Agreed. This is a major decision for any woman and people in her life should have an opinion and should be there to offer support. I think depending on her age, opinions and reasoning can help but as a general rule, if I were asked by a friend if she should get an abortion or not, my answer would be, "its your call. you're the one that has to live with the decision" and proceed to discuss the pros and cons and what her options are. Hopefully friends and family will give her enough info to help her decide which way to go. If the decision is going to impact more than just her and her unborn child then yes most definitely, the other parties that will be impacted must be brought into the conversation. This scenario should be for the single woman who is pregnant. Different "rules" apply to a married woman. It will still be her ultimate decision but her husband must be consulted and brought into the conversation.



People will always have their own opinions and they should stick to their convictions - nothing wrong with that. However, telling your friend that having an abortion is the wrong thing to do outright doesn't give your friend much compassion if the decision is to have an abortion. If she's pregnant because of a rape and doesn't want to carry that child to term only to give it up in the end and you tell her she has to is wrong. People can disagree or disapprove of abortion but for heaven's sake be supportive of the person that has to go thru with it because that decision did not come lightly. Trying to decide whether or not to have an abortion for any reason is really tough. There's a lot of sleepless nights and crying and soul searching and asking whether or not you've done the right thing. Just be there for your friend. Yes I speak from experience - I've had a friend who got pregnant from rape and another friend who was pregnant but was single and she felt that she was too young and immature to become a mother yet at the same time didn't want to carry the child to term and give them up. I was there for all the crying and decision making and the procedure and all the sleepless nights afterwards. It's not easy. Did I agree with them yes for the rape victim, no for my other friend but I had to respect their decisions.

I'm not someone that gets into debates about controversial issues, and I won't debate the pros and cons of abortion itself. I just felt this needed the view of someone who has been through this experience. It's all well and good for people to talk, but unless you have been in the place of going for the 20 week scan hoping to learn the gender of your baby only to be told the baby you can already feel kicking is going to die then you can only speculate as to how you might feel and what you might do. (you being a general you)
I just couldn't not respond when people use words such as 'stimulate' and 'encourage' as if they know it's the best thing when they really have no idea what they are talking about.

Since this thread is about aborting fetuses with anencephaly, my answer is about that and only that- although it does include fetuses with other severe abnormalities. Yes abortion should be allowed and legal in this (those) case(s). Allowed- not forced or strongly recommended.



This. This is why. Can anyone imagine that? Can you really? That has got to be one of the most devastating things in the world to hear. In some cases it might not be completely true- we've all heard about the miracle babies who shouldn't have lived at all. In the case of anencephaly it's pretty much a done deal. Those babies will die.
Some women might want to abort such a fetus right then and there for whatever their reason might be. They should be allowed to do so and not be judged for doing it or have to put up with "Omg, how could you?!?" reactions. Others might want to give birth to the life they created even though they know that life will be cut very short. A woman might want to at least hold her baby and say goodbye. She'd be allowed to do that, right? And I'm willing to bet that nobody would judge her for doing so. So- if a woman doesn't want to go through all of that, if she doesn't feel she could do that and wants to abort her baby..she should be allowed to do so in peace.

Either decision would be hard. Giving birth to a baby, holding it and bonding with it for even a moment..only to have it die is something I couldn't do. Holding one and bonding with him for a moment only to give him up about killed me, but at least I know he's still alive. (Enough said about that.) *major hugs* to joandsarah

Thank you mustluvcatz, you are one of the few that seem to understand where I am coming from. Major Hugs back for your own loss.



Both ways have happened. I have a friend who lost a baby shortly after birth because he had an inoperable heart abnormality. They had no idea and it was never picked up at the scan. My husband’s nephew was given the all clear at his twenty week scan and has severe Down syndrome and autism. So severe that he can't talk, can't toilet and can only eat baby food and can barely walk. He will probably always be at the level of a 12 month old baby. Likewise I have heard of cases were normal babies were aborted after the twenty week scan. I've never heard of a case of anencephaly being wrongly diagnosed though. But people do need to realize that scan is not infallible.


