In most cancers, particularly slow-growing ones like breast cancer, it’s not really a big deal to delay chemotherapy for a few months. It doesn’t affect the patient’s outcome much at all.
Man, from the title I thought there was gonna be a baby in this scenario. Would I (hypothetically, after I grew a uterus) give up my life for a fetus? Hell to the no. I thought you were talking about my baby, and in a New York minute I would.
So is this hypothetical set in Bizarro World? Because right off the bat my goals are completely the opposite of what they are here on Earth.
I have two other children. I’m not going to die for a fetus and leave them without a mother. Even if I didn’t have other children, I wouldn’t risk it, based on what’s said in the hypothetical.
I do know someone who was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer during her pregnancy, although at 32 weeks, not 20. (Note that this is a much more aggressive form of breast cancer that progresses rapidly.) It was stage IV when found and had spread to her liver. They did a round of chemo while she was still pregnant and induced the baby at 37 weeks. After birth they found it had spread to her bones as well. She did chemo after the birth and had a double mastectomy, and now, a little over a year later, scans show she is cancer free, although she will need to be monitored closely for reoccurrences.
So, in real life, there may be more options available then the hypothetical sets out.
But the hypothetical equally assumed without saying that the cancer removal would be successful. So how is the deck stacked?
What I actually did in the real world.
We had two children.
No problems with pregnancy.
Mother was small & I am large and my family history is large babies.
Her history was normal size.
We were both practicing Catholics so add all the Catholic consciousness stuff into the mix.
Statement to the Docs and hospital and all who could possibly interfere, "If there has to be a choice for any reason, save the mother. ( she was in full agreement )
18 years later the youngest, our daughter is dead.
The older is a boy and is now grown with his own family.
With everything I know that has/had/the actual outcomes changed from 1968 or so to 1973 or so and on up until today, the decision would still be the same.
At 72, I personally am probably not going to need to make it again. 
The reason for the question comes from the show house. Several times this sort of choice was asked and house could understand from an evolutionary standpoint that it made sense for a parent to die to ensure that the next generation to be born. I was curious if people would acknowledge such an instinct.
Would you cut down a beatiiful useful tree in order to plant a seedling in its place?
An adult human, similarly, has already benefited from the investment in its development, and it makes no sense to destroy one only to start all over again.
There is no such instinct in people because babies don’t grow up unless highly invested adults are around to raise it. Despite the popular cultural references to mothers laying down their lives to protect their offspring, there are no mother animals that would ever do such a thing. Mother rats or bears or humans who let one baby die can survive and move on to have more babies. Mothers who die trying to protect one baby not only can not have any more babies but their current baby is probably going to die too. A mother dying in defense of offspring is a really stupid thing to do, evolutionary speaking.
I’d do without treatment to let the baby live.
This has happened in my own family. My father’s sister was pregnant, and she had Hodgkin’s disease. She died a couple months after the baby was born. This was during WWII. So the father, who was in the Army, didn’t have a sick wife any longer, got sent to Europe, and killed in the Battle of the Bulge. So my cousin was an orphan when he was less than a year old. His father’s sister raised him.
Sounds like folks who say “That’s OK, you can always have another one” after someone miscarries. There was only one “that baby” too.
well, I’m a Dad and not a Mom, but this the exact type of conversation I have had with the Guestling Gaggle’s Moms. It came down to nope, there are to many alternatives routes to having an infant child to rear to make sacrificing Mom’s life worth while.
And it’s the truth, and if it’s not then that’s not the end of the world either.
I can forsee any number of scenarios, not the OP’s since I’m a father, where I would sacrifice so any of my kids can live. It’s not a hard calculation and actually it is pretty much an unthinking calculation.
The birth of our first child was problematic and I was clear with my wife that if there ever came a point where a horrible choice had to be made and she couldn’t make it, I would instruct the doctors to save her life over the baby’s.
FTR she (reluctantly) agreed.
I’m talking more about the idea of saying such a thing to the person who miscarried.
I saw a nature show about this species of octopus where the mom, once she’s about to give “birth” (not really birth, but the eggs hatch in side of her so she’s viviparous), more or less allows the baby octoplings to eat her alive. Evolutionarily this benefits her because the babies are fully-formed and ready to go once they’re born, plus eating her gives them a head start.
But yeah, for the most part, any animal mother who gives birth to small, helpless babies is not doing her genes any favors by laying down her life for them before they can survive on their own. If mouse mothers sense that that her brood is threatened, she will sometimes eats her babies- thus giving herself nourishment to produce another litter when circumstances are more favorable to do so.
I don’t think any octopus parents survive the hatching of babies, at least for long. I think most just “up and die”. Males die within a few months of mating. Females brood their eggs without eating, and die shortly after hatching.
Given this procreational lifestyle, providing your babies with at least one “good healthy breakfast” seems like a win-win.
In this specific instance, I would choose myself over the unborn baby. My husband was a foster child and several of my cousins are adopted. My family embraces adoption and I would have adopted had I not been able to have children of my own. Had I not lost my husband, we had planned to apply to foster once our own two children were grown.
In another scenario, when the child in question had already been born, there is no question. Child over me 100%.