At-risk pregnancy continues by choice, in faith
We tend to forget that carrying a crisis or difficult pregnancy to term is the other choice.
This Chicago area woman has a remarkable story, by virtue of doing what she deeply held to be what’s right and natural to a mother’s instincts.
Facing adversity, criticism and an uncertain future for her conjoined twins, Amanda Schulten says she chose life.
Despite the devastatingly low probability of survival, the single Marengo mother-to-be said that, for her, there was just no other option.
Joined at the heart, her daughters — whom she’s already named Hope and Faith — should be given a chance to live, Amanda said, no matter how long those lives may be.
Strong in her Catholic religious beliefs, Amanda said she loves her children unconditionally and cannot interfere with God’s will.
“He has a plan for me, and for them,” she said. “We never know when our last day will be. We have to enjoy it, and appreciate health while we have it.”
Amanda has created a blog about her experiences at amanda-faithhopelove.blogspot.com, which tells the story of her journey throughout the pregnancy. On the main page is the poignant poem she penned, “I Love You.”
“No matter what happens, my soul will never leave you; If difficulties come here, I will never disappear,” the poem begins.
“I’m sure you would be proud to call me momma,” she writes, “for you are a special gift to me.”
Amazing grace, especially in the cultural climate of convenient solutions to difficulties like this.
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You know, I’m all for women choosing to carry high-risk pregnancies to term, but I don’t think we should do it in a way that shames women who choose to abort.
Women who choose to murder their children SHOULD BE shamed.
How about women who end up murdering themselves and the unborn inside them through such decisions? Do they get a pass?
From the article:
“And the ultimate question: Amanda said if mothers don’t protect their children, who else will?”
Exactly. Our culture has fooled women into thinking the person in their womb is somehow not completely human and therefore not deserving of their motherly instinct: protection. Poor, foolish, “liberated” women, they don’t even know to feel shame. And if they do, they are told that the shame is foolish.
@Glenn E. Chatfield
If woman has a high-risk pregnancy, where she is not likely to survive, should she risk abandoning what children she already has for one that may not make it?
This is not about whether abortion is right or wrong, and a woman has responsibilities to people not currently in her womb to think about, especially if she already has children.
@Roivas I’ve never heard of women committing suicide as you describe.
I know too many families and have read too many other testimonies of women who survived such “high-risk” pregnancies. Doctors are very often wrong about the resilience of the human body.
How many testimonies do you read of women who didn’t survive high risk pregnancies and left their families in the lurch? Oh wait, you don’t, because dead people don’t write testimonies, nor can be activists for an anti-abortion cause. Nor any other for that matter.
@Roivas How many Medal of Honor winners left their families “in the lurch”? Some people reach for the higher good, and murdering your child isn’t the higher good.
@Roivas
St. Gianna Beretta Molla- now there is a testimony.
Glenn, let me put this in a way you could understand.
Situation A: A woman with a pregnancy that would kill her. She decides not to abort. She dies, and as is generally the case when one being is biologically dependent on another, the fetus/blastocyst dies as well, leaving behind a family of spouse and children.
Situation B: A woman with a similarly deadly pregnancy decides to abort, saving her life.
According to you, humans are people from the very first cell division. So, in situation A, two people die. In situation B, one does. Which is the better outcome?
As for Molla, I do find it rather ironic you are celebrating her choice given that in your preferred society no one could do otherwise, making her decision meaningless.
@Roivas You are making a scenario that is most likely never going to happen. One doesn’t make rules based on rarity. If there is indeed a 100% chance of death to the mother as well as the child, then both will die if action is not taken, then it is a matter of saving a life. If a mother will possibly die but the child live, then you are choosing who to kill, which is not our place – that is God’s place.
But such hard cases are not what abortion laws are about. I think if the law allowed ONLY for the hard case of losing both lives, there most likely would be no objection from the majority of people.
The problem is too often claims of this sort are made when in reality both survived.
“High risk pregnancies can often result in low birth rate, which occurs in a staggering 8.2% of the 4.3 million babies born each year.”
“A high risk pregnancy that is not properly identified and managed by your doctor can cause serious complications, injury and even death.”
Rare enough for you?
http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=20896
It is obvious, by this post, that you are neither an OB nor spent much time with pregnant women.
