidently stuck a nappy pin in their baby's tummy!

Also with unconscious brain damaged patients, we note that they can mount a pain response even though the cortex is damaged. Those patients always get the benefit of the doubt and are given anaesthesia if necessary.
An exception to this is made for the fetus who we still assume to be incapable of pain perception, despite the clear evidence that they mount a pain response to noxious stimuli.
The neural stem is present at around five weeks and the pain sensors are known to react to painful stimuli.
PROBLEM IS THAT MOST OF THESE STUDIES ARE DONE BY DOCTORS WHO ARE ALREADY INVOLVED IN ABORTIONS THEMSELVES.

And has anyone seen a fetus respond to an amnio needlestick?
I have.
Bullshit that the fetus doesn't feel pain.
Makes me feel sick to my stomach to think of it.

Stillfrazzled - the problem with it being termed a "right" is that it is then something that can be taken as read, without justification and i don't think that is right for anyone, least of all the woman considering the abortion. You are clearly an intelligent woman who objectively came to your decision based on information made available to you.

I don't think its a human rights issue - that would be an oxymoron because somewhere in some bill of human rights there is probably a line that says that every human has a right to life.

I think the question for me has to be, when is it a life? Is a ball of cells a life? technically it is, is it therefore an abortion to use progesterone based contraception which works by preventing implantation - a "foetus" has already undergone several rounds of cell division and differentiation before implantation takes place. That of course is a mad argument, but when is it alive? For me, the answer has to be when there is sentience, i dont know when that is, isn't there a rudimentary, functioning, nervous system at eight weeks? Is that when awareness occurs? probably not. How many women are made to wait i wonder? how long do you have to wait for a termination?

I don't think that any woman should be made to feel guilty about abortion but i dont think that we should be niave about what it is and that is he termination of a life.

snshine - all people who have abortios are women. a minority of physicians are women. whatever that %age is now..it was lower when that law was made.

I think late term abortion has two meanings:

1. Those carried out over 20 weeks as there are abnormalities-generally seen by society as fine
2. Those carried out over 20 weeks (but before 24, as they have to be by law), by those awful women who fannied about, didn't use contraception and then found it like having lunch to terminate-generally seen by society as horrid women.

I'm in the second group.
I'm not horrid, I had a mirena coil, I made a decision instantly but I didn't know until 19 weeks.
It wasn't like lunch, unless lunch is your worst nightmare served up to you every day for a year.

And those with the, 'ooh, but at 23 weeks it could live'.
Yes, it could, but not at 19 weeks when I asked for the termination.
I didn't ask to wait, I was made to.

out of interest netto, isn't the general advice to have a termination when you have a mirena coil? That must have been so awful for you - im so sorry

minipie - good point, it should be on an individual basis.

Your point, though, is weighing her mental anguish at continuing vs her mental anguish at terminating. Shouldn't it be her mental anguish and that of the potential child if pregnancy continues (emotional damage from poverty and feeling unloved?) vs her mental anguish and the ending of the life of the foetus if the pregnancy is terminated? My point is, where is the advocate for the foetus? There are two human organisms involved. Only one is making the decision. She has parental responsibility for the other one, and is in the best place of anyone to decide it's outcome, but doesn't she have a conflict of interests here?

Is it ever better for the foetus not to live? This is the argument we make for severely disabled babies who would live a short, difficult life. But can you extend that argument to a healthy but unwanted child? Is an unloved, unwanted life better than no life at all? Or would that person, with hindsight, wish their mother had terminated the pregnancy? Where is the advocate for the foetus here? How do you balance the mother's needs against the foetus's presumed desire to life? IMHO it's not right to force the woman to be an unwilling incubator, and its also not right to end the life of a foetus who has not consented to dying. But you can't have both. Its just not a black and white area.

I don't think gestation should be the primary driver of the argument. IMHO if you terminate it should be done at the earliest gestation possible, to minimise the chance of self awareness, pain awareness etc in the foetus. For the very rare late gestation terminations, foetal pain relief should be administered as there is no physical downside to doing so. But whether you terminate at all is a distinct ethical decision.

This has been an amazing thread to read, I'm so glad the OP started it.

