Do you have a better suggestion?
Yes, I think I about covered it in some detail upthread. Thanks for asking!
There’s probably no way to ask these questions without sounding provocative, so I’ll just ask them.
Questions for that 20% who chose the first option: Are any of you mothers? Or fathers? Or did you ever know anyone who gave birth, like close enough to hang out with them the last month of pregnancy?
Hmm…not quite the post I was hoping for from a poster named Plan B…
That would be me.
Thanks for that info. And sorry about my sloppy phrasing - I agree “always” and “never” have little value in most medical discussions
I’m sorry to hear you had to face that choice, but glad to hear things are going so well for your child. I can’t imagine the stress and worry you were under for a long period of time!
I was also very pleasantly surprised at the options and caring that was given to you by the medical staff at a time like that. It’s good to hear those stories, as often only the bad caring is heard about.
I’ve often wondered why all abortions aren’t performed by breaking the amniotic sac and inducing labor. If the fetus lives, it lives; if it dies, it dies. No woman should be forced to be a life support system if she doesn’t want to be one.
That doesn’t always work early on. The sac may repair the tear, or it may get infected without evacuating. And you’d still have to dilate the cervix to get a tool up in there to tear the sac - remember that we’re talking about early pregnancy when the cervix is tightly closed and plugged up with mucus.
Also, cervical dilation to spontaneous delivery width takes a long time, and requires dilating the cervix wide open with powerful drugs, so for an early procedure, it’s easier on the woman’s body and carries less risk of uterine rupture to dilate the cervix just a little bit, insert a scrapey thingy to release the endometrium and suck the uterine contents out through the small hole. For a late term abortion (which, again, is hardly ever done, and I really mean hardly EVER), the cervix has to be opened further, but again, not as far as it does for a vaginal birth. The less cervical opening, the fewer the risks.
(What I don’t understand is why women with a fetal death are often forced to carry the dead fetus for a while and then are induced to deliver a dead fetus vaginally. Why not do a D&X and get it over with? But I expect I’ll learn the answer to that next semester during my OB rotation. And I suspect it may not be a medical reason, but a political one, due to the “partial birth abortion” drama.)
I look forward to your proposals to sensibly regulate child prostitution.
Duplicate post. Look below.
It’s an imperfect opinion, to be sure, but really, where do you draw the line? Do you give the mom 39 weeks to waffle back and forth before finally saying “nope, don’t want it”? And by the way, I still see that no one at all has chosen the 9 month option so there MUST be some point at which it becomes too late to abort, right? Unless you’re really willing to draw the line between Monday: legal abortion. Tuesday: infanticide?
I think 8 months is plenty of time to figure this whole thing out. After 8 months aborting the child isn’t really much different from actually giving birth, so why not go ahead and do that? No one says anything about keeping the baby. There’s always adoption.
I have ethical qualms about this, too: birth, even fatal birth, is pretty traumatic, and letting a premature infant lay there and die to avoid killing it seems kinda Pontious Pilate to me.
I mean, it’s like when someone decides they don’t want a dog anymore so they dump it on the side of the road to “give it a chance”. That makes the person dumping the dog feel better, but from the now-doomed-to-get-hit-or-starve dog’s point of view, it would have been better to take it out back and just put a bullet in its head.
I’m not aware of either the historical Pilate nor the fictionalized New Testament version engaging in a Slaughter of the Innocents. Do you mean Herod?
That doesn’t follow. As of this writing, 29 respondents (20%) have chosen the option “Abortion is permissible any time before birth.”
I think she meant the “Wash my hands of this” bit. That is, just take the fetus out and let it die on its own, instead of killing it quickly with the scrapey thing (I really must learn the real term) or vacuum.
:smack:
It’s the scrapey thing just the curette?
CURETTE! :smack: Thank you!
Obviously, I must spend less time on the Dope and more time with my nursing books, or my brain will turn to mush before the fall semester begins…
I would not have an abortion after around 20 weeks, probably only for health reasons, but I don’t think it’s my business to decide for anyone else. It’s between a pregnant woman and her doctor until she delivers. That’s the difference between abortion and infanticide.
If you’d written out dilation & curettage, or even d & c, it’d have been obvious. Anyway, you’re allowed fourteen brain farts per week by board rules. Note, for instance, my misspelling of isn’t as it’s.
I did, in fact, mean the “wash my hands” thing.