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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI hate hate hate so-called pro-lifers. I hate hate hate anti-choicers.
Our 30-year-old daughter has avoided possible disaster or death because we live in Virginia, where abortion care is legal (for now).
Over Labor Day weekend, our youngest daughter joyfully told us she and her husband were expecting. We were all overjoyed. Then she started spotting. Went to the doctor who ordered labs, and her HCG was within normal limits for how many weeks she was pregnant (about 5). Nothing could be seen on ultrasound.
Next week, continued to spot. Six weeks pregnant. Another HCG blood level - continued to rise. Nothing was seen on ultrasound. The doctor said he was hopeful the pregnancy would continue.
Long, long, long story short, more blood tests, more ultrasounds, and they assumed she had a pregnancy somewhere but couldn't see anything. Nothing was visible in the Fallopian tubes. Nothing in her uterus. They gave her a shot of methotrexate which would end the pregnancy since they knew there were embryonic cells still growing somewhere but not where it was supposed to be. HCG started going down, but very slowly.
Yesterday she had abdominal pain. She went to the ER, was admitted, and had another ultrasound which showed blood in her abdomen. She ended up having emergency surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy and one Fallopian tube.
She was past the magical six-week mark. IF WE LIVED IN A STATE WHERE ABORTION WAS ILLEGAL SHE MIGHT BE DEAD.
ismnotwasm
(42,411 posts)I hate them too. Unapologetically
FakeNoose
(35,227 posts)I'm hoping she has a full recovery. Thanks for sharing this story. It's just further proof that it must be a private decision between the patient and her doctor. No one else has any reason to intrude.
Diamond_Dog
(34,294 posts)packman
(16,296 posts)May I suggest you send this into your state reps to thank them for their support in saving your daughter's life.
Heather MC
(8,084 posts)How's your daughter?
When she is ready, if she is ready to try again, recommend that she UPS her fruits and vegetables and drinks clean water.
And tell her not to be afraid to try again when her heart is ready💜💜💜
And I know you're doing this because you're a good mommy, but make sure everybody around her allows her to grieve. Losing the baby you want is never ever ever ever easy no matter what stayed your process your end in the pregnancy.
Blue Owl
(54,308 posts)maxsolomon
(34,876 posts)this is an abortion, and it kills that embryo, and that is an easy choice. there is no other option.
but this "exception" (i think there are plenty of these types of exceptions) doesn't factor in to their binary definitions. or policy.
get well soon.
housecat
(3,137 posts)maxsolomon
(34,876 posts)all those celibates giving pro-life homilies every sunday believe they've thought about it.
jaxexpat
(7,604 posts)I certainly appreciate the OP's hatred of these self-righteous, twit-witted, do-gooder life bandits but I think the true spear sharpeners are ambitious Republican politicians. Those characters see nothing but binary solutions because they're incapable of understanding anything beyond their binary world. Immune to education but they test well, you see.
ShazzieB
(18,372 posts)They assume that there's nothing to think about. To them, it's a cut and dried issue. Most forced birthers believe the following 3 things, or some combination thereof:
1. Abortion = "killing babies" = bad (actually, they all believe this)
2. The only reason women have abortions is to avoid having babies they don't want to have.
3. The only women who want to have abortions are those who want to have sex without any "consequences" (i.e., babies they don't want to have).
They know some women will be "inconvenienced" if they are not able to terminate unwanted pregnancies, but they don't see being forced to carry to term and birth an unwanted child as anything more than that: an inconvenience. And since everyone knows how babies get made (sex!) how to avoid getting pregnant (don't have sex!), you shouldn't be having sex if you don't want to be pregnant. Then there's the part they don't usually say out loud: if you have sex and aren't willing to accept the "consequences" (i.e., pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood), well, that's just too bad. "You could have just kept your legs together, you slutty slut, but you didn't, so now you have to pay the piper!"
It doesn't even occur to them that there might be anything else to consider. Pregnancy and having babies are common, every day occurrences, and most people outside the medical profession have absolutely no clue how many things can go wrong in a myriad of ways. It doesn't even occur to them that there might be anything else they need to know.
And so the forced birther politicians end up making laws that are completely divorced from reality and lead to all kinds of nightmare situations like the ones we've been reading about since Alito and his merry band of makevolent misogynists struck down Roe. And we get state legislators who are shocked (shocked, I tell you!) to learn about the nightmare scenarios they've created.
