I was very fortunate in that I found a Catholic clinic for my high-high-risk pregnancy with Klara. The personnel there consisted of truly pro-life people who all behaved like what I was doing was the most normal and admirable thing imaginable. But not everybody’s reaction outside of the clinic was positive. I heard comments of extraordinary nastiness regarding how stupid it was to risk my life this way. Even after my child was born, her first pediatrician suggested that it was irresponsible to give birth to a child who was destined to be severely unwell with a host of diseases that, as we now know, never actually transpired. She said that in the presence of a beautiful, healthy infant who was already there. To a mother who had just gone through a nightmarish pregnancy.
I was a 39-year-old, weather-beaten woman, and none of this could divert me from my purpose. But I can easily imagine a younger, less self-assured woman without access to the mental health support I could afford who would “choose” to abort under the pressure. That choice would, to a large extent, be a result of the environment around her.
What I believe must happen is that a civilized society should be like that Catholic clinic. We should surround physically “imperfect” people with love and support. We should channel our thinking completely away from the question of how we can put an end to this inconvenient person or this inconvenient pregnancy and towards how we can contribute to life and happiness. When you know that something is simply not an option, it becomes so much easier for your brain to find other solutions. Euthanasia should not be an option because its very existence is a barrier to the creation of solutions.
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Wish I’d had a clinic like that. Pregnancy with youngest, I was 38, nothing super high-risk. Things great with midwife up until final month when I got risked out for anemia.
Then I had to see a specialist, who was expensive, rude, and since he was the only one available… I had to sit in the office talking to him right next to a uterine vacuum-extraction machine. Like, OK, please tell me more about how I’m a dope for getting pregnant at my age, with diabetes, and how my kid will be oversized (he wasn’t), I’ll have to have a section (I didn’t), and he’ll be chronically ill (nope)… all while we just pretend we’re not chilling in an execution chamber where I-don’t-know how many babies have been shredded.
Still gives me the creeps.
-ethyl
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Lord. The extraction machine is like a weapon of war next to a pregnant woman.
I don’t understand why people who hate babies would want to become OB-GYNs or pediatricians. That dead-eyed pediatrician was downright cruel. And for what? It’s not like I can stick the baby back up the birth canal.
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Right? Might as well have been talking about anemia and ultrasounds while chilling on a gallows platform or something. Ghoulish.
-ethyl
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Two friends had doctors try to convince them to kill their babies because the child might be born less than completely normal. Most women are offered amniocentesis, the which has a small but real risk of damaging the baby, not because there’s in-utero options to correct problems, but so the parents can ill it were any to be discovered.
Many people have learned to distrust the medical-industrial complex and the men and women who serve it even before the covidian apocalypse.
It’s the utilitarian principle: any member of the human species who is not an asset on one’s balance sheet ought to be eliminated. It’s as old as the pagan world and as modern as the soi-disant Enlightenment. It’s most perfect expression is MAID.
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I know a woman who believed such a prognosis at an early pregnancy stage, aborted, and became unable to get pregnant again. Then her husband married the OB-GYN who diagnosed her. And they had two children together.
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I learned very quickly to ask, of every suggested prenatal test: If it comes up with result X, then what? And result Y? Was able to decline lots of stuff just based on… OK no matter how this test goes, my decision tree looks exactly the same after, so why would we do that?
Particularly important when you are out of pocket for all the testing costs 😉
I fought my way out of the GTT twice because holy moly people I know I’m diabetic. I don’t need to expose my baby to blood glucose over 200 just to prove it to you. WTF? So I will, yes, go AMA on that and just keep on exercising, monitoring, and not eating anything that makes my glucometer unhappy.
-ethyl
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I lost count long ago of all the women I know (or know of) who were advised to abort because if they didn’t, they would die, or the baby would die. or they both would die. or they would live but suffer devastating irreversible damage… but they declined to abort, and none of the predicted catastrophes materialized. I have yet to meet a woman who was advised to abort, refused to do so, and later regretted her decision.
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This is a lot easier to do in countries with socialized medicine. In Cuba, for example, a woman is told, “you can choose to proceed with the pregnancy but you won’t be admitted at any hospital to give birth.” These are all already somewhat high-risk pregnancies and women are terrified that they’ll be left to bleed out on the floor somewhere. So they agree to abort.
In Western countries with socialized medicine, it’s not done this crudely but the implication is there. Get rid of your “defective” pregnancy or suffer the consequences. I also know women to whom it happened. This is one reason why I’m completely opposed to socialized medicine. There’s no scenario under which my child would exist in such a system.
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\\ In Western countries with socialized medicine, it’s not done this crudely but the implication is there. Get rid of your “defective” pregnancy or suffer the consequences.
Don’t think it’s true for Israel. Otoh, may be our health system is not truly socialized, the way you used the term. In addition, Israeli society puts a huge stress on fertility, so the culture may make us an outlier among Western countries.
High risk pregnancies are monitored in “specialized clinics in public hospitals.”
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Israel is an exception because it has an ideological program of rebuilding its population count. Which is great. I’m for babies. More babies is always great.
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People keep telling me I’m this way because I’m traumatized about babies. And yes, I’m obviously traumatized. But I was always exactly like this on this subject.
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