Girl challenging abortion law on grounds of disability

[User273648]

I've name changed for this. A girl is challenging the right to abortion on the grounds of disability as she has Downs. I'd be really interested in opinions.

Personally, I have a cousin who has Downs. She is low functioning (the girl challenging is clearly high functioning as she lives alone supported by carers). My aunt and uncle struggle with it. My aunt admitted once that she had cried for the first two years. They found out at birth. She obviously loves her daughter but given the choice of the same child not having Downs' Syndrome she would wish for that.

Obviously this a very sensitive topic - I'm not intending to upset anyone...just listen to other points of view.

YABU - the law should be changed so it's equal regardless of disability
YANBU - the law should stay similar to how it currently is.

www.dsrf-uk.org/downrightdiscriminationcase/

@Timekeeper1 which is why I pointed out to you that post 24 weeks it is very clearly a baby - disability or not. Or are you just arguing for the word ‘terminated’ rather than ‘killed’?

@bumbleymummy Firstly, that paper is one paper that is an anomaly and there are many papers that show there is no ability to sense pain until much later than that.

Secondly, a baby is in most countries, legally and medically, deemed to be a born human being.

Or are you just arguing for the word ‘terminated’ rather than ‘killed’

Are you seriously arguing this point on a thread where several women have shared their stories about their agony over having late terminations due to their babies being incompatible with life or having complex disabilities. Are you actually arguing that these people should say they killed their child as apposed to terminated it...

@bumbleymummy

@Timekeeper I hate to burst your little bubble of denial but that paper is far from an anomaly. Fetal pain is an important consideration wrt the need for fetal anaesthetic and, due to medical advances, fetal surgery is increasingly being performed. There is a lot of research in this area and if there was no risk of foetuses feeling pain during surgery then they wouldn’t bother with the risks associated with anaesthesia would they?

I’ve already explained why I addressed your point on babies. No need t keep going around in circles on it.

@Timekeeper1 I was asking for clarification on what part of the phrase you were objecting to - calling them babies or saying they were killed. I’ve already addressed the baby point several times and no, it didn’t have anything to do with legal definitions. Call it a foetus all you want. It’s definitely not a ‘bundle of cells’ though.

@bumbleymummy I hate to burst your own little bubble of delusion, but it most certainly is.

*Utah recently passed a law that requires doctors to give anesthesia to a fetus prior to performing an abortion that occurs at 20 weeks of gestation or later.

The law assumes that a fetus may be able to feel pain at that stage in development; however, doctors groups and other critics of the law argue that a fetus cannot feel pain at 20 weeks gestational age.

Indeed, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) said it considers the case to be closed as to whether a fetus can feel pain at that stage in development. [6 Myths About Miscarriage]

"The science shows that based on gestational age, the fetus is not capable of feeling pain until the third trimester," said Kate Connors, a spokesperson for ACOG. The third trimester begins at about 27 weeks of pregnancy.*

www.livescience.com/54774-fetal-pain-anesthesia.html

*Third, the neurons that extend from the spinal cord into the brain need to reach all the way to the area of the brain where pain is perceived. This does not occur until between 23 and 24 weeks, according to the review.

Moreover, the nerves' existence isn't enough to produce the experience of pain, the authors wrote in their review. Rather, "These anatomical structures must also be functional," the authors wrote. It's not until around 30 weeks that there is evidence of brain activity that suggests the fetus is "awake."*

Are you actually arguing that these people should say they killed their child as apposed to terminated it

Ironic considering the objection to the term “forced birth” as “silly emotive language”.

*Fetuses cannot feel pain until at least the 28th week of gestation because they haven't formed the necessary nerve pathways, says Mark Rosen, an obstetrical anesthesiologist at the University of California at San Francisco. He and his colleagues determined that until the third trimester, "the wiring at the point where you feel pain, such as the skin, doesn't reach the emotional part where you feel pain, in the brain." Although fetuses start forming pain receptors eight weeks into development, the thalamus, the part of the brain that routes information to other areas, doesn't form for 20 more weeks. Without the thalamus, Rosen says, no information can reach the cortex for processing.

Fetuses do have reflex reactions that can make them seem pained, Rosen says. "If you see a fetus in utero react to needle stimulation, then the common conclusion is that it must feel." But just as with paraplegics, "that's a reflex that's mediated by the spinal cord; that's not a conscious reaction," he says.*

www.discovermagazine.com/health/when-does-a-fetus-feel-pain

@Timekeeper1 “At week 20 there is no possibility at all, whatsoever, that it could feel any pain. And many tests CANNOT be done until week 20.”
Your original point. Just to remind you. So if you read that paper, and several others on foetal anaesthesia you will see that it is recommended well before 27 weeks. You will also see several discussions about pain and response to stimuli etc. In any case, I think that your ‘no possibility at all’ is a bit misleading.

@MarieQueenofScots a good job that isn’t what I was saying then isn’t it? Have a look at my previous comment at 3.38 for clarification. Thanks!

a good job that isn’t what I was saying then isn’t it? Have a look at my previous comment at 3.38 for clarification. Thanks!