High risk doesn’t mean life or death. Any pregnant woman 35 and over is classified as high risk. That’s why you have 8.2% of pregnancies classified as such. There are a lot of women who are pregnant after the age of 34 (this is increasingly more popular now with careers and later marriage). In my immediate family, there have been 7 “high-risk” pregnancies due to maternal age and seven healthy children.
Not a big deal enough for you? Sheesh, educate yourself.
“Every day, 1500 women die from pregnancy- or childbirth-related complications. In 2005, there were an estimated 536 000 maternal deaths worldwide.”
Most of these were in developed sure, but some also happen here, between 11 per 100,000 and 14 per 100,000.
http://www.who.int/whosis/mme_2005.pdf
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×1662003
Shall we say, “Eh. Whatever. That’s for God to decide, not us.”
“In 2009, about 4 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving fatalities for every 100,000 Americans.”
Thats only .000004% of Americans. So obviously drunk driving isn’t a problem.
http://www.centurycouncil.org/learn-the-facts/drunk-driving-research
Also, the difference between you and me is that I trust women and doctors to make the best decision in such situations, with abortion being one of the many options on the table. You don’t have that trust, so you want the government to step in and make a decision for her.
How “nanny” state.
@Roivas
Answer the question about women with placenta accreta. Abortion would not help them, yet it is one of the larger causes of maternal death in the US. Roivas, what should a woman with accreta do?
Driving is not without risk. Pregnancy is not without risk. I never said anything to the contrary.
You just throw out abortion as the panacea of all the ills of pregnant women with high risk situations. That shows lack of understanding of pregnancy related complications.
Furthermore, I know that a person is inside the woman’s womb and that the best OBs know they are treating 2 people.
I fail to see the relevance of placenta accretas. Abortion doesn’t help, mainly because it is very difficult even for modern medical techniques to identify before the start of the birthing process, let alone earlier when an abortion would be viable. But even if abortion doesn’t help in that situation, I fail how that changes the fact it helps with other potentially life or health threatening pregnancies.
Furthermore, the existence of such conditions as placenta accretas support my point that only a woman who is fully willing to be pregnant should be subject to such risks. For a woman to die from pregnancy is tragic on its own. For a woman to die from a situation forced upon her unwillingly transforms into an injustice.
@Roivas
Name one specific condition on pregnancy that requires an abortion as its only cure.
“only a woman who is fully willing to be pregnant”
If she was unwilling to be pregnant then she should refrain from sexual intercourse.
“Name one specific condition on pregnancy that requires an abortion as its only cure.”
Ectopic pregnancy. There, that was easy. Others as well.
“If she was unwilling to be pregnant then she should refrain from sexual intercourse.”
So if a woman has no interest in having a baby, she should just refrain from having sex. No sex. Ever. As even with birth control methods used responsibly there is still at least 1-2% chance of pregnancy over the course of a year.
That also means not being in relationships. You see, in most relationships a woman has there is an exception of her partner being able to have sex with her. Maybe once a week, month, or even just once a year. But still sex. With a chance of pregnancy. So that’s out too.
So in your perfect world you would require a woman who doesn’t desire pregnancy to be forever alone, and never have sex. Once. Until menopause. So they can start having sex at around 50. 60 just to make sure.
Or as is often the case, the woman can be with someone with 1, 2, 3 or whatever amount of children who loves them, but doesn’t want anymore. Or someone who has been told by her doctor that another pregnancy would be dangerous.So for your world, the solution is simple. After she is done nursing her last child, she abandons the thought of ever having sex with her husband again. Completely.
And if the husband gets so frustrated he starts having affairs and they divorce over the issue? Or alternatively, if they maintain a relationship filled with bitterness, resentment and frustration because they have entire avenues of affection forever cut off? Well, at least you can be sure she will never need an abortion.
Another solution just occurred to me. Women everywhere could have lesbian sex. No chance of pregnancy with that.
Thus you see lined out the effects of the pithy bon mot you threw out.
Roivas, google natural family planning. It is possible for a woman to know when she’s fertile and therefore not have sex during that time if she doesn’t want to get pregnant. Clearly you’ve never heard of such a thing.
I have. And you know what? It isn’t fool proof. In fact, it has a 25% failure rate. So that’s no good either. Not if you want to guarantee no abortions based on your logic. Any sex that can result in pregnancy is unacceptable.
