No foetal pain before 24 weeks so OK to abort....?

[StableButDeluded]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/10403496.stm

I'm a bit about this. Just because they supposedly can't feel pain still doesn't necessarily make it OK. It just doesn't sit right with me that doctors can be aborting a baby of 24 weeks in one part of a hospital and saving the life of another baby that was born at 24 weeks in another.

I still think that with all the medical advances that now enable premature babies of this age to survive, the abortion time limit should be lowered, apart from in exceptional circumstances. Pain or no pain.

2shoes Good point. I got a positive result for DS on the triple test but we decided against amnio as we personally would not have aborted for DS. There is a lovely boy with DS in my kids school so I have seen that it is not always doom and gloom. After going through losses at 20 and 23 weeks we knew we could not go through late termination unless it was severe/fatal.

BUT I would not judge someone who chooses to terminate for non fatal diagnosis. DS can come with severe heart defects etc. Some parents already have a child with DS and could not cope with another but it doesn't mean that they don't love or value their first child. Same with spina bifida etc as it can be very serious and probably heartbreaking watching a child suffer. Nature itself miscarries the vast majority babies with severe illnesses so is it so wrong for a couple to choose to end a pregnancy when faced with terrible diagnosis.

Myths?! Myths??!!!! Abortion is what it is, termination of pregnancy.
With so many contraception choices available to all in developing world, there really are no excuses for having late term termination apart from medical reasons.
Vast majority of women know know that they're pregnant by 3rd month and can make the decision to abort.
I do not support a 'choice' to terminate late in pregnancy because the pregnancy has suddenly become inconvenient.
Try to grasp the gravity of the 'choice' you are on about.

very few abortions are carried out at this late stage in the UK.

You can google the stats really easily.

Most late term abortions are done because of severe abnormality to the foetus.

What about the minority of women who don't know they are pregnant until later?
The ones who, say had a mirena coil which failed.

That would be me, I had no idea I was pregnant, none at all until later. I made the decision not to keep it, I was made to wait 4, yes 4 weeks for an abortion and travel hundreds of miles to get it.
Yes it was late, just under the cut off point, it could have been 4 weeks earlier.

Late abortions are extremely hard to come by unless you can pay, and even then I doubt it's easy.
Not many clinics do them and only one in the Country does on the NHS, so when people say they are aborting healthy babies in one part of the hospital and saving them in another it's bollocks.
That does not happen, as the place I speak of is a BPAS clinic.

or if you're too lazy to search:

72% of NHS funded abortions were performed under 10 weeks (2008)

Abortions where gestation has
exceeded its twenty-fourth week
account for less than 0.1% of the total.
There were 124 such abortions in 2008.

here

Has there been some recent campaign on mumsnet to make women who are going through the difficult decision of abortion feel like shit?

Certainly seems like it lately.

Unless I am very wrong, you would find it very difficult to get any doctor to agree to a late termination simply because you had changed your mind about having the baby.

Rollmops you do seem to have a very low opinion of women.........

So you would make a 14 year old carry a pregnancy to term even though she didn't realise she was pregnant until she was 21 weeks?

I'm sorry, I think that's dreadful

oh and I find the anti-abortionist idea that abortion is wrong, oh apart from when it's the result of rape, really weird. If people are going to be pro-life then they should at least be consistant if they want to be taken seriously. Either you're pro-life or you're not FFS.

Dueling Fanjo can I add to your list and say I actually really dislike the term 'pro-life'. I know it is the accepted way of describing things, but what am I, anti-life?

mugglewump I had an abortion at 13 weeks when I was 19. The reason it was so late was because my doctor would not agree to it on grounds of morality. Therefore I had to wait a further 4 weeks to have a TOP with BPAS.

Thank goodness for BPAS!

And butt out all those who seem to think their morality is of greater importance than the mother who has to make the decision.

My GP was fantastic, but she'd never dealt with late termination before so didn't know where I'd have to go, or what would happen. She referred me immediately but I had to go to BPAS here (Glasgow), then they sent me for a scan, than I had to go back to them for my appointment in London and that took 4 weeks.
I had to take DD to one of the appointments though the Doctor was lovely and didn't mention any dodgy repeatable words and it went over DD's head, but anyone who thinks it's done lightly, or easy to get is very, very wrong.
Oh and BPAS in London were horrible. I wasn't treated nicely or sensitively at all.

Still, I have no regrets, it was the right thing to do.

I think it is right that it should be longer with serious abnormalities. It sometimes it only discovered at later scans that the baby has brain/other serious problems. It would be awful to deny such parents the choice of termination rather than give birth to a very ill baby who would possibly die anywy.

the limit should be the same for disabled babies and nt ones(how you know which is which I don't know )

Would you really want to force someone to carry a baby to term after a diagnosis of severe abnormalities? I know a lady who had a termination at 36 weeks. Her baby had a severe brain problem and wouldn't have survived. I have no idea how she came to that decision but I am sure it wasn't taken lightly at that gestation.

In some cases going to term endangers the mothers life (hydrops fetalis etc) aswell as having a hopeless prognosis for the baby.

I don't think they will ever take away the higher limit for babies with serious abnormalities.

so they don't do late abortions for DS?