Yes, any decent hospital will ask you if you want time with your baby. They may do this even if the baby was induced at 20 weeks. The hospital I stayed at was wonderful. I was only a public patient at the time (We have a very different health system over here) and I was given a private room at no cost.

Y'know, I'm really not the most maternal woman in the world, for all that I birthed three children. The first was actually the hardest, when I was 18, a child conceived in rape. And, everyone is different, of course, and their reactions to a similar situation would be different (And, I might add, should be respected), but for me, personally, almost the worst part of that (aside from the rape itself) was dealing with EVERYONE around me thinking that I'd gone nuts, wondering why the hell I was going through with the pregnancy instead of aborting it. Everyone. Even people with more pro-life leanings. I...just couldn't do it. And I was a pretty loud pro-choicer, at the time. Instead, I made arrangements for a private adoption by this lovely infertile couple who could give my child everything...and now he's all grown up, a doctor who runs an AIDS clinic in Botswana, and he has a wife and two kids of his own. We've been in close contact since he was 16. I'm really glad I didn't abort him.

I seriously don't know what I would do if I ever found out that a child of mine was going to be born with anencephaly. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't abort, personally, as I'm pretty strongly pro-life (but not at all political about it, I should add. I don't think that any government has any right to be regulating/encouraging/discouraging/outlawing such a thing). I would think that, if nothing else, if I could carry the child enough to term, that at the very least he/she could serve as an organ donor, so that perhaps other children might live who wouldn't otherwise. But I don't really know what I would do. I wouldn't know unless I was put in such a position, and since I'm in menopause now, that's not gonna happen. In general, I don't think such a decision should be encouraged, much less forced, either way, just as I feel about abortion laws in general. It is a deeply personal, individual thing, and each person's choice ought to be respected.

icad so sorry for what you went though.

Babies with anencephaly are not allowed to be organ donors as I looked into that while I was carrying. I'm not even sure 12 years later as to why as there is no other abnormality. I would have really liked if my little girl could have given another baby life, but it wasn't to be.

I do agree on iCad's exact point here - it's really circumstantial, which is the point I was trying to make in the first place. Nobody can say for anybody else, because everyone's different. If it were me, I would do it for my own personal reasons, but I know people who wouldn't out of any number of reasons. It's just like how my dad, who when my mother died after giving birth, knew that he had nothing. He was so poor that he couldn't even eat, so he gave me away for a better life. Some people would argue that that's uncaring, but then again, everyone has their reasons for anything and everything. You can't debate another person's decision unless they're being held accountable by law, which in that case is kind of . . . well, the court's job, no?

Would you personally force anybody to do something by taking away an option that is legally in most places a human right and in some places, even more than that - a compassionate act? They don't have to take the option if it's there, but if it IS there, it can be used by those people who choose it instead of being railroaded into something they no longer feel they have a choice in BECAUSE the option is no longer there. Also, on that point, there would of course have to be social infrastructure in place to help these women and girls, or it would lose its effectiveness in rural areas with little access to things like hospitals or doctors. Case in point below.

There's the story of this girl in a school I went to that I knew quite well through being table partnered with her. I was living in a small town at the time, and there wasn't much of a government agency in the area. Not much of anything, really. Trailer park, farms, a gas station, two bars, and a grocery store.

She got pregnant one night under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and her mother wouldn't give her money to get an abortion, let alone take her to get a checkup. There was literally nowhere in the area that did it for free. She wasn't the richest person in the world, and adoption was out of the picture as well as the place to arrange it was quite the ways away and she had no way of getting there. Nobody would take her that she knew.

