After that decision my relationship with my son’s father fell apart, mainly because of his drug/alcohol problems and we broke up. To this day he still believes I was lying about the pregnancy and that it wasn’t his child (I wasn’t with anyone else).

Today I’m happily engaged to the man of my dreams, my best friend, and we’re getting married next June. The sad part is he was told he cannot have children because of his medications for a specified disease I’d rather not mention.

I used birth control for the first three months we were together, but I figured since he had been told he cannot have kids, I was safe…and then…nine months later…I got pregnant. That’s where I am right now. I just hit seven weeks this week.

My decision to have an abortion next Friday is based on several reasons the first being how physically heavy I am. I weight 250 lbs. I refuse to have a pregnancy in this weight bracket (I had toxemia with my son and almost died).

The others are, my insurance is HORRIBLE. I work full-time and work for an insurance provider. You’d think I’d have good insurance. Nope! I’d have to pay for a c-section almost out of pocket (which I have to have a c-section because of my last birth), and with that being said — I can’t afford that.

My final decision is that we aren’t married yet and there’s not a way we can move the wedding up, plus my fiance is still in college full time and can’t financially contribute to our life right now. He does get disability monthly because of his disease, but that covers only the rent.

IF it were not so expensive to have a baby, I’d make other choices. Right now, I can barely afford to live/pay my student loans/take care of my one child…and after all, this was an unplanned pregnancy and we were told HE CAN’T HAVE KIDS.

Ugh.

The fact that most people don’t actually think about moral issues but just feel them explains why we see that there is no opinion so stupid that we can’t find someone who believes it. 

I tend to think the men in question — and people making decisions about reproductive health laws are overwhelmingly men — don’t care either emotionally or rationally.  They’re venal cynics who know that pushing emotional buttons gets them votes.

TL;DR: there are better targets for your “concern.”

Thanks for your post.

I want to thank you for being so brave and sharing your experience.  I am very sorry for you and your husband’s loss.  However, I am extremely grateful you’ve decided to speak out about your experience thereby comforting other men and women who’ve made the same difficult choice.  I believe Abortion is NOT a debate about killing babies, but rather a debate about women’s health.  Thank you again for speaking out!

The ignorant part, but maybe not the willful part, goes for the college students I’ve taught who are pro-life. Many of them have no knowledge of the actual religious dogma of their own faith, of extreme statements by people like England, nor any beyond the dimmest understanding of reproductive biology.

I know I sound like an arrogant silent-P Rick, but this really is my experience of people on this issue. I keep listening, and my heart keeps getting broken by what hear.  It’s horrible that people want to control the lives of others on the basis of so little knowledge. But I guess that’s how it always is. 

I honestly believe than education has a slim chance of changing people, especially as education tends to introduce a little empathy too.

I know very well the sadness of miscarriage and the pain of any type of “abortion” (totally agree with some who have said this term is a strange to hear being used in a different way than what we’ve come to think of it as meaning… even being pro-choice, I hated hearing the doctors throw this term around when it referred to babies I had wanted so so much!). My partner & I lost 3 angel babies before finally being able to bring our healthy son to term – for my pregnancies, the abnormality may have been a progesterone defficiency.

I agree that much more needs to be done with breaking the silence surrounding pregnancy loss and I thank you for doing your part. It takes a lot of courage to share this story…

~krismom

My understanding: 
>50-75% of conceptions end in miscarriage
>30-50% of implanted pregnancies end in miscarriage. 

The numbers drop significantly each week you’re pregnant. It’s really common to have a miscarriage in the first week of pregnancy (like my first miscarriage). It’s much less common to have a miscarriage after you’ve detected a heartbeat … roughly after the 6th week, as in my second miscarriage. 

These people don’t JUST want to take away your right to decide what to do when you don’t want to be pregnant. They also want to control your choices when you have lost a pregnancy you wanted, AND when you can’t get pregnant and want to be. 

The biggest thing I want women to understand about this: Even if you want babies … craptons of babies … and don’t think that elective abortion is okay, you should still be pro-choice. Because these people are out to get you, too. We stand together here. 

I don’t know about your country, but in my country anybody dying at home is getting an investigation, no matter what age. So, my guess for what would happen if foetuses were given personhood is that any woman miscarrying in a non-hospital setting would have to prove that they actually had a miscarriage and not an abortion (probably by having a doctor’s examination).

But how do we know if a foetus needs protection if we don’t know who is pregnant and who isn’t? Perhaps there should be a monthly mandated pregnancy test? Oh, and of course a national register of women between menarch and menopause? Not to mention a list of “known miscarriers” so the Foetal Protection Agency can make crack downs on fertility clinics and take into custody the embryos.

That last bit is hyperbole… but… if foetuses had legal personhood, wouldn’t a doctor transfering an embryo into the womb of a woman who has had several miscarriages and no live birth be on pretty shaky legal ground? And what about all the embryos who most probably aren’t viable (not multiplying in an expected manner), and wouldn’t currently be transfered? I guess they should all be transfered, too. Or at least get a decent burial!