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?

And I'm not referring to all abortions as dark and nasty. I am referring to late abortions specifically, for social reasons, if you read up with Marie Stopes you fill find that it is a major medical procedure with risks to the mother.

1. So is giving birth at full term. Possibly more dangerous.

2. If YOU read the info from Marie Stopes, you will see that usually the circumstances surrounding later term abortions are very harrowing and it would certainly be a breach of these women's human rights to continue with the pregnancy.

Of course abortion is a human rights, same as any other form of medical treatment. Otherwise, you are reducing women to being incubators.

If you don't like or agree with abortion then for you. Don't have one.

But don't you dare tell other women they can't have one, or even pass laws making them illegal. You simply can't put the unborn over the rights of the person carrying them. Ever.

I couldn't have an abortion when I should have done but that never meant that my pro=choice stance wavered!!! why would it!?

as a pp said, the arrogance of thinking that just because you realise that it's a difficult decision or really feel the weight of it does NOT mean that you should seek to control what other people do.

starlight

You have it spot on for me. I’m completely traumatised from pregnancy (4 pregnancies, 2 babies). I’ve always took the stance of pro-choice, not pro-abortion but I would fight vehemently to protect a woman’s right to choose because without thy choice I may be forced to go through another pregnancy and I just don’t know how I would survive that.

YANBU to be confused OP and it shows just how lucky you are to have never been a situation where you have to think about agreeing with it.

I don't like the idea of abortions beyond 12 weeks especially when there are so many people desperate to have children - it would seem better to have more babies to put up for adoption.

I don't think anyone who aborts past 12 weeks is aborting simply because they don't want to be a parent to the child. What a horrible idea if they make a decision that they feel it's kinder to abort than continue a pregnancy to the child that they should just give the child up and carry on! They likely will be making that choice feeling heartbroken and like it's the best thing for the baby rather than heartless people who can't be arsed to parent

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

And so the would-be mother who found out at the 20 week scan that her child would not survive outside the womb? She should just let things run their course for the next twenty weeks and deal with the dead child after it's born.

Or maybe, you could just not have an abortion if you don't want one.

Or wait till you've given birth, then when you're holding your precious child in your arms, ask yourself. Would I want to have my vagina ripped in half again to have my baby given to another woman?

They likely will be making that choice feeling heartbroken and like it's the best thing for the baby rather than heartless people who can't be arsed to parent

Yep devastated women and men who wanted to be mothers and fathers having to make a fucking horrible choice that then gets debated in hypotheticals on the internet by people who haven't got a clue.

My SIL had an abortion at 22 weeks. She had no reason other than “she didn’t want it”. She has also had abortions at 18 weeks and 12 weeks. Again because “she didn’t want it” each time. It feels like she uses abortion as contraception because the pill will “bring her out in spots” and she “doesn’t like condoms”.

In between each abortion she has gone on to have a child which has never made any sense to any of us.

But starlight (I meant to add) accessto abortion is absolutely a human righ by your own logic

My SIL had an abortion at 22 weeks. She had no reason other than “she didn’t want it”. She has also had abortions at 18 weeks and 12 weeks. Again because “she didn’t want it” each time. It feels like she uses abortion as contraception because the pill will “bring her out in spots” and she “doesn’t like condoms”

As distasteful as you may find that, we need to support her right to do that.

I am neither here nor there on abortion. It’s a decision I would never like to be faced with. What I do disagree with is when people use it as a form of contraception.

@tinkywinky2018 - I would agree but then contraceptives would prevent terminating another pregnancy.

She uses it as a game - tells everyone she will keep the child, then says she will abort and it goes on and on until she does. Everyone supports her but I think there is only so many times you can make the same mistake. Everyone knows sex comes with a risk of pregnancy.

I personally feel it’s wrong to use it as a form of contraceptive instead of taking other precautions.

My SIL had an abortion at 22 weeks. She had no reason other than “she didn’t want it”. She has also had abortions at 18 weeks and 12 weeks. Again because “she didn’t want it” each time.

Unless she has severe mental health issues that doesn't make sense because

A it is more difficult to get an abortion at that gestation than when she was 8 weeks

B You have to be pregnant for 22 weeks and go through the initial morning sickness/ exhaustion, and for what?

C at 22 weeks you stil basically have to give birth.

It just sounds like the sort of thing people say on these threads while clearly not knowing the whole story of someone else's uterus or while trying to make a point.

