People who are anti abortion from conception, how do you feel about IVF?

[KennDodd]

Watching Newsnight and the anti abortion debate in America. Person saying life begins at conception and deserves protection. Well what does that mean for IVF? If life begins at conception and deserves protection, then does that include protection for life before implantation in the womb? If not, why not?

Interested to hear pro lifers view on this.

Yes, there are people who believe you should be able to abort up to birth.

Such a strawman. At later stages of pregnancy it is usually an induced labor and it is not delivering healthy fetuses (often not even living ones). I have a friend who had an abortion at 35 weeks as the fetus was dying in utero - it had no hope of survival for even a few more days in utero - and she and her husband wanted to spend a few minutes with their much wanted first baby. They made the decision to induce labor, a decision made along with their doctor, in hopes they would have some time with her baby and she would not have to deliver a stillbirth (and by then an already decomposing body) a week or two later. She had an induced labor, and they had an hour or so with their baby girl before she died. They cherish the time they got to hold their baby, as brief as it was.

I live in Canada where there are no legal restrictions on the stage of pregnancy you can get abortion (you actually can get one up to day of birth) and there is not a glut of people aborting healthy fetuses a day before their due date. In Canada, only 0.66% of abortions are at 21+ weeks (2017 numbers per Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada). Because even without a law against it, there are professional guidelines. Physicians in Canada won’t terminate a pregnancy over 24 weeks without serious indications that the life of the mother is at risk or that the fetus has very serious malformations.

The 'as late as necessary' bit I really struggle to get my head around as a stance.

There are absolutely no situations where a late term abortion is ever medically necessary. Zero. Yes, there are times when the pregnancy needs to be ended for the woman's health, and times when a woman may no longer wish to be pregnant. But abortion is a process that takes time, so in the case of an emergency, abortion is never selected over just delivering the baby. That means that for any late term abortion, the outcome being sought is specifically that the baby is killed, not purely ending the pregnancy as the woman no longer wants to be pregnant.

The argument for early abortions about the woman's right to not be pregnant being more important that the foetus' right to life don't quite fit later on. The baby doesn't require her body for survival any more. It is capable of living independently of her (albeit needing support, but it doesn't have to be her), so I really struggle to understand how the woman's bodily autonomy comes into whether the baby gets to live. Sure, end the pregnancy - her body, her choice. She has removed her consent for another human to live inside her and they must come out.

So ending the pregnancy and abortion are not synonymous in the same way as they are in pre-viability weeks. I can't really find an argument to late term abortion that answers that.

I think that’s a good post @SleepWarrior. I have the same chain of thoughts and can’t be at peace with it.

I also find the justification that the baby is “disabled” difficult, I expect more so because I am raising disabled children.

Slightly cross-posted with feministcat there. Your friends situation was obviously very sad and handled as sensitively as possible. It wasn't really an abortion by the sound of it, just their only chance to have some time with their baby.

No, there aren't lots and lots of cases where late term abortions occur where the foetus is terminated prior to delivery of an otherwise healthy baby. But they do happen and I find the logic baffling.

The problem is, Sleep, that if a woman has an abortion at 30 weeks then legally no person is harmed by that decision. If a live birth is induced at 30 weeks then a living person will have been harmed by that decision: because 30 week birth will almost certainly have lifelong negative consequences. Induction between, say, 24 and 36 weeks would always be a legal minefield, so except in cases of pressing medical need the only real options are abortion or continuing the pregnancy.

It wasn't really an abortion by the sound of it, just their only chance to have some time with their baby.

Except it was. That procedure is considered a late stage abortion and is a method used in Canada to abort non-viable fetuses: www.arcc-cdac.ca/postionpapers/22-Later-Abortions.pdf

Her medical records indicate she had an abortion via induction of labour.

Here’s an article for a woman who had a late term abortion due to finding out late in pregnancy her much wanted baby had severe skeletal malformations (likely genetic) and made choice to seek an abortion as she did not want a painful life for her child. As she said, those who criticized her for not giving her baby up for adoption missed the point; she did not want her much wanted baby to live a life of pain, even if the child did survive birth.

montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-woman-who-had-late-abortion-says-she-made-the-right-decision

There are thousands of stories like this. Where women who had much wanted pregnancies had to face decisions like that woman from Montreal who knew their child would have a life full of pain, or knew their baby would not be “viable” in the sense of living through or after birth.

