I don't know how I feel about abortion anymore

[sirlee66]

I've always been very pro-choice. A woman's body. A woman's right to choose.

I'm currently 34 weeks pregnant with my first and now I think my thoughts are changing.

I believe the cut off is 24 weeks? There was a lovely lady on here the other day whose waters broke and she gave birth to a baby girl at 25 weeks! If a baby can survive that early... It just seems...wrong!

Maybe the cut off could be lowered. I started feeling flutters at about 15 weeks so maybe before then.

I don't know what the answer is. I still feel really strongly that ultimately, the mother should decide but I just can't get past babies surviving outside the womb at the same age as a baby that could be aborted.

Maybe it's just pregnancy hormones. I also can't stop think about the poor women who have to make that decision. It must be so awful and I just want to give them a big hug.

I guess my question is, AIBU to not really know how I feel about it?

But the truth isn't that these kids are a terrible burden who will ruin your life and that IS what people are being told. Have an abortion and just have another go. That isn't fact. It simply isn't.

It is the truth to some people, but I've never heard any drs phrase it in that way or tell people that. "get rid of it and have another go"? That is not how drs talk.
I don't know why you are trying to paint all obstetricians in such an awful way, I presume you have had a bad experience but it isnt fair of you to paint this as any kind of standard approach. It's just not how it works.

It's staggering to me that there are people who genuinely assume women just choose, on a whim, to have a late abortion, without being able to fathom the reasons why. And even if the result of the current laws is that a minority of women ARE doing it on a whim, that is not a reason to change them. Readily available abortion for all women, with no conditions and available as late as necessary is the only way to preserve bodily autonomy. A foetus's rights cannot ever trump a woman's until it's outside of her body.

Also, i really wish people would stop assuming that abortion is an upsetting, traumatic and difficult decision for every woman. It isn't. I knew from the moment I got a positive result that I wanted an abortion, I was more concerned about the prospect of anaesthesia making me throw up as I have vomit phobia (I opted for a surgical under general because I didn't want to put myself through the physical discomfort of a medical termination) than I ever was about the abortion. To me, it was an invader in my body, an inconvenience that needed dealing with. I understand that's probably difficult for some people to hear who may have been emotionally affected by their decision but my feelings, and those of the many, many women who didn't struggle with their abortion, are just as valid as those who did.

SleepingStandingUp The stats I gave you are from 2016. That’s really not 2 decades ago. The 2017 stats aren’t published yet so the 2016 figures are as current as it gets.

Ok tinky, So how are their abortion stats so high? You readily is nothing to do with how the information is shared, what information is shared, what bias is spun the doctors, etc?

I’m pretty sure their abortion stats in general are very high. So abortions not just related to fetal disability but all of them.

If the area tends to be a bit more accepting of terminations and have high rates anyway it stands to reason that It’s possibly more to do with that than a HCP conspiracy against potential parents of disabled kids

For you to equate that with someone deciding to terminate a pregnancy because the foetus was female or black... this is not a misunderstanding between us but a very, very, fundamental difference of belief

I have worked with women who have been set alight for daring to conceive a female child and ones who have been beaten to within an inch of their life because of the belief that a baby they are carrying may be the wrong colour.

Trauma is trauma even if you don’t understand it

I understand it may not be a popular opinion but having read through the posts (I'm pro-choice) @NewDadNearly30 does make a good point all be it using very emotive language, I'm not saying it's "evil" but surely if the lady in question does believe the baby to be an actual living being with zero complications and her own health isn't at an increased risk, it must be harder to justify morally as opposed to someone who has the belief it's just a cluster of cells ?

out of interest I wonder how many of the pro choice people on this thread would be able to be the HCPs carrying out the procedures, out of interest. Because if it is a human right someone has to

If I was a trained doctor, then yes, of course I would be able to carry out abortions. I really don't think we are facing a shortage of medical staff prepared to perform abortions to be fair. I know you keep talking about the huge trauma, but I think this is just based on anecdotes from your friend who worked in this area. There are plenty more areas that I would find more traumatic- emergency medicine, oncology, head injuries, alzheimers etc.

Not sure you understand the procedures in late abortions then.
Nothing like other surgeries. Much more harrowing.
Don't be deliberately obtuse.

Why do forced birthers always focus on the vanishingly tiny number of late abortions?

Of course late abortions are harrowing. Which is why most people don't have them, and the people who do have them do it for very compelling reasons. I know what happens because my friend went through it.

I doubt that doctors choosing to go into the field of obstetrics and gynaecology are left in ignorance of what they might be called upon to do.

Not seen anyone who's a forced birther. The opposite in fact.
Yes I suppose they know what they need to do. And that those working in abortion clinics have chosen a job there so that's a bit different. Doesn't make it nicer. Late abortion can involve passing the foetus. There is also the option of surgical abortion under general anaesthesia.
Abortion for medical reasons can be anytime up to birth. I read a case about a woman pregnant with twins, one had downs, and they had an injection to end the downs twin's life and birthed one live baby alongside that twin. It is hard all round.

Anyone opposed to abortion is a forced birther. By definition.

I'm not sure people think of it like that. If you focus on the unborn baby then surely you don't see the mother as a part of it at all.
I'm not saying you're wrong.
And actually I don't think that having no access to abortion is just about birthing a child. It is about having to go through pregnancy as much as having to have a baby. Those who go on about mothers being forced to carry a baby to term then have it adopted are the worst imo. Of course it is different having to give away a baby you've birthed, than ending a pregnancy.

