Abortion statistics

[musica]

Just read that one in five pregnancies nationally end in abortion, and in London it is one in THREE! Surely this is not good!

This is the relevant story

Absolutly aloha! I know of many women, myself amongst them, who have had abortions and never for a second regretted it. Most of those have gone on to have other children. If you get pregnant and want to keep the child, well and good. But we should NEVER be forced into having unwanted children, that's just plain uncivilised!

Quite frankly if I got pregnant again, I would be tempted to have a termination. My experience of childbirth was so horrific that I would do anything to avoid it again.

M2T - your friend sounds quite seriously screwed up, TBH. And I have to say, I think, given her mental state and her drug use, it is probably a good thing that she isn't having children at the moment. I personally have always been rather repelled by the idea of actually having an abortion. However, I don't feel that other women should be forced into motherhood. It's not good for them and it's certainly not good for children. And perhaps the people least fitted to be responsible parents are those most likely to be habitually careless or reckless - not great qualities for parenthood. Obviously a happy accident is great - but some people do seem to live pretty disastrous, self-sabotaging and chaotic lives in which getting pregnant is just one of the consequences. Others are just a bit careless and potentially pay a very high price. IMO babies shouldn't be a 'punishment' for carelessness or a burden to bear, but instead be much wanted and loved additions to our lives.

of course its only a baby if its wanted.
i've had an abortion myself for reasons i don't want to go into and believe me I DID NOT think ofit as a baby.
If i did think of it as a baby I would not have gone ahead.
Obviously my orher pregnancys were babies to me from the start but I was dreaming of the babies they would become not what they actually were at that time.

Charlize - That is absurd!! I mean your comment about it only being a baby if you want it to be.

A 23 week foetus.... what is that. A bus is a bus.... a tree is a tree and a baby is a baby whether you want it or not!!! Just plain facts.

Aloha - Yes she is fuct up. She is a bit better now and desperately wants a baby though..... SCARY!

I DO think that abortion before 12 wks should be available..... its after that I find disturbing.

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Agree Twinkie - I find that very worrying.... and definitely denial! Another poster said the same further down the thread. Very bizarre.

Agree that the idea of a babty only being a baby if it's wanted is scary. Also found the use of the term "it's" in that line.

I do feel that abortion should be a readily available option for all women, also feel that after 12 weeks this option should be taken away, unless there are real medical grounds for not continuing with the pregnancy.

I can remember my gp telling me that all I would have to do was say that I didn't think that I'd be able to cope with having a baby and it would be grounds for an abortion a very sad world when that's all it would take to end the life of a baby.

That is sad Jenie, BUT isn't the parent going on to have that child and mistreating it/neglecting it that much sadder ?

I had a termination at 8 weeks gest when I was 17, it was of the medical variety - non surgical, they give you a massive pill to induce labour/miscarriage horrible, painful and shocking. I personally would rather have gone 'under the knife' as at least I wouldn't have had to see that 'sac' pass in a rush of painful heartbreaking blood. That, however, is beside the point. I personally would NEVER go ahead with a termination again, as it destroyed my life for the best part of 2 years. Though I am pro-choice.

Agree that terminations beyond 12wks should be strictly regulated, although goodness knows what I would've done if I had've discovered that I was pregnant at 12 weeks in ? That 'choice' would have been taken away from me....

Or for the woman to experience 40 weeks of pregnancy, carrying that (unwanted) child to term (developing her feelings of guilt, self loathing and doubt with every passing week), delivering it and then handing it over to a bewildering care system ? None of the 'options' are pretty.

I'm interested in why people are using the 12 week cutoff? Why 12? (I'm not having a go - I genuinely find it difficult for myself to rationalise a cut off point) I can understand 9 weeks (after that you need a surgical abortion). 14 weeks is the "official" start of the second trimester isn't it or have I got confused? Is it just that dating scans are usually done at 12 weeks so it feels more of a person then?

