Pro-lifers - what would you do? *trigger warning*

[catcuriosity]

Not a thread about a thread, but obviously there have been a number of discussions on whether blanket bans on abortion are appropriate in this day and age, and a number of people both on and off line have come out in support of them.

I am just curious as to what a pro-lifer would do in this situation, and apologies if this is triggering to anyone.

Scan at 18 weeks reveals part of the baby's brain is damaged and that has impacted the normal development, including deformaties to the limbs and spine, which has a huge scoliosis. The bladder is also very enlarged, suggesting the baby cannot empty it itself, which could ultimately result in the bladder exploding.
More tests reveal that the brain damage has left the baby paralysed, and it would be unable to take its first breath after birth and would therefore die straight away, assuming it made it to term, which was below 50% liklihood.
The paralysis also meant there would be no fetal movement, and therefore no warning signs if the baby died in the womb. If that happened, there is an increased chance of infection (and risk to the mother's life) and also a high chance of no future pregnancies if infection left lasting damage.

And most importantly, doctors think baby's nervous system doesn't develop until 20-24 weeks, and therefore at 18 weeks, the baby can't feel any pain associated with the issues. After 24 weeks, the baby will be in constant chronic pain.

So, do you terminate or carry the pregnancy on?

I would abort - it would clearly be the kindest thing to do. Your reasons for doing it would be only love and compassion for the baby, and I don't see how anyone can think that is wrong.

Some PPs have said they couldn't live with themselves if they had an abortion, but I think that is sort of selfish - putting your own fear of guilt ahead of the concerns of your chance of alleviating the baby's suffering.

So, I think having an abortion would be a kind thing to do, a compassionate thing to do and a brave thing to do.

I wish you all the very best.

Sorry cat I wrote my post while falling asleep last night & realised it has all kinds of errors. I especially didn't mean to write 'good luck and much much luck' but 'good luck and much much love'.

Btw I can very much empathise with how you describe feeling guilty - I can't remember exactly how you put it. Something along the lines of feeling that your body had let your baby down.

I would say that however you feel is fine. I feel very sad about the embryos we destroyed, and I prevaricate daily about our decision although we did PGD almost 3 years ago. (i wouldn't make a different decision now though.) Other PGD parents I know don't seem to feel like that & my husband doesn't. We're all different and process things differently.

I also want to say, as another poster did up thread, that either telling or not telling your in laws is fine. I'm so sorry that you have to consider their reaction at such a sad time.

Thinking of you.

Oh Kitty. I am so sorry The thing is, whatever your mum wants to believe, ectopics don't just move. I am sure that, when it comes down to it, your mum would far rather you were safe, and alive, and able to try again if and when you want to. She is responding the way she is because she doesn't understand that that was the choice.

FWIW, I know someone who is deeply Christian and who had an ectopic pregnancy. She doesn't give it a second thought as being the right thing to do. Being religious doesn't mean you think like that. It's misunderstanding the medical condition.

It wasn't though sweetheart. It truly, truly wasn't. Be kind to yourself

Kittymum, when your mum comes up with "You never know, yours might have been OK", you need to say every time and very firmly "We do know, mine would never have been OK, the foetus would have died if they'd left it, and I might have died also". Can you print off some information about ectopic pregnancies for her to read?

I am pro choice, but I do feel that to terminate for non medical reasons is wrong. I would never tell anyone in real life my opinion as I would not want to make anyone who has had a termination that I didn't know about feel bad, or judged. I also realize this is just my opinion, and as such is completely subjective.

In these circumstances I would terminate. I think the grief and loss would be the same either way, but the guilt of letting my baby live long enough feel terrible pain would be worse than the guilt of termination.

I am so sorry that this is a decision you have to make. I really hope that your friends and family are nothing but supportive.

Hi OP. I'm so sorry you find yourself in this impossible and heartbreaking situation- one I found myself in 6 years ago.