When I think of my DDs' birth mum, going through 6 pregnancies, 2 of them resulting in still birth and her 4 children taken off her (for the right reasons because she's in an abusive relationship), I would hate to think that anyone put pressure on her to give birth to her babies. That would be beyond cruel.

And I now understand that those people who say that those babies could be adopted have no understanding of the damage that's done to a lot of those babies who are adopted, because of being taken off their mothers. I see the effects in my DD1, who has Attachment Disorder and very likely brain damage. The adoptive parents then have to pick up the pieces.

It's so much more complicated than those anti abortion campaigners realise, but I don't think a lot of them really care, sadly.

People who are opposed to abortion because they consider themselves kind, loving, spiritually elevated individuals who 'really care about babies' should get to work on helping mothers and babies. They should fundraise and campaign for more maternity services, more midwives and obstetricians - lack of access to maternity care causes needless deaths of babies, pregnant women and mothers. They should work with and support organisations who are trying to end poverty. They should back good sex and relationships education, which focuses on consent and respect for women - and on pleasure. They should support access to reliable contraception.

But the vast majority of them do none of these things, because their agenda is nothing to do with babies at all. It comes from a viewpoint that women are not fully human, and not to be trusted - they mustn't be allowed freedom of choice over their bodies, and shouldn't really be allowed freedom of choice over when they have PIV sex, or who with. Much better for men to be in charge of reproduction.

This shows in the constant wailing bullshit about 'all those women who abort at 30+ weeks because they just changed their mind about the baby'. There is not a single documented case of this happening (not to say it hasn't, ever, or that it won't, ever, but the % of women who might make that choice is vanishingly small). The women who have died because they were forbidden a safe abortion, or a legal one, so they either died due to complications in the pregnancy, or sepsis from carrying a dead foetus, or from using an unsafe method to attempt to end the pregnancy... or from ending their own lives because that was preferable to continuing the pregnancy? Well, there are many, many documented incidents of those.

Make your own choice regarding your pregnancy, but shut the fuck up about what other women do about theirs. Your opinion doesn't matter.

Thank you, @ItsuAddict it's a case of seeing how RL is never black and white. It's very easy to say that adoption is the answer, but the reality of it is so different. We have 60,000 children in the care system and it's breaking at the seams.

To be fair, I do know a woman who find raises for SPUC and also runs a local charity supporting low-income mothers. She may be unusual, I don’t know. I tend to steer clear.

I wonder what pro choice people think of women who have multiple abortions, 3 or 4 - or even 7 or 8?
I’m sure I read somewhere that a very small percentage of women were on their 10th abortion - do you judge those women in anyway at all?

Addict not read any memoirs no. Know a couple of surgeons though. And they all have to rotate as they train.
Where have I said that your friend should have to carry that baby? I haven't! So why say that?
And obviously, what can I suggest? What do you suggest?
All I have done is acknowledge that from a medical perspective it is also traumatic. Not that that overrides a patient's decision.
People think that babies taken from their mums at birth go on and grow as healthy normal developing children. Some do. Some are damaged by the unnatural removal from the figure who grew them, resulting as a pp said, in attachment disorders.
It's a really really emotive topic. Don't shout me down for considering things you haven't thought of. It's a discussion. Not an arena to tell people to fuck off, call them stupid dicks, or goms or whatever.

No there really are a lot of people who do practise what they preach, but they're not the ones who lobby outside abortion clinics by and large. They get on with what they're doing and don't shout out about it.

I admire and respect them, but they don't see the contradiction, they're opposed to abortion but also don't want to promote contraception as they see it as promoting promiscuity in young people. They don't see that their stance increases the number of unwanted pregnancies.

I wonder what pro choice people think of women who have multiple abortions, 3 or 4 - or even 7 or 8?
I’m sure I read somewhere that a very small percentage of women were on their 10th abortion - do you judge those women in anyway at all?

That would imply that pro choice people place judgement on all abortions but we “turn a blind eye” to the first one or two for some reason. Why would we be okay about abortion no.1 but decide abortion no.7 is wrong?

SGB, I'm pro-choice but having been pro-life when I was younger, I think that strawman arguments can actually do more harm than good when talking to pro-lifers.

When I was pro-life, it was before I was exposed to feminism and if someone had said to me 'it's because this society is patriarchal and hates women' or similar, I would have thought that this was nothing to do with my own views for being pro-life and that therefore there was a gulf in understanding.

I'm sure there are some pro-life people who do also think that men should be in charge, etc. But I suspect there are many more who have come to their beliefs for other reasons. For me, it wasn't about punishing women or taking control of them (this wasn't on my radar at all) - it was about not undoing what had been done (by having sex) to the detriment of the foetus. I was fed a lot of propaganda about the cruelty of abortion at school (and church- I remember a priest referring to it as 'the killing of innocent babies') so that's where my beliefs originated.

It was only much later that I realised that there's a huge imbalance as men can just walk away and leave the woman raising the child on their own and that being pro-choice meant you can still apply whatever moral framework you want to your decision, but that everyone else is free to do the same and to make a decision compatible with their own beliefs.