What's fascinated me most are the people who have said, in so many words, "I have always supported choice but the OP shocked me." It does seem very much like women are free to have an abortion (though they're not easy to get) BUT not free to feel okay about it. "Women must be punished with guilt, or how will they 'learn' to be more careful?" seems to be the attitude. Which seems hubristic to me. You never know when it could be you whose contraception AND backup contraception has failed.

sunshine for me, it's alive when it can live outside my body. It might be 'nearly' alive before then, but - and here's the rub - for as long as it relies on my internal organs, blood, and energy to live and grow, I should get to decide whether or not it can.
That's why the 24 weeks thing makes sense to me - it can survive outside of a body at that point. But I had a MC at 8 weeks and, to be honest, it was like a really bad period. I was sad, because I'd wanted a baby, not a MC - but I didn't feel like a baby had died. To compare my sadness to my cousin's grief when her baby actually did die would be a terrible insult. At 8 weeks, it wasn't a baby - so why should someone who hadn't wanted to be pg feel she should feel guilty when the same thing happens at 8 weeks? I can't think.

I may not be making much sense - I feel like I could talk this through better than I can write it down!

Sunshine I do see what you're saying, and believe me I absolutely don't deny that abortion removes the potential for a life.

But I place greater importance on the objective decision of the woman who has to risk her own life (small risk, I know, but still present) and mental health to sustain the potential life and bring it into the world.

Would you agree that forcing a woman to bear an unwanted child is a violation of her human rights? I do, which for me means that by default, abortion should be a right.

And since I believe that women should be able to decide if they're in a position to bear and raise a child, I don't think I or anyone else has the right to quiz them on whether they're unlucky enough, or sorry enough, or whatever.

Purely my opinion, not expecting to convert anyone.

Sunshine
My best friend was pregnant in pretty disastrous circs 20 years ago. Everything that could be wrong was wrong. She was living a chaotic lifestyle, relationship very fragile, parlous finances, temporary accomodation, recently deceased parents.
When you said that you felt weak at the thought of the possibility that you could have aborted your daughter I was reminded of her because those are the precise words she used.
She believes that her unplanned daughter saved her. If she didn't have her, my friend shudders to think where she would be now.

blackcurrants - i think its a very different thing for everyone, i cannot agree with you, im sorry. There will be women who cherish their little beans from the moment they are pregnant and those who greive for miscarraiges and still births. My friend lost her child at 16 weeks, she named him and had a proper funeral. She, by the grace of God, has had another child since but still grieves for her other child. Saying that, she did lose another at 11 weeks and felt pretty much the same as you did, sad but not grieving.

your comment about having a right to decide if a foetus that relies on you for life is allowed to live, leaves a very sour taste in my mouth.

I'm not judging you, there but for the grace of god go i - if i were to fall pregnant now i coudlnt have the baby i just couldn't. I have a mirena coil, lets hope i never have to face that decision. I've had two "unwanted" pregnancies - and my decision was to have the babies, that doesn't give me the right to judge another who decides not to, i just cannot come to terms with how it is trivialised.

Same here Netto. I had to wait from 17 weeks (when I realised I couldn't go on) to 23 weeks. And it was the most horrendous thing that could happen to anyone. I did not have a general anesthetic. I remember almost every minute of the twelve hours it took, apart from moments where I blacked out from the pain.

But I guess some of you think I got what I deserved, right? Don't ever think that you could not be in the same situation. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy but what happened to me could happen to any of us.

stillfrazzled, that is a very good point, you are absolutely right, no one should be forced into bearing a child that they don't feel they can care for, that is what abortion should be available. In that respect, yes, it must be a human right - but not a right as in say, the right for free prescriptions - sorry, im not making much sense, because i honestly cant make sense of the whole thing myself. I am not picking on you per se, but i think you put forward some very sensible points and it helps me to "get my head" around it as it were.

reading michelles and nettos posts makes me so FFS why did they make you wait???

stillfrazzled yes I do agree it is a breech of the woman's human rights to be forced to carry a baby she does not want. I also think it is a breech of the baby's human rights to be euthanised. You can't support both.

IMHO the baby didn't ask to be created but the woman (if she had consensual sex) did know that she risked a pregnancy. That might be a very very low risk if she used 2 methods of reliable birth control, but she still accepted the risk. Should that affect whose human right trumps whose? She does not have to raise the baby if she continues with the pregnancy. It is much much harder emotionally to bear and give up a baby than to end a pregnancy, but it avoids a human death. So is it worth it?

