To think that the world would not be a better place without Heidi *Content Warning - abortion/disability edited by MNHQ*

[bridgetreilly]

Heidi is 24 and has Downs syndrome. She is beautiful and brilliant and very articulate in explaining why the UK abortion law is discriminatory in allowing abortion up to full term where the child has Downs syndrome (and other non-fatal disabilities including cleft palate or club foot), when the standard limit is 24 weeks.

She's not the only one to think that. The United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ concluding observations on the initial report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland made a key recommendation that the UK change its abortion law on disability so that it does not single out babies with disabilities. However, the Government has decided to ignore this recommendation.

Heidi, along with the mother of a young boy with Downs syndrome, is planning to sue the government for discrimination. She is amazing and I hope she wins.

I have to say I’ve changed my mind since reading this thread. I initially thought, yes stop over 24 week abortions, as I couldn’t see why anyone would abort then, the baby is a viable baby by then, there are good enough tests before this time etc.

However, reading @sinkgirl and @hoik and also the account of why some women have aborted after 24 weeks, and that these are all for very serious medical and quality of life reasons, not ‘because they have DS or ASD’ or whatever, that I cannot see why the Heidi campaign has come about? It’s aims as not what bears out in reality it seems.

Thank you bflat

Aber9 I’m so incredibly sorry for your loss and for what you had to go through. I can’t even imagine. Sending lots of to you.

I am strongly against abortion beyond 24 weeks for any reason other than if the child will not survive birth or will die shortly afterwards.

Do you have a severely disabled child?

Coolcucumber it looks as if Heidi is being used by anti-choice groups to push a narrative that has little or no bearing on reality.

Of course no-one is going to say that she shouldn't exist, or that she is a lesser person because she has Ds, or that she's not entitled to express her views.

As sinkgirl says, a logical conclusion would be for ground e to be repelled, so that women have the legal right to end a pregnancy for any fetus regardless of its disability status at any point.

But that's not what this campaign is pushing for. It's an attack on reproductive rights dressed up as disability rights.

And the OP has been VERY quiet since her first post.

Yes, the anti abortion people always cloak themselves in some smoke screen that try to tear a people's heart strings. If we are not careful they will persuade enough MPs to reduce women's rights to abortion choice - remember the current law does not force any woman to abort a disabled baby - that is currently entirely her choice, her body, her choice.

Abortion rights have nothing to do with the whether the world would be better off with someone in it - this is not the test before the 24 week threshold and it is not the test after the 24 week threshold.

I was severely ill after ds was born. I had a variety of issues and it was only during yet another battery of tests that a doctor at the hospital asked if I could be pregnant. Leaving aside the fact that I truly cannot recall conceiving dd, it turned out I was 21 weeks gone. I had no clue. I'd been breastfeeding, losing weight rapidly, and been so poorly I hadn't noticed any symptoms.

Cue battle stations at hospital. I'd been given tons of tests and drugs. Various hormone levels were so out of whack it was hugely likely that any foetus I was carrying may have problems. Nonetheless, we were told there was a week wait for a scan. Luckily, I had savings and we stumped up for private ( with the same nhs consultant!)

By some miracle dd was fine apart from some little physical niggles. But I will remember to this day the chat before the scan, and the desperate wait to see if her brain had developed at all ( which was a real risk due to the drugs I was on.) I knew then that I would have aborted should the brain have been damaged or not present. And I knew what it would entail and that it would likely have been at 23- 25 weeks. And I am thankful I had that choice. All women should always, always have that choice.

I agree @LonginesPrime.

I also don’t agree that the law should be changed because it makes Heidi feel “unwanted and unloved” or whatever it was she said. Given she’s presumably loved by her family and friends why does she expect the law of the land to make her feel the same way? It’s not about her or anyone else with DS. It’s about the woman and what she chooses for her own body and the baby she is carrying

I’d have aborted a baby with Downs. That does not for one second mean I don’t think people like Heidi aren’t valuable people with a lot to bring to the world. It just isn’t a choice I’d have willingly made for me and my family.

A PP, I think Wolff? raised the issue I have with this campaign. I really dislike it and it makes me feel really uneasy.

