I’m confused, Kalhoun. She was an alcoholic, then quit drinking and THEN got pregnant? Or she was an alcoholic while she was pregnant??
I can understand how some women develop severe complications and end up having to abort because they WILL die if they don’t. I mean, if the mother dies the baby dies too so we may as well save one of them.
But if a woman already has a severe medical condition, though, why not just get fixed? If I were a diabetic, or had a bad heart condition, or whatever else and I knew that a pregnancy could kill me, or severely harm me, I’d be getting my tubes tied immediately so I’d never have to go with what some of these women have gone through. Who wants to face a decision like that if they can help it?
But then I have a child already, and were I to develop something now, I’ve already known the joy of motherhood. Sure, I’d like more kids someday, but if it doesn’t happen it wouldn’t devastate me like it maybe would someone who never had any children. Maybe some of these women take their chances because it’s worth it to them to try to have their own baby, even if they’re risking their life to do it.
It’s sad, and it pisses me off because, maybe, it could be avoided. If adoption were easier in this country, maybe women with serious medical conditions wouldn’t feel so pressured to try to make it through a pregnancy. I know that some people have their reasons and want their own biological child, or none at all – but there’s got to be women out there who are doing this only because they know there is no way they’d ever be able to adopt.
Good luck in finding a doctor who will do this unless you’re either past a certain age, or have a certain number of children. I had to get a couple of shrinks to verify that I really, REALLY wanted to get my tubes tied, AND I had to get a couple of other MDs to verify that getting pregnant again would be hazardous to my health before I could get a doctor to agree to sterilize me in my mid-20s. I had known all my life that I never wanted children. I did, however, want to have a normal sex life with my husband. I got pregnant three times in two years, once on the Pill, once using contraceptive foam and condoms together, and once on the IUD. I had two miscarriages, and carried one pregnancy to term. I finally just abstained from sex altogether for a couple of years until I could finally get fixed. This, of course, did lasting damage to our marriage.
Yes, I’m still bitter about it. I don’t think that I’ll EVER get over it.
Why did it take 2 years to confirm that a pregnancy would be hazardous to your health, Lynn? I mean, if you have something really wrong with you, wouldn’t it take just a short time for the doctors to go “yep, she’s got ___________ (disease), if she gets pregnant she could die,” and boom, that’s it?
I just don’t get why it would take so long. Making a woman wait just increases the chances for a pregnancy, and then she could sue the doctors who drug their feet confirming that she didn’t need to get pregnant to begin with.
In WV, I’m told for Medicaid to pay for your tubal, you have to be either 25 or already have 2 children. I don’t know what the rules are if you have regular insurance. (One would think insurance companies would jump at the chance to pay for a tubal because it would mean they won’t have to pay for a pregnancy.)
One’s stance on abortion has very little to do with respect for human life. The pro-life wariness of life/health legislative provisions are one of the reasons I do not support the movement. The other side of the respect life mantra is respect for the woman’s life. She is not merely an incubator. Her health should not be involuntarily compromised by the state in pursuit of an alleged ideal.
Personally I was quite sick during the last trimester of my pregnancy last year. My daughter was pressing on my intestines and caused scar tissue from an old injury to turn into a painful partial intestinal blockage. I was unable to keep food down for almost three weeks and was in the worst pain I have been in my entire life. The only medication I received was a few shots of morphine. Important medical tests could not be conducted because of potential harm to my child.
During this period my doctors and I discussed all options including inducing early. Fortunately the condition passed and I was actually able to carry our child to full term.
I fail to see how state interference in my life at that point constitutes any form of “respect for life.”
Well, if the father doesn’t want her to have the child, and is mentally unbalanced, and so stressed out that he intends to kill the mother, having an abortion would quite likely save her life.
One would think, but insurance companies don’t always work like that. Many of them will pay for lung cancer or emphysema treatment, but they won’t pay for smoking cessation programmes.
We are trying to keep this on a medical level. “Respect for life” and people’s stances on abortion are best discussed in on eof the 100s of other threads devoted to the topic.