The guy didn't remember her, denied it ever happened, and left her stranded. The school wouldn't help, and that's as far as they looked. She was eventually pretty much railroaded into having this kid, and I don't know how it turned out because I moved away before it ended, but a guy I knew from there told me a bit later on in one of our Skype sessions that she was still raising this baby. Totally forced into it. I know for a fact that she didn't want the baby in the first place. If there had been stuff in place for this girl to get help, then she would've had more options. Which leads to my point - cases can differ. There are so many variables as to what could've happened with the girl, but because there was a lack of help available, she was forced into something she didn't want to do.

Gosh, what you went through is actually, as far as I'm concerned, much worse. *hugs*

That's terrible that anencephalic babies can't be organ donors. If there's no abnormality otherwise, why the hell not??? Frankly, one of the reasons why I didn't abort when I was rape-pregnant was that, if only in my mind, the child gave the rape a curious sort of purpose. No one else understood my mindset at all, but...it was what it was and it was very strong. Knowing that there was purpose was comforting to me. I knew that I couldn't raise him myself, but I knew that there were people who wanted children but couldn't have them...and as it turned out, it was fairly easy to find them, perhaps because I was living in New York City at the time. And then, he grew up to make this remarkable contribution so...Yeah, in the end, there WAS a purpose for it all, and I can see it now and know it and...Yeah, the circumstances of his creation (greatly) sucked for me, but they were what they needed to be at that time and place, for whatever reason, and now I am completely at peace with all of it. (And, as a bonus, I have two grandchildren whom I adore, although I don't get to see them nearly as often as I'd like since they spend most of their time in Africa and they're not yet old enough to email and stuff.) I think if I had aborted my son, it would all still be meaningless in my mind and I think it would still be preying on me. I think. I don't know. But I think.

In a similar vein, if I was carrying an anencephalic baby and he/she could be an organ donor, then to me that would give the whole thing purpose as well, and that would allow me to take some comfort in an otherwise completely tragic situation. I would know that my child needed to be exactly what he/she was, with a particular genetic makeup and such, in order to allow another, somewhere, to live or to have a better quality of life. But to have that legally barred for some God-knows-why reason...Well, that sucks, to say the least.

More hugs to you.

I don't qualify pain if that's the correct word. What you went through was totally different but also horrible and unfair. So I don't believe in saying well my pain was worse or better. It's all unjust and painful and not things I would want anybody to have to live through. I'm sure yours was also a kind of grief and there is no wrong or right way to deal with it, your mind deals with things how it needs to. I'm glad your mind is at rest over the situation and that you have two adorable Grandchildren now. I'm just old enough to have Grandchildren but I had my two children somewhat later in life so none yet.

I hope things have changed with the donating of organs. I can understand if the baby has other deformities or is still born, but my daughter lived for 40 minutes. No doubt I was given a reason at the time, but it may have just all gone over my head. It's not something I want to look into now, I think it would upset me.

*hugs*

True, one's perception of a bad event is always colored by one's own personality and how the event gets "filtered" in one's brain. I suppose most women can't assimilate the idea of being violently raped, so that would seem a horror to them. (And don't get me wrong. It IS. But, as they say, time heals all wounds -- and this was 31 years ago, actually almost to the day, now that I think about it! for me -- and the brain is probably the best analgesic of them all.) So to me, not having any "filters" in place, the notion of finding out that a much-loved/wanted but not-yet-born child is 99.99% guaranteed to die before, during, or very shortly after birth...Well, that's just inconceivable, even though, as I said, I'm really not the most maternal woman in the world. So... *Yet more hugs*

We held our son, we wrapped him in a cute but way too big babyblanket (the nurses helped with that), we took pictures, we got a cute footprint, we were asked if we wanted to bury him ourselves or if it was ok to cremate him with other aborted children. They warned us that they only cremated 3 times a year. We still chose the latter, because to me at least it felt like he would have little friends with him at the graveyard. The only thing we didnt get was a registration of his birth, and frankly thats not what I care for.