I have been told that it's possible to have 'medical' terminations as late as 20 weeks, now, induced entirely with pessaries. It's a bit like giving birth.

At 12 weeks it looks like a baby, but to me it's not a baby, yet. Still a fetus. I make a distinction, too.

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"None of the 'options' are pretty."

I agree, WSM. That's why I think this issue is so hard, and I am very wary of any statement which implies that these sorts of situations are completely black or white.

I found the morning after pill traumatic enough (with the changes in hormones, felt really ill, plus guilt even though chances were there wasn't even an embryo). I think we do people a disservice by implying that abortion is EVER an "easy" decision or an "easy" experience to go through, no matter how much bluff, bravado and plain stupidity people might present after the fact.

hugs WSM.

Iam saddened and rather upset by your attitude towards me Twinkie and mt2. Obviously I did not put my point of view across very well.
To make it clear I do not think of an embryo as a baby at all. And I did not imagine a baby growing in the pregnancy I terminated. What is so difficult to understand?

NO WAY Twinkie ! Some teenagers may be getting pregnant as a result of a lack of sex ed but those I know who have had terminations in their teenage years (not many), are educated middle class girls who DID use a form of contraception but it failed (like myself). Nobody I know would consider abortion to be a form of contraception, there may be girls/women who do but I honestly think that they are the minority.

P.S. Is the pessary a new thing ? Mine was via an oral pill.

Mt2 Why do you think Iam in denial??
Please do not physco analyse me, you know nothing about my circumstance and I do not have to explain myself to you.

Charlize - I understood perfectly..... doesn't make it any less worrying!

hugs back G {{{}}} We must get together again soon (and revive the meet-up thread )

So much for promising myself (and DH) I wouldn't get involved in this (totally unconstructive)thread.

Twinkie I think you reread your message to me.
It is incredibly insentive of you to tell me that the baby I aborted was a little human beingand try to make me seem guilty of something. Woyld you say the same to your sister?
I hope not. So why say it to me.

Mt2, you understood what perfectly??

Charlize - I never said you were in denial and I certainly didn't want you to explain yourself!!!

I just think that the statement " A baby is only real baby if its wanted" Is shocking!! Does that apply after the birth too? Where is the cutoff point where this sort of rationale is no longer appropriate?

And before you say it.... you really don't have to justify anything to me or anyone else but yourself, but this is a discussion forum.

I wasn't trying to psycho-analyse you!

WSM - You're right, there is no solution or clearcut situations.

Back to the origin of this thread - I find it all so sad that the statistics are so high.

LOL, yes WSM. We need to get some good "walking into town" weather too, or suss out the busses or something.

M2T: for what it's worth, I agree with you that what you feel about whether it's a baby or not doesn't make any difference to whether it is or not, but I think you have charlize's meaning the wrong way around. Us feeling our wanted baby is a baby after only a few weeks of knowing we're pregnant is a very human emotion, but it doesn't make it accurate. It's not a baby at that point.

What I can't put my finger on (and I don't think anyone can really) is at what point it becomes a baby, because life is a series of gradual changes not defined steps (we just use defined steps for our own brain's convenience to "pigeonhole" things to understand them better). For me, I'm leaning towards the old tradition of the "quickening of the womb" being the point where soul/being is imparted (for the sake of my own mental convenience) - around 16 weeks depending on the baby. It's not really logical - as there's movement before then, you just can't feel it.

Finally thought of one friend who put off trying for a baby (only for about 2 years) 'for her career'. Maybe I don't move in the right circles (I mean, we only tend to have Masters degrees and PhDs, but we don't tend to be massive earners)... is it really that common? Most of my friends don't have children until our 30s-40s because we didn't find the right partner until then, no other reason. TBH, most of my friends who had children much younger, it tended to be very unplanned.

Mine in my 30s were unplanned, too, but luckily with the right fellow, or maybe I wouldn't have been taking chances I did.