Thus as before, lesbian sex is the solution.
http://www.americanpregnancy.org/preventingpregnancy/fertilityawarenessNFP.html
That 25% “failure” rate includes times when the couple used NFP to GET pregnant. Pretty much every married couple I know practices NFP successfully, my husband and I included. The only time I heard otherwise was when a couple was doing it backwards and couldn’t figure out why they kept getting pregnant. Then they did more research and discovered the problem!
You also completely ignore the possibility of adoption.
“lesbian sex is the solution.” Do you really believe that, or are you just being a troll?
“If she was unwilling to be pregnant then she should refrain from sexual intercourse.”
That was the statement I was addressing. Adoption has nothing to do with the state of being pregnant.
“every married couple I know practices NFP successfully, my husband and I included.”
Ah, so since it doesn’t happen in your experience, it doesn’t happen anywhere. Anecdata! Gotta love it.
Can you cite a place to back up your assertion about the failure rate?
Also, the statement about lesbian sex was taking Deb’s statement to its demonstrated logical conclusion. If a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant, then she shouldn’t have sex that could result in pregnancy. Therefore the only acceptable sex under that condition is lesbian sex.
If you have a problem with that statement, take it up with Deb. Or maybe you could deign to explain the flaw in my logic.
@Roivas
If a woman is unwilling to raise a child than no she should have no sex.
I didn’t have sex until I was ready to raise children. My husband and I waited…until marriage. That was 26 years of my life without sex. And guess what? I was fine! I didn’t spontaneously combust from not having sex and neither did my husband.
And, by the way, NFP has a 98-99% efficacy when avoiding pregnancy.
But seeing how you know very little about pregnancy, I would assume you know even less about NFP.
No, the solution is: If you are fertile and you don’t want to get pregnant, don’t have sex!
Roivas, see Deb’s comment.
“Adoption has nothing to do with the state of being pregnant.” It does when you assert, as you did, I believe, that a pregnant woman who doesn’t want to be therefore will have an abortion, as though that were the only solution.
“No, the solution is: If you are fertile and you don’t want to get pregnant, don’t have sex!”
And the women who never want children? Are they morally obligated to be nuns? Or do they simply not matter?
By the way Deb, maybe your okay with having random pregnancies, but many are not, for preference, health, economic or any other reasons. Assuming people start as late as you do, and lose their fertility at age 51, a two percent chance of getting pregnant per year (as that is what the failure rate refers to) translates into an approximately 40% chance over that period of time. And that’s with perfect use.
With typical (average) use, there is a 7.5254*10 to the 4th chance of not getting pregnant over that period of time. In other words, .0007525%.
And that is just the chance for one pregnancy. For 1 but not 2, its .001334. For 2 but not 3, its
.002366.
You get the idea. The break even number, i.e. 50% chance number, is 11.5. 11.5 pregnancies. That is insane.
But still, this analysis is flawed, it doesn’t account for such things as the gap in fertility caused by such things as breast feeding. So lets be kind, and make it so that once the number gets above zero, it makes us skip 2 years.
The new probabilities are as follows. .004207 chance for 2. .007442 for 3. .01316 for 4. The break even number is 9.5.
And this is merely the average. Given some couples enthusiasm for sex, it could be much higher.
Are you seriously going to suggest that the average couple would be willing or heck, even able to have and support 9-10 pregnancies? With the havoc it would play on both finances and even more importantly, on the poor woman’s body? Or that society could possibly deal with all the extra unwanted children through adoption like Betsy so blithely suggests?
And even ignoring all that, I refer you back to the percent chance of avoiding pregnancy entirely with typical usage of NFP. Its .0007525.
So in other words, in order for women to live by your prescription, I refer you back to my comment about lesbian sex.
Wooh. That was long.
@Betsy
Adoption has nothing to do with pregnancy if, for example, if the woman is in poverty and has such poor nutrition that she constantly miscarries, adding yet another health hazard to her life. Or the mother of 5 children who would have to live with everyone she knows shunning her because they would refuse to understand why she is okay with 5 but is going to give the last one up for adoption. Or the 14 year old who got pregnant by her father, who sure isn’t going to allow other people to find out by let it get to the point of labor.
I could go on with dozen’s of other scenarios for you, but for you they all amount to the same reductive thought: These women should never have sex. Because if they do its their fault, and they shouldn’t of had sex in the first place. Even if it was within your precious holy matrimony.
@Roivas
So your solution is lots ‘o sex and lots ‘o abortion? Got it.
