Did you see the article about babies photographed in the womb from 12 weeks?

[lisalisa]

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Northerner, what about when it's possible to take a five-week foetus to term?

Donnie, I think I am saying that a woman's life, a real lived life in action, has more importance and validity for me than the potential life of a foetus. And I fully realise that this view is both incomprehensible and abhorrent to you. But in fact my own experience of accidental pregnancy only strengthened that view. I could see, suddenly, my life taking a completely different and terrifying route. I chose to go down it; but I was a well-off woman in her late 30s who did want a baby really. Very slightly changed circumstances would have led to a different decision. And no, I do not personally think that view is at odds, or makes me feel guilty about, my darling precious daughter whom these days I love and prize above my own life.

MI I dont understamd your question - do you mean when it's possible to take a 5 week feotus to term OUTSIDE of the womb?

Yep, sorry, that's what I meant.

Yes Donnie, I do think a real human being's life is more important than the potential life of a foetus/unborn baby, actually. How can it be otherwise? Once upon a time the Catholic church used to advise husbands to let their wives die in childbirth if it came down to a choice between mother and baby. I think that's evil.
While we are debating this, there are real women out there grappling with what are sometimes very painful, gut-wrenching decisions. Some of them may even be reading or posting on this site. So it behoves us to be careful and not say anything which criticises the decision another member has or would make for herself.

Oh I see. Well that would put a whole different spin on things. Women who didn't want to proceed with their pregnancy could donate the unwanted feotus to a childless couple, and it could 'develop' in a lab somewhere. Don't ever see this being scientifically possible though do you?

I agree with you eddm. My first thought when they were saying it would change the abortion law, I thought why? havent we always known this. Why do these pictures make a difference.

I had a a feeling this thread would raise these issues

I'm sorry I haven't read all of it but eddm's last paragraph sums up precisely what I wanted to saywhen I saw the front page of the paper carrying this story.

Women facing this agonisinig decision really don't need more pressure, particularly for the sake of sellng newspapers

hear hear suzy. termination was certainly an option for me when I thought my 2nd child had a high risk of Edwards syndrome. even without these v high resolution pictures that decision would have been a difficult one for me, albeit the right one (and because of testing 'windows' would have been almost halfway through my pregnancy, so would have meant labour too)

So does that mean that we should never publicise newly discovered information on feotuses for fear of pressurising women? I think not. Don't we want to arm ourselves with all of the facts in order to make an informed decision and understand the true consequences of our actions?

I read an article where a woman aborted her 22 week feotus/baby girl who had downs and a severe heart defect. She was given a pill to bring on labour and gave birth to a very small but perfectly formed baby girl, who was breathing and her heart was beating for 20 minutes. The parents were totally unprepared for this and it has destroyed them. The report said that many babies are born breathing after late abortions.

No it doesn't mean we shouldn't be informed of new research, but 'Walking in the Womb' is, IMO, sensationalising a sensitive and emotive issue.
But then that will get the daily Mexpress more readers won't it?

sure, information should be published. i just feel surprised that people need a picture of a foetus to bring home to them what a termination actually is. i suppose i'm someone who's given this a lot of thought because of personal circumstances. btw saw a shocking bit of Trisha (!) this morning where a mother took her 13 yr old pregnant daughter for what she (the daughter) thought was a scan and was in fact a termination appointment. she ran off & had the baby (not that she's a good mother now, or anything). talk about informed consent,...

OMG yes bundle, that was very scary (as was the £200 the mother gave the daughter for her 14th birthday when the daughter had a track record of selling her clothes at school to make money for alcohol)

I don't get to see it often, but waited for traffic chaos to die down before left for work this morning suzy. and the mum/grandma was 33???!!!! she looked older than my mum (60)

It was a corker of an episode and no mistake

Anyway, sorry to hijack this thread.

Northerner, you say that you don't see it ever being scientifically possible to develop a 5 week foetus outside of the womb yet it was not that long ago that it wasn't scientifically possible for a baby born at 24 weeks to survive. It's not that long ago that it was not scientifically possible to grow a foetus outside of the womb and successfully implant it in the mother but that happens regularly now.