I haven't read many of the later posts but wanted to share my story in case it helps. I don't tend to 'do' labels but prior to the loss of my son I considered myself as someone who would never end a pregnancy (although equally someone who would never judge anyone else for making that decision if it were right for them). I was so blissfully naive and ignorant- I almost didn't have the nuchal test because 'I would love my child no matter what.' How ignorant of me to not realise there are conditions so severe they are incompatible with life, and even those that aren't could cause a child an unbearable lifetime of pain and severely compromised quality of life.

Well I went skipping into my 20 week scan (when I was just over 21 weeks) to be told that my baby had no kidneys and no chance of survival. No kidneys meant no amniotic fluid and as such no chance of lungs developing. When he went to take his first breathes he would die. Furthermore continuing the pregnancy would result in him slowly being crushed as I had no amniotic fluid in addition to causing deformations like club foot etc.

To say the bottom of my world dropped away from me was an understatement. NOTHING can prepare you for the reality of what you would do in this situation. For me, despite my previous beliefs, there was no choice. I could not let my baby continue to pointlessly suffer. For ME (and I judge no one who carries to term) the easier option would have been to let nature take its course. I was desperate to meet him and spend as much time with him as possible. However, for me I felt the only thing I could give to my child was to save him from further suffering. The next few days which followed were horrific and something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

I have never felt the need to explain my loss as a 'termination' to anyone as I just don't feel like that label fits this situation (and as I said before I don't like labels anyway). If I ever do go into detail I sometimes say my son had a fatal condition and I was induced.

I never felt 'guilty' for what I had to do. If anything the opposite because the only consolation I have is that I minimised his suffering as much as I could. I feel like instead I took the pain so he didn't have to. I would have gladly swapped my life for his a million times over if there was a chance to save him but sadly life doesn't work like that.

It's an absolutely hideous situation to be in and one that you just can't hypothesise about what you would do until you are in it.

Wishing you much love and strength OP. Arc were a lifeline to me in the early days. Be kind to yourself.

I'm so sorry for your loss iwant - you have put it into words so well and you have hit the nail on the head about not feeling guilty, the bit about taking the pain so he didn't have to is so true and is what makes you the best mum to him. I have a scan tomorrow at nearly 22 weeks and it is always in the back of my mind that something could be found but I cannot imagine how we would deal with it and just hope we never have to find out - I just hope I could be as strong as you and others who have been in such a heartbreaking situation.

I'm so sorry for your loss Iwant. Thank you so much for sharing. The world is richer for you, and others on this thread who have trod similar paths, sharing your stories.

On a separate note, the reason I say that IMO it's understandable to feel guilty is that when people tell me they don't feel guilty & that I shouldn't, I feel like there's something wrong with me. Like, why do I feel so sad about my body carrying a higher chance than other bodies of killing babies. Why do I feel sad that in order to have biological children, we were placed in a position of choosing between life or death for some of those children. if people say ' don't feel guilty ' then to me that sounds like I am broken for feeling as I do. I would never have chosen to put myself in the situation of having to make the choices we made, and the choices we may have to make in the future.

So, for anyone on this thread who has had to make similar choices, and feels guilty, I say this: it's OK that you feel guilty. I don't like that you feel guilty, or that I feel guilty, and I doubt you do either. I doubt any of us would choose to feel guilty. And I'm not saying that we should feel guilty, for whatever reasons we do. But let's just acknowledge that it's a sad and difficult position to be in, carrying with it sad and difficult feelings. If we don't acknowledge that, then we run the risk of silencing female voices, in order to collude with an imposed narrative.

Iwant
Thank you so much for that post, and sharing your story.

ARC have been amazing to us. Such an undervalued charity, but such compassionate people who run their telephone service.

catcuriosity - I'm glad that you've already found ARC (though sorry that you've ever needed to find them in the first place). Wishing you much strength and love over the coming weeks and months whatever they may hold and decision you make.

Thanks everyone for your kind words - Its good to know that sharing my story may in some way play a small part in helping people understand the reality of being faced with this horrific situation.

Kitty 2 members of my family have died from an ectopic pregnancy.
Feel no guilt. Your mum is wrong.