How did we ever make it this far as a human race without contraception and abortion?
Fertility is not quite the numbers game you play. Never using contraception doesn’t always mean 10 kids. In the case of my grandparents it meant… one. And with their neighbors it meant… 2 kids.
Look, the only way to have 100% gaurentee of no pregancy is 100% abstnance or male/female castration. All birth control has a failure rate as does NFP.
You continually argue for 100% certainty against pregancy. You can’t have 100% certainty while having sex unless one or both members is castrated.
So in essence, abortion, to you, is the be-all-and-end-all back-up contraception.
I’m saying that if there is sexual intercourse between two uncastrated partners, there is always a chance of pregnancy (be it slim with tubal ligation, NFP, or perfect pill use). People should be aware of this and make decisions accordingly.
My solution is for people to make their own choices in this regard without coercion by government or your church of choice. Even you don’t like the decisions they make.
Do you concede that you demand that the only moral way to completely avoid pregnancy for women to never have non lesbian sex?
By the way, your grandparents probably used contraception. The pill is by far the newest method of birth control. Practically every other form of BC has been known to man since at least the time of the Ancient Greeks.
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1982/6/82.06.03.x.html
You might find this particular part of the article interesting.
“Until the early part of the century, there were no laws against abortions done in the first few months of pregnancy. Prior to the 19th century, Protestants and Catholics held abortion permissible until ‘quickening’—the moment the fetus was believed to gain life.”
Funny how these sorts of things shift. I wonder what could have possibly changed the church’s minds.
And you still haven’t answered my question about women who don’t want children, and never will. Should they just become nuns?
Or once again, is lesbian sex the only moral choice for them?
@Roivas
No, they can have heterosexual sex… but they shouldn’t act all offended if they get pregnant.
Ah, yes. People getting offended. I forgot that was the real issue at stake here.
Not that women can have health or life threatening consequences from pregnancy. Not that some people are so fortunate that have to work two jobs and still not have enough extra to provide for children.
No, its all about pig headed women getting offended.
@MrRoivas
No, humans-in-the-womb’s lives are at stake.
And women shouldn’t be surprised to be pregnant if they have sex. By the way, if you look at the abortion statistics 40% of women weren’t using ANY birth control at all. So abortion is their ultimate back-up contraception.
Ah, yes, the ‘exception should make the rules’ argument- a lefty classic. Life and death pregnancies are an exception to the rule.
Again, your argument boils down to: women and men have the right to unlimited sex and access to unlimited abortion when said sex leads to pregnancy. Nice.
Unlimited sex- You make it sound as though that’s a bad thing. If there in fact a limited supply? Are we going to experience a desperate sex shortage if people continue to have it willy-nilly without thought of the future? Perhaps we can participate in a sex recycling program.
And I love that particular gem of logic. 40% of women getting abortions lack birth control. The solution?
1.Ban birth and stigmatize birth control!
2.???
3. No abortions!
Even more so, you have no way of knowing what circumstances such a woman is in. Perhaps she comes from a orthodox Muslim family which forbids birth control, but also has made it clear that they will only accept sons. Or maybe she is married to an abusive husband who refuses to use birth control and doesn’t allow her to use it either. Or perhaps she is a raped 14 year old who never thought she would need birth control.
In your world? They’re all sluts, and that’s all you need to know apparently.
And pray tell, can you indicate where I argue for unlimited access to abortion? I must say, I miss where exactly where I made that statement.
Life threatening pregnancies? Rare, yes. At least with modern medicine. Health threatening ones? Much less so.
My solution? Let the woman decide whether she feels the health risks are worth it.
Yours? You decide whether she has the baby, you through the government. Such a decision is far too important for a silly little thing like a pregnant woman.
P.S. When you throw statistics around, its nice to use a source.
@Roivas
“In your world? They’re all sluts”
Quote me where I ever called anyone a slut. Quite honestly, I had a hard time even typing the word- I don’t talk or think like that.
Here is your source. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
I got the stat low though, it’s 46% of women. So these women who are not using birth control BY CHOICE, and are having sex by choice should then be allowed to kill the baby by choice too? Because it is inconvenient? Only 12% of women say they have an abortion because of their health and health of the baby. Some of the personal heath concerns: morning sickness-hardly the life or death scenario you painted.
But hey, we need a back-up, so let the women decide to kill her child even when she knew she would likely conceive.