"How you know which is which I don't know" are you serious, 2shoes? Are you really arguing this point when you aren't even aware that most disabilities, especially those incompatible with life, are detectable in the womb? Or are you arguing about intellectual disabilities, which is why you're contrasting with NT kids? In which case, frankly you're having a different argument to the rest of us.

Late abortions are almost exclusively done where there are serious abnormalities detectable in the foetus. Usually, as many have said, they aren't picked up until the 20 week scan and often much later, and that's why they're late term. Many of those abnormalities are incompatible with life. We're not talking about a foetus with a possibility of being on the autism spectrum, here, FFS.

DuelingFanjo, thank you, I'm glad someone else mentioned the hypocrisy of the "rape exception". If there was ever a clear indicator that the antichoice lobby were about punishing women, there it is. If you're pregnant and it's your fault, have a baby. If it's not your fault, have an abortion. They claim to be worried about the foetus, but all the focus is on the cause of the pregnancy.

Re "how do they KNOW babies younger than 23 weeks don't feel pain" - the neurons aren't connected up yet. There is no connection between any part of the foetus and the brain or within the brain to create any circuit that could lead to any sensation, let alone enough connections to enable any interpretation of a signal as 'pain'

It's like giving you a battery, a light bulb, and a couple pieces of loose wire and saying "how do you know there's no light" - it just isn't possible!

One of those 2008 after-24-week abortions would have been by my SIL. The foetus had total anencephaly, ie no head. There is no way it would have survived after birth. Without that legal exemption she would have had to endure another 3 months of pregnancy, labour, only to have the baby die. What would anyone have gained from that?

notcitrus, I had two babies at 23 weeks and they were able to experience pain. they underwent numerous invasive procedures and although they were intubated and couldn't cry, you could see them pull away and see the pain on their faces.

I wasn't able to have my 20 week scan with this pregnancy until I was 23+3 as my hospital couldn't fit me in until then . If we had had the news of a serious medical problem, there is no way we would have been able to process everything rationally and emotionally in time for a cut-off of 24 weeks. But we may have been faced with news where we would have chosen to terminate (I like to think I would never do it, but am not foolish enough to believe that I would definitely think the same if I was ever in such a situation). Thank goodness the option of an abortion later than that, however hideous, would have been open to us if we had needed it, rather than being told "sorry, because we were so late giving you the scan you have no choice now but to continue with your pregnancy".

I am fervently pro-choice. I do truly think that a woman has more rights than the foetus she is carrying. The woman is more developed emotionally and physically than the foetus she carries, and I don't think any research in the world can claim otherwise. So I just cannot bring myself to ever be a 'pro-lifer' as that seems to be about putting the rights of the foetus above the mother (and don't get me started on the ridiculousness of the 'except in rape' situations). It would be wonderful to live in a world where the wishes of the pregnant woman were always compatible with that of the foetus she is carrying being given the chance to live, and hence there were no abortions. But we don't live in a perfect world. Until we do, then I will always support the right of a woman to have an abortion under any circumstance that she deems appropriate, not what some other person, or society, deems appropriate.

tortoiseonthehalfshell no need to be so rude.
I am talking about disabilities like DS.
I do know that a lot of disabilities cannot be picked up(or like Cp are mainly caused at birth)

'so they don't do late abortions for DS? '

I would guess that if they do then they are very small in number. Of all the people I know of who have terminated for DS, all were before 24 weeks. If an amnio is done it is usually after the blood tests at 16 weeks or after the 20 week scan but as discussed above this is sometimes offered late.

In all honesty, though, individual families know what they can cope with. Are all these pro-lifers who are against termination for abnormality adament that women should go ahead with severely disabled babies going to offer to help with the care of them? Or are they speaking about something they have never had the horror of facing and will never lift a finger to help those who have severely ill children. Do they only care until the baby is born?

Also, if a parent goes ahead with a very ill baby they will often face a simelar choice of whether to use/withdraw life support or not. The choice of should the baby be allowed to live/die will come up again for some of these poor parents. Is it wrong to not offer or wothdraw life support if the baby has no chance of a normal/fair life? Should we pursue life at any cost?

well.... here we go. I had an Amnio yesterday. I am waiting for the results which will be in within 3 days. If the baby has Downs Syndrome my DH and I have decided together that we will terminate the pregnancy. That is a choice which is open to us and which we have made based upon serious thought about our own personal circumstances and our own ability or desire to leave an adult with Downs Syndrome into the world.

One of the best pieces of advice I got from a very close friend was to not allow other people to sway my own judgement of a very personal situation and to not give a s**t about other people judging me.

Obviously I would not wish to go through a termination but it is something I will do because of a variety of reasons which take into consideration my needs and the future needs of any child I have.

I had an abortion when I was 26 (at 8 weeks) after a double contraceptive failure. I have never regretted that abortion even when I had troubles trying to conceive later in life. There is no connection.

People can judge away all they like but as far as I am concerned the decision to terminate a pregnancy is a personal one, just as the decision not to terminate for something like Downs syndrom is for other people. I would never ever judge anyone who decided to continue a pregnancy where they know a child will have a disability and I refuse to live my life being effected by judgemental people who think I should live my life according to what they would do or what they think is best. Sod that!