Can we learn anything from the live organ donation ethics here? We dont' force anyone to be a live kidney donor, or partial liver donor, or even bone marrow or blood donor. But it is held in high esteem, the idea that you would risk your own life and accept inconvenience and short term pain to save the life of another. Whereas with an unwanted pregnancy, a woman who decides to carry to term and have the baby adopted is frowned upon. Why? And is this the same reason that drives us to want women to feel guilty after an abortion?

Because a woman couldn't be allowed to just rock up to a clinic and say suck this thing out of me, at this rate I ain't gonna fit into my skinny jeans no more!

It involves travelling halfway across the country, for some women to another country. It involves many appointments with differents doctors, examinations, blood tests, a number of ultrasounds...

I guess the solution would be to stop assuming that anyone would behave so flippantly over this.

"It might be 'nearly' alive before then, but - and here's the rub - for as long as it relies on my internal organs, blood, and energy to live and grow, I should get to decide whether or not it can. "

Sorry this leaves a sour taste in your mouth, Sunshine - I'm a bit confused as to why, as I don't think of it as an aggressive stance. They're my internal organs. I own my own body. Slavery is universally considered a bad thing... why should my own authority over my own body be controversial?"

For what it's worth, I am fortunate in that I haven't ever experienced an unplanned pregnancy. But when I come to think about what being pregnant does to me, I think: I should have the choice to do that. Anyone who forces a woman to bear a child (by making it difficult or impossible for them to get an abortion) cannot be doing a service to either the woman or the unwanted baby.
"Oh!" some people say, "But you can give the baby up for adoption" - as if the being pregnant part, and the giving birth part, may not also be something that a woman does not want - and should not be forced - to do. If the pregnancy endangers the woman's life - what then? Should my living child be rendered motherless so that an 8 week old embryo has a chance?

This kind of conversation, about who's life is more important- is why I stick to my frame of reference. If it is my body which is creating the life, I should have the chance to stop it from doing so. Because it's my body, and because I am a person with responsibilities in the world - including an already-living child.

blackcurrants
"for me, it's alive when it can live outside my body"

For you? ...YOU?
When did we allow subjective emotions to trump science and reason?
It kicks, it dreams, it swallows, it hiccups, it responds to painful stimulus.
But as far as YOU are concerned, it ain't alive until it's past the birth canal.
It is, by any objective scientific standard, ALIVE.
Your feeling doesn't determine whether "it" is alive or not for goodness sake.

I'm a midwife. I'd like to try telling that to the women on Labour Ward.
Or the women who had a stillbirth ( which of course is not logically possible if the baby wasn't even alive to begin with)
Give
Me
Strength

Sorry but in a truly ethical society which considered women as human beings, not servants and incubations, abortion would be available on request( (none of this 'needing the permission of two doctors') up until the moment of birth and that is how it should be. Because the minute you start giving a foetus 'rights' you are TAKING RIGHTS FROM WOMEN - the right not to be used as an incubator, the right not to be forced to undergo months of discomfort, pain, reduced mobility etc, the right not to risk your life in labour and the birth process against your will.
And the difference between a wanted and unwanted baby is not about how much money you have, or how much support you have, your physical health or your career or your education/ It's whether you want to continue the pregnancy or not that matters.

Tell me, anti-choice whinyarses, do you find, (maybe on your day off from your antichoice womanhating activities) a little time to enter into discussions on rape laws just to remind everyone that it's really terrible that innocent men get accused of rape and we mustn't forget that it's important to stop that happening? Because all this guff about those eeeeevil anecdotal hypothetical women who get pregnant because they can't be arsed to use contraception and therefore have an abortion a week and crack jokes all the way through the procedure, etc is the same as all the guff about those eeeeevil anectodtal hypothetical women who have nothing better to do than accuse fine upstanding men of raping them for no reason at all. Maybe this sort of thing happens now and again but (and here's the important bit) it does NOT justify treating all women as liars, criminals, minors and people who can't be allowed to make their own choices.

The thing is blackcurrants, you DO have a choice, you have the choice to not get pregnant in the first place. You have the authority not to have sex without 100% chance of not getting pregnant - no contraceptive is 100% but abstenance is. As to bitter taste in mouth, maybe that was the wrong choice of words, i use this to describe something that whilst i accept it, i don't like it and im sorry, i don't like it, even though i accept it.

Thankyou Queenmarythegreat for puling blackcurrants up on that comment about the baby only 'being alive' when out of birh canal.
You worded it much better than I ever could.In fact you have wrote some pretty insightful things on this thread which I totally aree with