It’s a whole new form of manipulation by using Heidi. She appears articulate and passionate but it’s quite clear she is parroting what she’s been told and is following a script. I think she’s being terribly used.

As she has DS, interviewers are going easy on her. No robust debate as she doesn’t have the cognitive skills to respond. She was on the radio and the presenter asked her a very basic question several different ways and she couldn’t answer. Just kept repeating what she’d already said and then she had to hand over to her mother.

My view is that the decision rests with the woman as she is the one who has to experience it and no one else should have the power to decide.

A disabled child in a family can cause huge inter generational trauma that no one else has to experience except the family.

All these people saying it’s a women’s choice as it’s her body etc seem to suggest people should be able to do anything they want. There are lots of things you can’t get people to do for you legally. It’s not like you can do it yourself so you need HP to assist your right to choose. So you are affecting the HP also. It’s not just about the women in reality.

Whose going tolook after all these unwanted children-is she? noone should be forced to have a baby

i do think tests need to be improved on though and more reseach done into it-sometimes the results come very late

Theyre in the wrong job then beaker

So you are affecting the HP also

HCP can opt out if they have personal objections to abortion however most HCP that I have encountered have been professionally, if not personally, sympathetic to the need for safe access to abortion.

Nice try though on blaming women for making HCP feel bad.

The law disagrees. It is not infanticide and they are not people until after they are born. The woman is the only person here with rights as it is her body and therefore her choice.

And raising a disabled child goes way beyond "imperfection". We are all imperfect in some way, imperfection is not the same thing as complex disability.

Thankfully, while there are HCPs who choose to opt out, there also exist those willing to help women.

I can only imagine not HCP will be very sympathetic to a woman who has made a very tough decision.

Don't forget most of these babies will have be very much wanted, even if they were a surprise, many will have been planned some may even be fertility babies.

The woman while making a decision not to bring a disabled baby into the world will be grieving for the normal baby she wanted and she thought she was carrying.

Well rebelenny - good for you. No one is expecting you to have an abortion. You can hold whatever position you choose as long as it doesn’t impose on other people’s choice.

Sorry for the typo, most HCP not, not HCP.

So you are affecting the HP also. It’s not just about the women in reality

That's an HR issue, not a policy issue.

I doubt there are many pro-choice advocates who think that HPs should be forced to carry out terminations against their will, so that's a silly strawman argument.

It's management's job to make sure staff are deployed suitably and obviously if someone doesn't want to carry out a procedure, that's between them and their manager to sort out. It doesn't mean that services shouldn't be provided to the women that want them, though.

You’d think that blackbear but unfortunately woman in this situation are being looked after by judgemental people like beakerbabe. Can’t imagine that she can hide her feelings on this subject.

I know two ladies who have continued to grieve for their 20 week plus terminated babies, long after the death. One baby had a condition not compatible with life. The other had very low odds for mother and baby surviving the pregnancy.

The thought of somebody trying to inflict their views on those ladies really hurts.

Makes my blood run slightly cold at getting rid of the ‘imperfect’ people (because they are people at that gestation)

There are women on this thread who’ve spoken about their traumatic experiences of TFMR.

There has been a link to the stories of those who’ve needed TFMR post 24 weeks.

There are people who’ve spoken about the impact of raising a child with severe disabilities.

How dare you trivialise all of that by dismissing these issues as “imperfections”? That’s repulsive.

Raising a child with severe disabilities is extraordinarily hard. Marriages break down and people kill themselves, and sometimes their children, under the strain. Help from the state has been cut to the bone and many people struggle on with no support at all. How dare anyone suggest that somebody is wrong for deciding they couldn’t cope with that life?

Makes my blood run slightly cold at getting rid of the ‘imperfect’ people (because they are people at that gestation)

Does it not make your blood run cold to think of a woman being told she must continue the pregnancy, having found out her wanted baby will be born to live less than a week, every moment of it in agony?

I don't really want to link to details of some conditions, as it might trigger women who have been in that situation, but suffice it to say that their are conditions for which I would crawl through broken glass on my hands and knees to get the opportunity to peacefully stop the baby's heart in utero.

Sometimes, termination is an act of love to prevent unimaginable suffering to "people".