This is the point I wanted to make - you can not predict where science will find its limit

I seem to remember some scientists (possibly japanese) trying to create an artificial womb for sheep embryos.

(soupy you should have seen her, she was)

Good point soupy. But my point is, that if a five week feotus can be developed out of the womb then surely this could aleviate the issue as the feotus would not have to be destroyed but could be donated to a childless couple. And for the mother, having a feotus removed at 5 weeks would be far less traumatic than todays procedures.

You mean donated and implanted in the childless woman?
Well that would make a lot of sense and be good in an ideal world, but I fear that few women can come to the decision over donating/ending their pregnancies in such a short space of time (5 weeks)

Oh, I agree entirely, Northerner, and what you are saying ties in with another thread (I think) about how babies surviving late abortions were left to die. I was only responding to the point about lowering the limit because of how young a baby can be and still survive.

eddm:" do we really want to go back to the days of back street abortionists who kill women and leave babies horribly deformed? Or the days when women were victims of their own biology, 'barefoot and pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink'. " - do you really think this is what would happen if the the limit on abortion was dropped? I think we have come a bit further than that.

"As for reducing the limit, what's the point of 20 week scans if you can't take action as a result?"
I didn't think the purpose of the scan was to make the decision on weather the baby should be terminated or not. I thought the scan was to check for anomolies and treat/prevent/cure/prepare what they could. Of course there are a number of tragic cases and I don't think anyone is debating the need to have termination's as an option in these cases.

I do think though there is a point where a fetus becomes a baby. To take it to extremes - a 40 wk gestation is obviously a baby, at the point of ceonception it's definitely not a baby. Abortions should be easily come by after this point - but how to define this point? These pictures seem to illustrate that this point is earlier than first imagined.

Soupy - good point. When 5 wk old fetus's can a survive outside the womb, it wouldn't be far off a time when egg's could be fertilised and gestated entirely outside the womb - scary thought I think. Who controls the ethics in that situation?

The whole abortion procedure needs a damn good shake-up. You are "supposed" to get 2 doctors to agree that an abortion would be in your best interests and then you are "supposed" to have counselling. But the majority of women that have contacted me through the website, regretting their abortion, having been pressurised into the decision, all say that the counselling was inadequate and that at no point did anyone sit down and ask them, the woman, what they really wanted. Is this the pro-choice everyone keeps harping on about? These women don't get abortions for themselves, they do it because their boyfriend says so, or their parents tell them too, or both. They then have to live with that decision for the rest of their lives, finally telling someone like me about it. Abortion is carried out far too easily and checks are not thorough enough. IMO the medical profession don't even respect the woman's choice let alone respect the life of the unborn baby she is carrying. Until the medical service focuses on the individual and actually LISTENS to it's patients, then there will always be regretted terminations and distressed women.

Maybe some women are pressed into abortions; other women and especially girls are under pressure to have babies they don't want, from their families, from anti-abortion doctors who lie to them about their rights or harangue them (in clear contravention of medical ethics), from partners, from abusers, from emotive pictures in the Daily Mail designed to make them feel bad. Women and girls should be free to choose and their decision, whatever it is, should be respected. Sadly that's not usually the case. And I don't think the way these pictures have been presented does anything to help women in very difficult situations. It merely piles on the emotional blackmail.
As for 20 weeks, that's exactly what the scan is for; so that parents can make a decision about whether to continue with the pregnancy if the foetus is seriously affected. The scan was available before advances in medicine made it possible to save a very few very premature babies. Sadly many babies born extremely premature will either not survive or will only survive for a few hours/days/weeks with major intervention or will only survive with serious disability. It's not as easy as saying a baby born 16 weeks early will survive. The likelihood is they won't.

a close friend of mine is a paediatrician and she says babies born before 28 weeks almost certainly have profound developmental problems. Just cause they're breathing doesn't mean to say they're going to have a good quality of life.

Abortion maybe isn't fair on the foetus, but bringing an unwanted child into the world, who may suffer because mum can't cope is IMHO, even worse. If all those pro-life people spent more time supporting women who already have children and are suffering as a result, I might have a bit more respect for them.