If I rolled my eyes hard enough to express what I think of the chowderheaded dimwits who make these awful draconian laws, they'd get stuck and I'd have to spend the rest of my life looking at my own brain, so I'll just close with a few of these:
niyad
(118,979 posts)maxsolomon
(34,876 posts)at least on the part of the millions of RTL women in America.
CharleyDog
(763 posts)Snackshack
(2,541 posts)
but I have zero respect for them. None I have ever met has spent a minute at being any type of big brother, big sister or foster parent. Growing up as ward of the state of California the first few years of my life none of these folks ever showed even a passing interest at doing anything to improve any orphans life.
They yell and scream and stomp their feet about a fetus but vanish the second after birth. They will gladly consign a woman to death to further their misguided dogmas. Because it costs nothing to be anti choice and everything if they actually cared.
I am in my 5th decade and I can say without hesitation religion is one of the worst inventions humans have contrived too smooth their vanity (this cant be all there is Im too special there must be more after this) or weakness, one should not need to be feared into being a decent person with burning for eternity.
Farmer-Rick
(11,127 posts)It is a destructive force in the world. The religious followers pretend to be charitable but they are so easily manipulated by evil. If there was such a thing as a devil, it would have invented religion to introduce evil to the world.
American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, Steven Weinberg once famously said, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion."
https://m.economictimes.com/opinion/vedanta/two-good-reasons/articleshow/11299834.cms
Snackshack
(2,541 posts)Was 100% right.
It was a sad day to read if his passing not long ago.
Farmer-Rick
(11,127 posts)Over a year ago. Sigh, we lost a good man.
Dorn
(560 posts)* Sorry to hear of your daughter's ectopic pregnancy
* Rich people will always be able to get any kind of medical treatment they want
* All medical care must be 100% free for everyone
* Since the ruling it is much clearer that abortions are not a choice: they are part of standard, normal, required health care
* Hating doesn't help
TeamProg
(6,630 posts)Perhaps bring greater attention to these dangers within forced the birth states?
IbogaProject
(3,465 posts)I'm taking a guess that ivf might be an option if her other tube gets damages if she saves some eggs now. Many states require health insurance to cover fertility treatments for trying for1st and 2nd child up to ago 40 or 42.
Hekate
(94,107 posts)I agree with you about the forced-birthers. They are fanatics who dont give a damn about anyones life.
TNNurse
(7,083 posts)should be charged with practicing medicine without a license and also maybe manslaughter if the woman does not survive.
mnhtnbb
(31,909 posts)result in: ectopic pregnancy. I am so sorry for her loss--and yours--and the fear you all experienced.
Ectopic pregnancy rate is about 2%. In 2020 there were 3.6 million live births in the US and over 900,000 abortions, which would mean about 90,000 ectopic pregnancies.
Forced birthers don't care about those women. They just don't care.
For stats on the US birth rate
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57003722
Abortion statistics
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/
wils3038
(13 posts)What happened in Iran where the police beat a young woman to death for not wearing a head scarf is exactly what Republicans want here in America.
barbtries
(29,625 posts)A woman close to my family was pregnant last year: happy, looking forward to it. At the anatomy scan they got the unthinkable news that their daughter had a condition which was incompatible with life. She had to make the decision whether to continue or terminate the pregnancy. She made what I believe to be the best decision, and like your daughter, fortunately in a state that allowed the termination.
All that's gonna change if republicans gain any more power than they currently have. We're in NC and it's very likely that the rights we now have will go away soon, because republicans have a gerrymandered lock on this state.
My ex-DIL had an ectopic pregnancy requiring emergency surgery. Her symptoms began with pain that was so bad she literally passed out. She could have died. Didn't know she was pregnant.
she did go on to have a healthy pregnancy after this happened. I just say that to hopefully give some hope and comfort to your daughter - I am so sorry for your loss, so happy that she is okay.
PatrickforB
(15,059 posts)Because let's tell it like it is. These people want to jam their religious ideology down the rest of our throats at the expense of our wives, daughters and granddaughters' very lives.
Allowing a human being like your daughter to die because her ectopic pregnancy wasn't detected until after six weeks is odious, immoral, and fanatical. Evil.
niyad
(118,979 posts)(back in the '70's), called them anti-choice woman-haters.