I agree with Stephanie Paterson cited in that article: if one has moral opposition to late term abortion (or I would add, any abortion for that matter), fine, don’t get one. But legally, restricting it is always an interference with women’s rights, and the fetus should never have “rights” over that of the mother.

If the induced labour leads to an infant that takes a breath isn’t it then “born” and has rights just like the mother?

Two points:

One, you are missing the point. Whether once born the fetus may take a breath or not - for one breath, ten breaths, ten thousand, is irrelevant because it is not yet born. It is not breathing at the time the mother makes the decision.

Secondly, no, because once born the baby’s parents get to make decisions for that baby’s medical care, because the baby can’t speak for itself. When a baby is born with a serious medical condition - incompatible with life or not - the parents are not obligated to consent to medical intervention.

Feminstcat

I think what you are describing is exactaly what people object to, though. Poeple do not think a fetus that is at a stage where it could live outside the womb should be killed inside the womb on what amounts to a legal technicality.

If you can deliver the baby without its death, you have removed issue of the rights of the mother over her own body. It's like you have an algebra problem, and you've balanced the equation on both sides with regards to rights of the mother.

What you then have left is that the mother not only wants to be not pregnant, she wants to kill the foetus. That's rather getting outside the right to her own body, and getting into violating the body of another living thing.

That is getting into quite different territory, saying the reason you want the abortion is not to no longer support a pregnancy, but specifically to kill an individual who could live outside the womb, even if they would be very ill. Many people have a very difficult time seeing that as being different from choosing to kill a child who has been born because they are very ill, something they find morally reprehensible, even if they understand that the parent wants to avoid suffering.

The official Catholic line on this is unambiguous, if not widely known even among Catholics: IVF is viewed as sinful, partly because of the destruction of embryos and the selective reduction of pregnancies that is often part of IVF, but also because it replaces intercourse with a technical process.

And is precisely why I am no longer a practicing Catholic and why my two children (the first of which is, according to the Catholic church, a "product of science" as opposed to a person), are baptised, but not Catholic.

Although DMIL's parish priest did tell her, once DC1 arrived, that really the sins of the parents wouldn't be visited on the child, particularly after baptism. However, I am still not in a state of grace so can't accept communion until I go to confession and then make atonement for the sin of IVF. On this, as well as so many other issues, the Catholic Church can fuck right off.

I'm pro-choice by the way.

There is huge difference to not consenting to intervention - which isn't an absolute right by the way - and actually causing death.

One will put you in prison for a long time.

When non-viable babies are born (ie they are missing a brain, are very premature, or otherwise have issues incompatible with life) even if they can initially breathe, it is not uncommon to just wrap them and try and keep them warm and comfortable until they pass naturally, be it a minute or a day. No “heroic” medical interventions when it is known the risks are too great (and outcome so poor). No one in those cases seems to get on the mothers for not doing enough to “save” their babies as they do if a mother chooses to end a non-viable pregnancy.

Used to be impossible to imagine a fetus living when born at 21 weeks - now it is not impossible but fraught with complications and long term health issues. Still, even if technically possible, parents aren’t obligated to consent to “life saving care” for a child born at 21 weeks, 28 weeks, or even 41 weeks. Many will, but they are not legally obligated to consent to provide or continue such care.

So why are women expected to continue a pregnancy?

The official Catholic line on this is unambiguous, if not widely known even among Catholics: IVF is viewed as sinful
I think it is widely understood within the church, certainly I understood before I had ivf that it wasn’t accepted...but then neither is contraception and there aren’t many huge catholic families any more.

Yes, that has long been the practice, and I don't think its particularly controversial. It becomes quite different though if you don't provide care for a child that could survive. If someone delivered a 30 week old baby that was otherwise healthy, and just allowed it to expire, they'd likely go to prison.