Cat I hope you get all the support you need.

My mum had a termination after having me- she'd been told that another child would endanger her life. She was sterilised but it didn't work. She had previously been 'pro life'. I think until you are faced with these decisions you don't know how you will feel.

I totally agree poodles.

Guilt is a very normal emotion in these situations. Not to be confused with regret. Lots of people assume that if you feel guilt then you must also regret your decision.

I am 100% non regretful about my decision yet I still feel guilt (much less than at first though)

I'm glad I'm not the only one Kittyandteal (your situation must be so much harder with the loss of your baby as well as the 'choice' aspect, I'm so sorry.)

crappy I'm so sorry for the loss of your family members and Kitty I'm so sorry for the loss of your baby. I can understand your feelings to some extent - I had a mc before the pgd, because of my dodgy chromosomes, & blamed myself for it, I felt like my body was a murderer. When I was going through PGD a dear friend who is a vicar advised me to think of the lost embryos as miscarriages, could you do that? You had no choice.

Similarly for those who have had late TFMRs, a friend of mine who lost a baby through TFMR refers to her baby as stillborn sometimes, and the truth is that she was. Maybe that would be a way for you to handle the situation with your inlaws Cat? It's not a lie, it's the truth. But I don't feel you should have to hold back from the full truth unless you want to, and that is what is best for you.

I hope you are, I don't know, OK seems the wrong word but I can't think of better. If you feel able please update us after you have resolved the situation with your in laws, and continue to update on how you are.

I've found counselling great, Kitty, it's a great idea whether you go through 'counselling' or talk elsewhere. Wishing you luck and light

Kittymum03 An ectopic pregnancy is not a viable one, you did not terminate you essentially saved your own life. I say that because a close friend of mine very nearly died when she ended up rushed in hospital for appendicitis and very nearly died on the way, it was found she had an ectopic.

That doesn't mean you won't feel sad or upset or grieve for a lost baby or lose chance. The feelings are very much the same as miscarriage, the difference is where the pregnancy was but like miscarried babies there was no viability there.

Kittymum03, your mother is being very ignorant and very hurtful, I suggest you just print out the advice from this webpage. If you have a ectopic pregnancy, the baby has implanted incorrectly, if it de-implants then you would miscarry it- it would either be dead already and not survive on the way to the womb to reimplants.

The only 'ectopic' pregnancy where it's been the utmost rare survival isn't actually an ectopic pregnancy, it's called an abdominal pregnancy where it's implanted somewhere in the abdomen but has a blood supply. The fallopian tubes have no good blood supply, either it grows and then bursts your tube or dies and blocks your tube. In most cases in abdominal pregnancy both mother and baby die during the pregnancy, it's a million to one they survive and there's no cases of an ectopic surviving or moving. You'd know if you'd had an adominal pregnancy, the surgery would be very ivasive and you'd have many tests after to see why it happened, plus they would tell you.

If a baby deimplants in the womb it ends in miscarriage, it's no different if it moves from somewhere else.

I am so sorry for your loss, I know the pain myself and your mother's comments don't help. Please print out this page and give it to her. Please don't torture yourself, you did nothing wrong, you did the only thing you could do, like with a miscarriage you had no choice in the matter it was to remove or to risk your own health essentially for nothing, because the baby was likely already dead or would have died and killed or injured you gravely.

miscarriage.about.com/od/medicaltreatmentchoices/f/viableectopic.htm

iwantkhaleesiseyebrows, I am so sorry for your loss, that's a truly horrible position to be in. I hope you have a lot of love and support around you.

It is not abnormal to feel guilt, whether you make a choice or are left choice less, a lot of women who lose a baby feel that way however it happens. We shouldn't, we aren't at fault and have done nothing wrong, have been shocked and left little or no choice, but it's natural to feel guilty- sometimes like your body has failed. All you can do is reassure yourself that you aren't at fault and haven't failed.

It's not abnormal not to feel guilty either, we are all unique and while we may have similar experiences we never have exactly the same.

Sorry as you may tell this is very emotive subject for me.