Let’s say you’ve been trying very hard to get pregnant and finally manage it. At your 20 week ultrasound you find that there is a cancerous growth on your uterus the only possibly treatment is to remove the uterus entirely which obviously will kill the baby. The cancer is growing quickly and your doctor believes that if you wait till full term it’ll kill you within a year. Obviously if you choose to abort and have your uterus removed you will never be pregnant again.
Please note this is not a question about whether it should be legal to abort the baby rather what choice you would make in the situation.
No, I would not. My husband would rather have me alive than dead, I wouldn’t want my offspring to have this as the story of its life, and I value my own life just enough to make ending it an undesirable outcome. Plus, if it’s a pre-term delivery, there is a good chance the baby won’t make it anyway and my sacrifice would be all for naught.
Nope. I made that very clear when I was pregnant: If it’s him or me choose me guys. Of course now that’s he’s out I’d choose him first any day, but while they’re on the inside it’s a different story imho.
In the real world, problems like these cause complications for the pregnancy, not all pregnancies come out all right even without complications of this sort, and there isn’t always someone capable and/or willing to take care of the child if the mother is taken out of the picture.
Well in the original scenario it was stated that you’ve been trying for a while which implies that the father is also interested in the baby. I don’t see any reason to assume the father wouldn’t want to take care of the baby. As far as a healthy outcome I’m not a doctor but it seems like if the growth is on a different area than the placenta it shouldn’t be an extreme problem and the mother’s body usually will protect the baby to the best of it’s ability.
I suspect that I would argue for the cancer surgery but that my wife would be inclined to continue the pregnancy. In our experience, for obvious reasons, the developing life inside has been much more tangible for her at that point than it was for me. It would be harder for her to let go of, and easier for her to take chances with her own well-being.
Well, in the real world, the cancer removal might fail. There are uncertainties on both sides, many of them unquantifiable, and it’s hard to see that they weigh in one direction or another here.
Instead of attacking the limitations of the hypothetical from one side, why not just share the value judgments and conclusions that animate your choice of that side?
That’s a no-brainer. Remove the uterus. You can always use a surrogate, adopt, or even have a uterus transplant to get another baby, but there’s only one you.
Now, if the cancer was almost certainly terminal, even if you had surgery quickly, letting the pregnancy go to term would probably be the better choice, but that would depend on the individual person and the various probabilities of outcomes.
This has played itself out in real life many times. Not usually uterine cancer, but breast cancer or lymphoma or some such, where chemotherapy might prolong life or even be curative. Of course, sufficient chemotherapy would be very toxic (most likely lethal or worse) to the developing fetus.
I’ve heard of at least one case of the mother continuing the pregnancy.
Because I felt the hypothetical was stacking the deck in an unrealistic way, assuming in the OP without saying that the baby would be born healthy and that there would be someone there willing and capable to raise it. All the OP actually stated was that the mother had been trying hard to get pregnant and that she wanted the child. In today’s world, that could mean one of several possibilities.