Termination of pregnancies - too willing to terminate, maybe there are other choices?

[Ilovepastafortea]

I have trouble with the issue of terminating pregnancies.

For context I had 5 miscarriages & 1 baby born 'sleeping' at 29 weeks.

Also 2 of my (3) husbands were adopted-well DH's mother was adopted in the 1920's. The point is if abortion was available in 1963 & 1926 neither of them would have existed. Their childless mothers wouldn't have had babies to love & care for.

If my first husband had been aborted my lovely son wouldn't exist. He killed himself at the age of 32 leaving me with a baby. But at least I had my baby which was part of him.

If my DH's mother had been aborted my 3 lovely step children & 7 gorgeous grandchildren wouldn't be here. Both of my step sons served in the Royal Navy - one in special forces & got his Green (Marine) beret. My Step daughter is a nurse & worked in A&E for many years, is now a Matron. She has saved many lives & made a difference to many other people's lives including taking unpaid leave to be there when her grandmother was dying.

But then I understand why some people do it.

I can particularly understand it if the woman has been abused or raped - who would want to bring their abuser's or rapist's child into the world. I get that.

I just wish that they would think about having their unwanted baby adopted so that someone who can't have a baby can love & care for it.

My heart goes out to those with an unwanted pregnancy & facing this.

I don't know what I'd do to be honest.

I have no doubt that most women terminate a pregnancy after much heart searching & grief. However, I also hear about women who are terminating their 3rd or more pregnancies & using it as a method of birth control.

So brings me around to AIBU to ask if people terminate a pregnancy number 3 or 4 are being unreasonable?

Or not.

Just canvassing opinions.

I agree. Pressuring women to give birth to babies in order to hand them over to an adoption market is vile.

Women are human beings, not incubators and fertile women are certainly not incubators for infertile women. Obviously infertility is awful for someone who badly wants a baby but someone else deciding to have an abortion has nothing to do with that.

I firmly agree with as early as possible, as late as necessary.

Have you forgotten the physical and mental impact of pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum? I am 5 months pp so it has been 14 months since I found out I was pregnant with a much wanted baby. I had a low risk pregnancy, some last minute minor complications resulting in c-section, and a very positive speedy recovery, yet I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. My organs have been rearranged and are putting themselves back together. It was over two months before I felt able to bend over to pick up anything because of the back ache. The mental impact of hormone fluctuations made me unrecognisable to myself and incapable of any rational thought or conversation. My hair is falling out in clumps, I went through sickness and pelvic pain and the list really does go on…and this is all for a low risk, uncomplicated pregnancy and postpartum recovery. It takes two years to recover from pregnancy and birth, at which point there may well be lasting, irreversible negative changes to physical or mental health. The idea that women should go through this unwillingly to then give a baby up for adoption into a care system which is underfunded and failing, especially knowing the negative impact of separating a baby from the woman who carried and birthed them? Madness.

While I completely understand why your personal struggles might make you sensitive to the notion of someone terminating a pregnancy, other women's choices are theirs and your opinion, with respect, means nothing to them.

THEIR personal struggles lead to their choices and it is nobody else's business.

Thank God the UK government isn't trying to railroad our reproductive rights in the way Trump has in the US.

Anyone planning on voting Reform needs to take a look at Farage's recent comments on the issue, though 👀

It's not a baby, it's a fetus. Most women have abortions at 7 weeks, (shortly after they find out) when the fetus is the size of a grape and doesn't resemble a human being in the slightest, just a rudimentary arrangement of cells you wouldn't be able to distinguish from any other mammalian fetus.

And women DO NOT use abortions as a method of contraception!

Also I'm fairly sure there are more children in care than fosterers so I wouldn't concern yourself with supply and demand of unwanted babies.

If you ‘have trouble’, OP, feel free not to have an abortion. Let other women enjoy the full bodily autonomy you woukd like to have yourself.

This is a really awful thing for adoptees to read… it’s not madness. For some people it’s about their wish not to destroy life/potential life and there are many post partum women who would go through it all again (hence why people have more than one child) and many adoptees who are incredibly happy in their adopted families

The mental and physical toll of having a baby is enormous. Let alone to give that baby up at the end.

I endured both pregnancy and childbirth to get my DC at the end of it. There is not a chance in hell I’d do that again instead of having an abortion.