To me, and to my partner it seemed like a horrible thing to wait all those months just to have him die at birth (he didnt have anencephaly). To see him struggle for oxygen and not getting any.
I believe every family should have a choice to follow their heart. And I believe its just not the mothers choice, fathers suffer just as the mother and I hated how my partner was ignored. Apart from the sorrow for our son, the anger at the way my partners feeling were brushed away still lives inside me.

I think that really brings in a debate of ethics and being humane.

It brings up a question: Is there a point where the <pain, torture, etc.> is worse than the preciousness of life.

And, that's what suicide is exactly, when someone finds the pain in their life not worth living for. And, that's a type of question only someone can answer themself. And, sometimes they don't even know the answer. And, in cases where a woman knows her baby will suffer from a terminal illness/disability/ etc. she can't ask her baby. So, of course, it's her decision.

I know this thread is old but I just want to add my opinion.
I am pro-choice. If I personally had a baby with Anencephaly I would probably get an abortion. Somehow, for me, that would be less traumatic and painful.

I'm sorry about what you guys have been through! I can't imagine

I personally think that it is the mother's choiche to have an abortion in any case, I think that decisions concerning one's own body should be dictated by the morality of others. I dont think I would have an abortion if the child was healthy and my life wasn't in danger, but I am not a woman and I can't judge women who choose to have the abortion even if the child is healthy.

I think I am pro-choice as well. From some investigation, apparently fetuses have no sign of life and are truly just a blob throughout the stages that an abortion can take place, so you aren't really taking its life. But I also think that if you don't want to have a baby of your own, and you're pregnant.. just give it up for adoption. Yeah. I am really on the fence with this one. :/

Fetuses with Anencephaly - Should their abortion be allowed?

This is the original question to this entire thread.

In Narainu’s top post, she specifies that in her area the laws state when and why a woman can abort a child. She tells us that politicians are talking about adding to the “ok to abort” list pregnant women who carry a fetus that tested positive for Anencephaly.

Narainu gives her opinion on abortion, but asks everyone who came to read what she had to say about their opinions. She does state that she feels woman should be “stimulated”, but here I think she means that women should be told their chances with the child. Her opinion on this is bias, as she herself would probably feel the child would not have a true chance at life, and therefore feel she herself would not bare the pain of trying to raise then losing her child. I cannot guarantee this is what she meant, but it is what I took away from it.

Now, when giving an opinion, which is exactly what it is. You can give your opinion, and if you have personal experience you can use it as an explanation. However, an opinion is a person’s personal moral reasoning and choice on a subject. Personal opinion does not be need to be debated, but simply stated. Fighting over beliefs and opinions on matters is not necessary as not everyone need feel the same.

I am a mother, I have two children. I have not had to bury a child, and I pray to any god that will hear me to never have to bury one of my decedents. I love them dearly. I also believe that no matter what, abortion is a woman’s choice. If the mother, who must carry the child inside her, decides she cannot bare to birth a child simply to lose him/her in a few minutes then that is her choice and no one else’s.

I personally could never handle this. I cannot abort though either, as my self-morals will not allow me to destroy a life without ever being near it, holding it, and naming it. I am trapped in this situation. My fiancé has a different view on this, and we may not see eye to eye, but he is also woman’s choice and promises to always respect any choice I make.

I support a woman's right to choose, so my answer to the topic title is obviously "Yes".
It's not even a moral dilemma for me, as in my view, life starts at cognition, not conception.

I will even go so far as to say that I don't think males should have any say on the matter. Having an opinion, as I do, is fine, but I don't think elderly white male politicians should be the ones making this decision on behalf of women. Some men may argue that, "but that baby is half mine!" True as that may be, but the woman is the one who will have to endure the entire 9-months of carrying it, the pain of giving birth to it, any complications that may occur, and ALL potential health risks, death being one of them. So for that reason, I think it should be the entirely up to the woman.

I remember shouting "AMEN" to another one of your posts, and here I go again

AMEN.