Indeed. You haven’t addressed any of the other emotive language though, a point I made earlier.

Incidentally as I said to a PP would you mind not tagging please, I still receive notifications. Thanks!

No one has the right to force a woman to give birth and take on the responsibility of a disabled child. I would have aborted without hesitation if my baby had Down syndrome. It's about quality of life, impact on the family and other children and then what happens when the parents die? Who takes responsibility then? Just because her parents were happy to keep her doesn't mean they have any right to force this on anyone else. It reminds me of that campaign to stop women having the early test on the NHS led by that actress. How fucking dare they

*When Nebraska legislators debated the state’s new abortion law, it was claimed that fetuses must feel pain because they have the same reflex reactions to pain as children and adults. Templeton dismisses this reasoning. “There are indeed reflex responses, but in our view, because the nerves are not wired up to the cortex, they are reflex actions without experience of pain,” he says.

The report notes that #####the same reflexes are seen in seriously malformed fetuses that have no brain at all, and therefore can’t possibly experience pain#####.*

Read more: www.newscientist.com/article/dn19089-24-week-fetuses-cannot-feel-pain/#ixzz6NN4n8DpB

“At week 20 there is no possibility at all, whatsoever, that it could feel any pain. And many tests CANNOT be done until week 20.”

And as I have shown, this assertion is correct, @bumbleymummy So what I said, was right.

You can’t force women to give birth to a child with disabilities no matter how happy this individual is as someone with Downs or the other woman I’ve read about who’s challenging it because she has a baby with Downs who she can’t imagine life without.

They need to realise that downs is not the only disability and even that is on a scale of not very affected to very affected.

Some parents can cope with more than what others can. Some children will have a very poor quality of life and suffer compared to others with the same disability.

@Timekeeper1 there’s no point in arguing about this. The fact is that anaesthetic is used for foetal surgery well before the third trimester because there is evidence that the foetus shows signs of pain when given a harmful stimulus. Use of foetal anaesthesia reduces the rate of foetal mortality during intrauterine surgery. If there was no risk of the foetus feeling pain pre-27 weeks then this would be unnecessary. Again your not possibility whatsoever’ comment goes against the research and advice of foetal surgeons but feel free to argue that it’s completely unnecessary all you want.

What I genuinely don’t understand about Heidi’s standpoint is that she is here living her life because her mother had the choice to continue with her pregnancy.

A choice that she now wants to deny other women; and more importantly women with a devastating and unique set of circumstances that apply to a vanishingly small number of women. A single woman being forced to carry on with a pregnancy she doesn’t want in any circumstance is one too many.

I’m also more inclined to believe sources which have absolutely nothing to do with the abortion discussion.

@bumbleymummy OB/GYNs now advise AGAINST anaesthetic being used before the third trimester. You can ignore that fact all you want because it doesn't suit your agenda, but the evidence is there. The evidence is also on this thread that they don't have pain receptors at 20 weeks. BACKING UP my statement. You can run from that, but you can't hide. It's there. ;)

@bumbleymummy I’m also more inclined to believe sources which have absolutely nothing to do with the abortion discussion.

As am I. Which is why I was very careful to avoid that, and even rejected a couple with excellent information because they were linked with PlannedParenthood, and could foresee that would be picked out.

Ultimately this case and others like it have only one aim: to make abortion illegal again in the UK. To go back to the bad old days of illegal abortions. To go back to the days when women in Britain died of illegal abortions. It really is that simple. The likes of Bumbleymummy think this is a good thing. Says it all, really.

Foetal anaesthetic is provided for interventions that trigger noxious fetal responses. The paper I linked to states that the perepheral receptors for pain are present throughout the body from 20 weeks. Cortisol response is also present from this gestation. You will find this information in lots of papers on foetal surgery. You can google them yourself if you’re actually interested or I can link to them later when I’m at my computer. Needless to say, that paper is not an anomaly as you originally stated. Nor has it been influenced by any connection to the abortion discussion.

@Celerysam I wish we would all stop talking about women's choices here. A baby is created by two people. I can't condone the idea that a woman can choose to terminate alone. It's as much a man's right. Yes the woman is carrying the baby but she chose that as a possibility when she chose to have sex.

Does the man have to: go through income loss/job loss, back ache, weight gain, crippling nausea, blood pressure, gestational diabetes, fluid gain around organs etc? No? Then he HAS ZERO SAY.

Treating a kid as a consequence definitely isn't healthy, and foisting a pregnancy on someone who doesn't want it will not end well. I wonder if they would ever say to someone that was in a traumatic accident-- that's a risk you take every time you get in a motor vehicle!!! They probably wouldn't, because it's an illogical and rude thing to say.

consent to sex IS NOT CONSENT TO PREGNANCY.

HTH

For me the medical facts surrounding the abortion and how it's performed are irrelevant. A lifetime of dealing with a disabled child and then that child's lifetime after you have gone is what is relevant. It's the woman's choice - if you are happy to go ahead with the pregnancy that's fine but the choice should be there for those that are not (and as the stats show that is 99 percent of women who are told their child has DS).