I’m not playing fast and loose with contraception either but accidents DO happen.

Thank god women in this country have the option to choose.

And FYI it’s not a baby until it’s born, don’t use emotive language in an attempt to build your case.

I think ‘my body my choice’ can apply this way round too

I'm baffled anyone who supposedly is thinking of the child could think bringing them into the world when they are not wanted is a good choice for them 😐

If abortion was legal in 1985 I wouldn’t have been born. So what? I still fully support women’s right to an abortion, if they choose to have one (or 5). You don’t get to speak for me (or your husbands really).

I can’t afford a child. If my contraception failed I would terminate, not because I don’t want a child but because I don’t have the money to raise one

yes I could go through the whole pregnancy but imagine how hard that would be explaining to neighbours, work colleagues let alone having to give a baby up at the end and spend the rest of your life worrying if they’re ok

I'm sorry for your losses, that sounds very hard.

As it goes, I'm the product of a failed abortion attempt. My mum was pregnant in 1967. My sisters are considerably older than me and a few years ago told me about how they'd had to drag my pregnant mother out of the bath where she was trying to kill both herself and me. She was married. Nice house. Good job. Thing is, her and my dad couldn't stand the sight of each other. He wasn't a great guy. She'd ended up married to him because she got pregnant after WW2 and back in those days that would've made you an outcast. She was literally just about to be able to escape her miserable life when she fell for me. That must've been crushing for her, and certainly explains why I grew up thinking she hated me (because she did and blamed me for everything).

^^ That's what it looks like when 'adoption' is the answer. Despite being a committed Catholic, she was very much in favour of a woman's right to choose.

It’s not emotive language. It’s a choice based on how you perceive it and when you think life begins. Plenty of women talk about ‘their baby’ before it’s born and plenty of women talk about ‘losing a baby’ - no one talks about a foetus except people who don’t want to have an emotional connection to what is happening when a termination occurs

Sure, but everyone involved in adoption knows it comes out of loss. It may absolutely be the best available outcome for the child in the circumstances, but at best, an adopted child has lost its birth parents, and often at least one other set of carers. That’s not nothing.

Womens body, womans choice. Foetus not baby.

But, MN does seem very keen to suggest abortion in any circumstances outside the conventional family unit and I do think it shouldn't be taken quite that lightly.

I strongly believe that the trauma of a baby being separated at birth, or soon after, from it's mother is a trauma that can never be fully overcome. The body holds that trauma. This is reflected in the higher risk of suicidality for adoptees.
Your child has lost their father to suicide, surely you understand the impact of this.

Children should absolutely be adopted when they are at risk and need safeguarding, but bringing a child into the world knowing, as a mother, that you are going to put them through infant trauma of separation isn't preferable to terminating a pregnancy. It's cruel and unnecessary.

I find your train of thought really alarming.

It doesn’t matter what people call it. People also call it ‘peanut’, and all sorts of things. Biologically, it’s a foetus, and it becomes a baby when it is born.

And most of thses forced birthers in the US don't care about the baby once it's born. They don't believe in subsidised healthcare, childcare for minimum waged mothers, food stamps etc. Those poor unwanted children are often forced into grinding poverty. But somehow these activists ignore the charity part of the bible.

I agree with you OP, however you will not get a reasonable discussion about this on AIBU.

If my grandmother's first husband hadn't been killed in the war, I wouldn't be here, not would my DC. There really is no point in all the ifs. Life is what it is

Firstly your ex killed himself at 32, suicide rates among adoptees are hugely high, my dad was adopted, it can cause so much harm. Generations later for that matter.

You think his birth mum would be glad she had him to have him live so much trauma? Not to mention the trauma of him out in the world

A pregnancy isn't a baby, especially not when it's early. Women are people who already exist and we have the right not to continue with a pregnancy, birth a baby and raise a baby if we don't want to. The rights of existing adult women trump those of theoretical unborn people every day of the week.

How is this not a reasonable discussion? Who is being unreasonable? Surely you don’t think that people who are replying to the OP, giving their views on the matter, are being unreasonable just because they don’t agree with the OP?

This is wishy-washy, overly sentimental rubbish.

You can't over ride science.

A foetus is closer to sperm than a baby at the time of the average termination.