I respectfully disagree I'm conflating issues or suggesting that I've said all 24 weekers thrive as my post didn't say that.
I simply said my 24 weeker that I could have elected to terminate hours before her birth is thriving. This is a fact. Touch wood her only issues are a little ecszma, and a small hole in her heart which is a congentital issue unrelated to prematurity which the drs are not overly concerned about. It is for this reason that I mentioned my "thriving" 24 weeker in my original post - to explain my reasoning. Ar no point did I say that they always survive and/or thrive. I'm fully aware of the challenges faced by babies born at 24 weeks, like my daughter and other friends I have met on our journey . I also know from experience as a parent that has faced premature birth, that it is nice to hear of good outcomes. Other similar parents and I frankly found comfort in hearing success stories and would pore ove the noticeboards on the ward containing pictures and letters from parents with babies previously on the ward who had been successful.
Regardless of intention, you are conflating the two. There are unintended consequences of doing so. Having had my own premmie journey and gone on to work with Bliss supporting hundreds of women going through the same, I can assure you that kind of messaging is not harmless. What you are describing is searching for hope and that is a normal reaction when facing a scary situation. But the most important thing we were told when supporting parents was to be honest. They've done a lot of work with parents and the most common thing they were told by parents was the lack of real information made things harder. Why was my 24 weeker not thriving, why did mine go on to have a long term chronic disability. The expectation that things would be fine, made that much harder to deal with. Of babies born before 26 weeks, only 20% go on to have no problems. 46% have moderate to severe disability, and 34% have a mild disability. A third have multiple conditions. Only 20% "thrive" but more recent research has also found that within that group, 78% had at least one condition that manifested in adolescence or early adulthood, such as anxiety, depression, ASD (compared with 37% in the general population). The other effect is on parents of babies born earlier than 24 weeks. If babies survive and thrive at 24 weeks, then doctors should intervene with my 22 or 23 weeker, but we know it isn't that cut and dry.
Notwithstanding the above, survival aside, the psychological impact of late termination is hard. I previously lost a pregnancy at 20 weeks and had to go through the labour only to give birth to essentially a dead "baby". It isn't an easy option physically or mentally and certainly made me think twice about very late termination for non medical reasons and I'm entitled to my opinion on this.
I'm sorry you had to go through that, but surely that should indicate to you that nobody takes a 24 week non medical abortion lightly and in fact, the number of those is so low it is pretty much statistically negligible. The number of abortions after 20 weeks is 1% of all abortions. Those at or after 24 weeks is 0.1%. This would indicate that it is only done in extremis and therefore the option should be available for those situations where it is required. The alternative is to force a woman to carry an unwanted baby to term and deliver. I'd suggest that could have an equally severe physical and mental impact. Let's say a woman has a child, is pregnant with another and discovers at 22 weeks she has cancer. If she puts off treatment she will die within the year. These are the kind of scenarios the law allows for and should remain in place for that reason.