I was simply responding to the poster’s comments. You should address your comments to ** Mr. Moto**. The rest of my comments pertained to the OP.
You asked about saving a woman’s life by ending a pregnancy. I am trying to show that there are other more involved circumstances where this may pertain rather than just the simple kill the woman or kill the fetus scenerio.
On a medical level my own pregnancy was a direct threat to my health and life. I was unable to keep food down and I was in profound abdominal pain for a prolonged period. Prior to becoming pregnant I had no intestinal problems at all. Treatment options for the condition were limited because of the pregnancy. Surgical treatment was indicated as a possibility but my doctors did not want to do this if possible because it might have induced early labor. Serious pain can make someone feel as if they’d rather die. My ability to relieve the pain was limited because of the pregnancy and it was sheer hell. Had the pain continued and my problems remained my child would have been induced at thirty six weeks. My doctors fully discussed this with me.
Fortunately the condition relieved itself and I was able to carry the baby to full term but for almost a month I had to many unpleasant options to consider all of them involving trade offs between myself and the life of of my potential child.
Under certain pro-life reasoning that priviledges a fetus above the life of the mother, pro-lifers would have been fully justified in making medical decisions for me to make sure that I did not put my needs above the needs of my fetus. I find that horrifying.
Of course, you’re assuming the woman is healthy enough to undergo surgery in the first place. A woman with severe heart disease, for example, may not be able to safely tolerate the anaesthesia needed to perform a tubal ligation. It may be safer for her to use other means of contraception - and even theough there’s an increased risk of pregnancy when using birth control pills or the diaphragm or an IUD compared to surgical sterilization, the overall chance she’ll get pregnant while using those forms of contraception properly is still very low, so I could see why she might not want risk the complicaitons of anesthesia in order to be surgically sterilized.
There are no “pro-life” and “pro-choice” lobbies in Islamic communities, with a raging battle such as takes place in America. Islam views abortion very differently from contraception, since the former entails the violation of a human life. The question that naturally arises is whether the term “human life” includes the life of the fetus in the womb. According to Islamic jurisprudence it does. Islam accords the fetus the status of “incomplete zimma”. Zimma is the legal regard that allows rights and duties, and that of the fetus is incomplete in the sense that it has rights but owes no duties. Some of these rights of the fetus are:
(a) If a husband dies while his wife is pregnant, the law of inheritance recognizes the fetus as an inheritor if borne alive. Other inheritors would receive their shares in accordance with the prescribed juridical proportions, but only after the share of the unborn is set aside to await its birth.
(b) If a fetus is miscarried at any stage of pregnancy and shows signs of life such as a cough or movement and then it dies, such fetus has the right to inherit anything it was legally entitled to inherit from anyone who died after the beginning of the pregnancy. After this fetus dies, what it has inherited is inherited in turns by its legal heirs.
I understand you may not be used to attributing such things, but if you are not the author it is pretty much considered mandatory around here ( though frankly I know there are a couple of times I should have cited more carefully myself ).
I’m happy things worked out fine in the end, Amethyst Autumn. We had to face decisions like this when my wife was pregnant with the Moto twins. Mrs. Moto’s age made birth defects a possibility, yet testing for them involved real risks for the kids. In the end, we decided against invasive testing, opting for ultrasound only.
Mrs. Moto also had health issues that involved a radical lifestyle change for her, and even this wasn’t enough to prevent early labor and an emergency c-section. Thankfully, as in your case, the kids are fine.
In our family, as in yours, we were weighing the risks toward everybody, mother and child (or children) and making decisions that gave everybody a fighting chance. We weren’t placing a higher value on our children, though we obviously wanted to do all we could to protect them and carry them as long as possible.
Most pro-lifers I know don’t spend a lot of time worrying about these cases, regarding them as tragic cases cases of sick babies or sick moms. Frankly, there’s not a lot anybody besides a doctor can do here to help.
It’s women with good strong pregnancies but weak familial and social structures to support them that has us most concerned.