Abortions and Children

[LeslieAGD]

This was a question that was addressed on another message board:

Ladies...If you found out you were having a child with a birth defect/illness, would you terminate the pregnancy?

Guys...Would you want your significant other to terminate her pregnancy? What would you do/say?

Discuss...

[Lindz928]

I think there are a lot of things that would have to be taken into consideration when making a decision like that.

Mainly, what quality of life would the child have? If the child were so ill or had so many birth defects that it would not be expected to live to adulthood, and would be in pain and miserable for their entire life.... Who knows.

Having never been pregnant, and therefore not knowing how that feels, I wouldn't feel comfortable saying what I would or would not do. But, I do think I would probably at least consider it.

[KSig RC]

Originally posted by LeslieAGD
Ladies...If you found out you were having a child with a birth defect/illness, would you terminate the pregnancy?

Guys...Would you want your significant other to terminate her pregnancy? What would you do/say?

It would depend on the situation - if the kid were to, say, have down's syndrome, or another defect/illness whereby they could still live a full and (relatively) functional life, then I'd be considerably more inclined to keep.

If it were something like, say, a defect to an organ or brain function, where the kid would have very little chance at functioning on any reasonable level or having any sort of quality (or length) of life, then I'd be all for giving it the ol' heave-ho. Maybe not, like, "all for" - I can't really say w/out being in the situation, but from the outside looking in I think that's the division.

Luckily, I'm having my penis turned inside out in a few months to avoid precisely this situation - trannys ahoy!

[AznSAE]

good question.

terminating should be the last resort. i would have to discuss this with the mother and then make a decision after looking at the entire picture. if the child is going to end up suffering for the rest of his/her life, then maybe the best thing is to terminate. i actually think parents who end up with these types of kids are blessed. they change your life for the better and can be an inspiration to others.

i heard on the radio one time about this guy who left his wife because the child they had was a special-need kid. not cool!

have any of you seen the saint jude's childrens hospital special that comes on once in a while? the little boy with cancer was a hartbreaker. he didnt make it in the end, but his parents made sure he was loved and happy. thats the best we can do. i wanted to call in and make a donation, but had no money.

[honeychile]

Originally posted by AznSAE
i heard on the radio one time about this guy who left his wife because the child they had was a special-need kid. not cool!

Sadly, my understanding is that this happens much more than most people realize.

I would be a liar if I said that I absolutely would stick by my anti-abortion stance, if I were to be pregnant with a child who would never have any sort of real life. I've babysat a child who was blind, deaf, and had cerebral palsy, so it's not like I don't know what I would be getting into. But I would also want to know, to mentally prepare myself (and my husband) for what was to be.

Just in case no one has ever read this:

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by Emily Perl Kingsley

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved.

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

[AGDee]

One one hand, I didn't bother with some of the pre-natal tests (particularly the one that detects spina bifida and sometimes Down's Syndrome) because they had a high false positive rate and it didn't matter to me what the results would be. I wouldn't have changed my intentions either way at that point. I was an Occupational Therapist and almost expected that I would have a handicapped child because I had the resources to cope with it and even provide a lot of therapy myself.

On the other hand, there ARE some defects, which would be highly life limiting such as heart problems that aren't fixable, which may have led me to that decision. If they knew a baby couldn't make it once out of the womb, why go a whole 9 months, go through the pain of labor, etc., knowing that the baby wasn't going to make it.

On the third hand, I have friends who had numerous ultra sounds which showed that there was an inoperable problem with their baby's heart. They were seriously contemplating aborting the baby because they were told that the baby had no chance of making it outside the womb. They decided to get a second opinion and the second doctor agreed. Then they got a third opinion, who said that he could operate and fix it. At that point, they decided that if there was a chance that the baby would be ok, they would keep the baby and see what would happen. The baby was fine and didn't need any heart surgery at all. So... I'd have to make darn sure and I would probably get second, third and even fourth opinions before making a decision.

