If the Tories win, Cameron will support plans to reduce the upper abortion limit

[policywonk]

yikes

oh lulu I know a lot about birth injury....

I will give conpassion when people give it back, these threads are always the same, genuine posters post balanced sensible stuff, and the few come on to let people know how worthless a disabled baby is in their veiw. I make no apologies for getting angry by that.

I don't judge as I know people in rl who don't cope,but I also know more who do and whose lives are just as good as the ones who choose only to live in the nt world. I think people forget that sometimes

in answer to LuluMaman on Wed 15-Jul-09 22:16:33

residential care doesn't involve giving up your child. It is usually used when a child needs 24 hours care. No-one can provide that - you need people who can go home at the end of a shift and get some sleep.

It is also used when there is no suitable education locally. We are very, very lucky with ds1 in that there is a suitable school locally, that can handle him. If there wasn't we would have no choice but to send him to resi - for his sake as much as ours- he needs an education.

'some put in institutions I'd guess."

well they don't because they have closed.

Just a 'for instance' but if I had a baby that was anencephalic - had no forebrain - I would abort. Because that child would have no chance at all. If for some reason that condition had not been picked up until late in pregnancy - say, the mother thought she was menopausal, then I think late termination would be essential (an essential choice for the mother to have).

It would be impossible to draw up a law that listed all conditions and all circumstances that would make a late termination valid - in whose eyes, anyway? So the best we can do is say, this is a matter for the woman concerned to decide, with the assistance of her doctors.

I know(yes know, not some made up fictional people) who although they lve their child cannot cope with the child extensive medical needs, they haven't put the child in an (institution(hard as they don't exsist) but found a middle ground, where they get the support they need.(oh and the disabilitie would not have shown up by tests)
institutions do not exst anymore(sn schools won't soon)

absolutely agree with 2shoes et al.

I was offered to have the pregnancy with ds terminated right up to the end of the pregnancy. Ludicrous.

I agree edam although I think doctors are dreadful when it comes to understanding anything about LD's. Truly awful.

No problem with a woman deciding with her doctors, but just give equal protection (or lack of) to apparently non-disabled babies. In other words treat the disabled life as equal to the apparently non disabled life (and I do keep using apparently non-disabled on purpose because of my experience of my 'perfect' baby). Least problematic way to do this is certainly to raise the limit to birth for any fetus.

i thaought the reason the 2 times were different was cos the clever doctors of old decided that disabeld babies couldn't feel pain, has that changed?

Well Julia Hollander has written a book on that Leningrad . If you dump your child in hospital then SS will step in and foster care will be found (In JH's case extremely good foster care).

Some people just leave their newborn baby in hospital and walk away. Friend of mine is a neonatal nurse who ends up caring for babies in this situation. Terribly sad.

Then you have that mad woman who wrote a book all about how she couldn't cope with her disabled baby which was all horrifyingly 'me, me, me' - Julia thingummy? She found a foster mother, I think.

"Has anyone ever asked those 2,874 women why they choose to terminate after 20 weeks?"

onager, I didn't know until 19 weeks. I had a Mirena coil, hadn't put on weight, and having no periods is a common side affect of Mirena, one I was told about when I had it put in.
I went from having a flat stomach, to showing, literally overnight as soon as I found out, and had to hide it for 4 weeks. I used to keep a big coat in the living room to put on to answer the door and I only went out if I had to.
I'd even wait until it was dark to go to the corner shop.

What made it hard, wasn't the choice I made, I always knew that was right, but the lack of support. My best friend disowned me, my boyfriend was 5 hours away and worked full time and I didn't dare tell anyone else.

I had to go to London alone, have two GA's in two days, leave the clinic an hour after the second one and sit in Victoria station bleeding heavily and in pain for 11 hours, before catching an overnight bus home.
My BF had to stay here with DD who was 5 at the time.

There is no support at all that I could find, people are just disgusted by you.

Most of what is spouted online (not really here mostly, I will say, I would have come here for support had I known about it at the time) is utter rubbish, and never thinks about how the woman must feel, and I feel lucky in some ways as I'm not particularly vulnerable.

The woman I met in the clinic covered in cigarette burns, and the 18 year old receiving nasty phone calls from her parents, they were.

We incidentally have a very good care package for ds1 from SS. We also have a very good SLD school on our doorstep. With this sort of support it is very easy to have ds1 live with us. It doesn't come cheap, but ds1 has a very good quality of life (equal to mine/his brother's).

It often comes down to money, but with enough money put in to support families life can be good.

LeninGrad because it points out that all the testing in the world doesn't mean you will have a nt baby. people like DP make sweeping statements on these threads, they need to be addressed imo.

edam - no JH didn't find a foster carer. She just left (how brave) - SS found the extremely excellent foster carer.

She does still have contact and I am beginning to think I have been to harsh on her, it was just the 'look at how brave I am' stuff that grrrr grated.

saintlydamemrsturnip get it right she abandoned her baby in hospital and then went on to write a book about it,lovely woman...

Would agree with you about ending the time limit entirely, whether the baby is disabled or not, saintly.

And that doctors do not necessarily know much about learning disabilities. I don't know how an obstetrician can predict what life will be like for a baby with DS, let alone any more complex disabilities - the range is so huge and obstetricians probably don't have a whole lot to do with children and adults with disabilities day in, day out.

Certainly doctors and nurses are as likely as anyone else to be ill-informed and even prejudiced against people with learning disabilities. My sister's an LD nurse and could tell stories all day long about the insensitive attitudes her patients come up against inside hospitals.

raise the limit untill birth for both.

Oh yes, I knew there was a reason I disliked JH...

Yup, I'd sign up to that, 2shoes.