@Susan
Not really sure why you are pointing out the harrowness of late abortions. I have already said that.
Pregnancy to term I have also said, is more dangerous than abortion at any gestation, in the most cases.
Autonomy of bodies is a right. But the intervention required to remove a foetus is different, imo, to treating a disease. It is intervening in a natural biological state, whereas treating disease is aiming to treat a pathological state, with the return to natural state as a goal.
That being said, I agree with abortion being an option for all women everywhere.
Back alley abortion still exists in many countries. Buying tablets to induce shedding of womb lining as abortion is illegal. Criminal doctors who abort at much later gestations, as has happened in some countries. It is a very difficult and emotive subject.
But I have said it should be available to all women.

Abortion isn’t a contraceptive. That’s a fact.

@Valentinesfart - unfortunately it is the case and that is what happened. There is nothing wrong with my SIL nor anything wrong with the child at 22 weeks. My MIL went with her to all the scans.

I agree with you - I don’t know how she was given a termination at such a late stage but she was.

If you wish to believe I have “made this up for the sake of this thread” then do so but sadly that isn’t the case.

@Tinky, I haven't said it shouldn't happen.
I said I think all women should be able to access abortions everywhere. Perhaps I need to read more around human rights. But no need for narky comments about international organisations being more right than me. Of course they are, otherwise they wouldn't be international organisations

I don't like the idea of abortions beyond 12 weeks especially when there are so many people desperate to have children - it would seem better to have more babies to put up for adoption

Are you aware that in the UK the number of children being taken into care has risen but the number of children being adopted has actually been falling since 2015? Are you also aware that the majority of late term abortions are requested due to the physical health of the mother or serious complications being detected with the feotus? Are you under the impression that there are scores of people queueing up to adopt children with complex physical and learning needs? There aren't enough people willing and able to adopt the unwanted children who are already here but you would be happy for women to be compelled to carry and give birth to babies against their wishes because you "don't like the idea" of termination after 12 weeks

On the 24 week limit/prem birth argument: my DD was born at 25 weeks (spontaneous labour), and she is perfectly healthy now.
Before she was born, I was vaguely pro-choice, probably with a similar squeamishness about later abortions.
By the time we took her home, four months later, I was PASSIONATELY pro-choice - partly as watching her gestate outside of me gave me a much better picture of how unformed they are at that gestation. Mostly, however, it was just becoming a parent - the idea of going through that and being ambivalent about having a baby at all was just awful, if that makes sense (I may not be articulating that very well!).

From a news article: in Iceland, almost 100% of women terminate pregnancies with a down's diagnosis. In Denmark, 98 percent of pregnancies with a Down syndrome diagnosis are terminated.
In France, it’s 77 percent, and in the United States it’s 67 percent.

starlight I got the impression that you seemed more focused on how harrowing it was for the doctors performing the procedures. In the vast majority of later term abortions, we are not really talking about a choice- it's a necessity in order to avoid the woman having to suffer considerable distress.

Your distinction between abortion and other medical treatment doesn't hold water when applied to treatments such as amputation, preventative mastectomy, transplant etc. Here you are also intervening in a state of nature and I fail to see the distinction between this and provision of abortion.

OP I have given birth to two babies and my pregnancies confirmed me in my view that abortion was an absolutely unalienable right. Yours has sent you in the other direction.

Neither is evidence that we can tell other women what to do.

There’s only one opinion that matters to me on this issue, and that is the one of the woman seeking the abortion.

Make abortion easy and quick to access and you will cut the number being done after 10 weeks. Take away the need for two doctors’ approval. Give woman the right to have a mifepristone abortion at home instead of attending a clinic. There will still be late terminations for medical reasons but these are a very small number snd no woman goes through that unless there is a very good reason.

Tink2007
It definitely isn't a contraceptive.
I do believe that contraception should be available to all women worldwide but unfortunately that will never happen due to DV, war, homelessness, religion, education, shame, and gender expectations for women to be vessels to grow and birth babies.
For that reason, abortion needs to be available.
And the 24 week limit is something people use to say all of a sudden a baby is a proper baby and will live. It is the very earliest stage that a baby might live, but not without huge amounts of support and even then many will be left with permanent disabilities and requiring support. It isn't as though abortion up to that stage is awful as if a woman left it another week a healthy baby would be born. It wouldn't.

I think it is natural to re-hash one's view on abortion during pregnancy. I was pro-choice before, and I'm still pro-choice, but there is a slightly differently feeling about it.

I think that the right to control our fertility is one of the most basic rights for women because without it, we don't control anything else in our lives. Most late term abortions are done for reasons I feel quite sad about, and learning more about why some women feel that is their best choice left me with compassion for them, not judgment. But it was something that I needed to research to feel some level of peace about.

I don't know that I would recommend a women who is pregnant research this right now, because it's quite sad. Even looking into how those very early babies who survive do as they grow up is sad. There is a difference between "surviving" and "thriving."

I honestly think you are better off just enjoying your bump and planning and all that, and just thinking about how very, very blessed you are that everything is going well.