[ISUKappa]

I don't know. I would like to think that I would keep my baby, no matter what. Even now I wonder how I would react if I found out something was wrong with this baby. But I can't say how I would choose unless I were in that situation.

My niece was born with a life-threatening defect that required her to have intensive surgery two days after she was born. She's now four months old and doing well. Her quality of life should be that of/near to a normal, healthy human being. But that's not always the case. In her situation, my sister and BIL had no idea anything was wrong until Leah was born and babies born with her condition usually have about a 50-60% chance of life.

Tests such as an amniocentisis and chronic villae sampling can say definitively if there is a chromosomal problem (Down's syndrome or an unbalanced translocation) but they can't predict what kind of life that child will have. And ultrasounds and blood tests (AFP, etc..) are so imprecise, any abnormalities found could be nothing when the child is born and others may be missed completely.

For some parents any time spent with their child, whether it be a few hours or years, is worth the 9-10 months of pregnancy and labor.

I would keep it, no matter what.

[Tom Earp]

I am sorry, but if a Child cannot live a healthy and knowledgedable Life, then there would be only one decission!

Who of You can decide that a Child who can be vegetated can function?

What is Life For Them. Hell in a broken form.

[aephi alum]

That's a tough decision, and one that I hope none of us ever has to make.

It would depend on the birth defect or illness. If the child had such severe problems that it was likely to be stillborn or live a short, pain-filled life and not survive to adulthood, then I probably would terminate the pregnancy. If the problems were less severe, I probably would not terminate. But where do you draw the line between severe and not?

Plus, you have to consider that doctors aren't perfect. You could end up aborting when the child could have led a near-normal life, or not aborting and then having a child who lives a short, painful life.

[kstar]

I would abort, no questions asked. Too many kids born with severe disabilites say things to the effect of "I would have asked to be aborted if I had the chance."

I carry a Tay Sachs gene. If my husband carried the same our child would be born with it. It's a horrible and dibilitating diease and the children born with it rarely live to 2. If one of the prenatal tests indicated Tay Sachs I would be scheduling an abortion immediately.

I admire people who have the dedication to raise such children, but it breaks my heart to see some people with great minds imprisoned and frustrated by their bodies, or people who will never even know their name. I just don't have the emotional strength for it.

[KSUViolet06]

Just something to consider, doctors aren't always right when they tell you things like "your child will never do this or that". It's just a diagnosis based on the best of their medical knowledge, but they are human and they aren't always 100% right.

Example: When my mom was 6 months pregnant with me, they told her that due to a birth defect they'd recently detected, that IF I EVEN survived being born, I wouldn't be able to speak, walk, or perform any basic tasks like feeding/dressing myself, and I would have the brain function of a kindergartener. They said I'd be unable to go to school and she'd be taking care of me 24/7. They suggested that she terminate the pregnancy. Since I was her first, she decided not to.

I am now an absolutely fabulous person with practically a full ride through school. Last time I checked, feeding and dressing myself was not a problem either.

[carnation]

I bore 5 of my children after 35--well, 3 of those after age 40. My doctors really wanted me to get amniocentesis each time but I had a miscarriage at 35 and didn't want to risk the chance of another miscarriage that amniocentesis carries. (Small, but it's there.) I also realized that I couldn't have aborted anyway.

I opted for the really intense level 3 ultrasound that shows most problems. Thank God, there weren't any!

[USCTKE]

Guys...Would you want your significant other to terminate her pregnancy? What would you do/say?

no...plain and simple...no

[NinjaPoodle]

Originally posted by AGDee
... So... I'd have to make darn sure and I would probably get second, third and even fourth opinions before making a decision.

after that, yes I would.

Originally posted by kstar
I admire people who have the dedication to raise such children, but it breaks my heart to see some people with great minds imprisoned and frustrated by their bodies, or people who will never even know their name. I just don't have the emotional strength for it.

And I admire you and those like you who are honest enough to admit this.