Celerity
(46,154 posts)'anti-abortion' as a label automatically sets ups a problematic dialectic in people's minds that you must then be 'pro-abortion' (and not simply pro choice)
As a female (and if I was a male as well, or neither gender too), I am not pro-abortion, I am pro RIGHT to an abortion if that is a woman decides to do.
PatrickforB
(15,059 posts)Genki Hikari
(1,766 posts)Because it's what they are.
They hate women who have sex, and they are perfectly willing to kill any who dare to have it without popping out little brats everywhere, preferably blond-haired white ones.
They will be in for a huge shock when their polices result in an acceleration of brown babies being born (because they have abortions, too, that you just took from them, too).
And just wait for the wailing they'll do when they get the tax bill for the massive orphanages we'll have to build to house all the unwanted babies because there won't be enough people to adopt the surge of new births. There aren't enough people now to adopt all the unwanted kids, and they "think" making more of them will improve that situation? What do they think will happen to all the kids born from this? That some magic fairy will come along and house, feed, clothe and educate them for free?
They never think through these things because they are stupid, and, worse, they're too stupid to see how they are the cause of all the human misery and devastation born of their stupid.
Carlo Cipolla was right: Stupidity is the root of all evil.
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)I'm sure there are stats as to when pregnancies fails & when it's noticed and medical care is necessitated, and they choose cutoffs just on the other side of that date range. They seem to be that intentionally cruel and uncaring, so long as it garners them more power.
Lonestarblue
(11,481 posts)organs cannot be done until around 20 weeks, so those women who have an unviable fetus would still have a carry a baby they know will die at birth or will be severely impaired for several more months, thus jeopardizing her own physical and emotional health. The cruelty of the forced birthers is astonishing.
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)Farmer-Rick
(11,127 posts)"Its not until around 17 to 20 weeks, when the four chambers of the heart have developed and can be detected on an ultrasound, that the term heartbeat is accurate, according to ACOG. (American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology)"
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna24435
But the religiously insane want us all to believe a fluttering tube of an embryo amplified by medical equipment is a heartbeat. It has gill slits on the side of its head with a fish tale and yolk sac at 6 weeks when the religiously insane think it magically takes priority over the life of the mother.
PatrickforB
(15,059 posts)want to enact legislation that declares that life begins at fertilization. Talk about going back to the dark ages!
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)By shifting verbal shorthand they've set it up so they can "prove" life begins at conception. They've been playing 3-card Monty with their rhetoric.
The problem for them has always been that until quite near birth, there is nobody home inside the human brain. We now know that's because until that stage of fetal brain development, there simply is not the capacity for organized signals. It's more like a room full of spools of cable rather than a computer network. And in humans and other animals with complex brains, the individual exists in the brain. Our consciousness exists in the brain. But not until it has made a sufficient number of connections between neurons - and this is key - and then pruned them so that organized signaling is possible.
Christian extremists used to depend on their belief in a "soul" to determine when a fetus became a person. Problem is, that's a matter of personal opinion, not fact. It was a weak arguing point outside of their subculture. Now though, they've shifted the language so that people talk about when "life" begins. A single cell bacteria is life. A mushroom is life. As is a human fetus. None of them are a person though.
yardwork
(63,683 posts)One of the cruelest aspects of these horrific laws are how they pretend to negate people's real feelings of loss. Nobody wants an ectopic pregnancy. Your daughter and your family wanted the baby. Thank goodness your daughter was able to obtain care.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)been handled somewhat differently because of that. At least I hope some people in the chain of decisions would have had the required basic good sense.
It's also likely that a lot of local OBGs and hospitals will have had time now to adjust practices to meet the new realities. People will be discussing their experiences on social media. OBG issues and emergencies didn't just stop last June, after all.
Btw, when intense emotional reaction is uncontrollable, maybe direct it toward something positive? Like donations to those who do good? Our job is to STOP those who believe hating others excuses anything they do.
Best wishes that you all will have that precious new life in your lives soon.
Demovictory9
(33,465 posts)Stuart G
(38,726 posts)soldierant
(7,744 posts)I'll bet you are going to be celebrating it like crazy.
orleans
(34,754 posts)and you went through this as well
Mad_Machine76
(24,766 posts)are just too complicated for anti-choice laws to not harm or kill pregnant people. Period. And nobody should be forced to accept a pregnancy they don't want either. And pregnant people in anti-choice states are the same as those in pro-choice states. Alito, et. al would have us believe that modern civil rights laws have eliminated any barriers for women (totally excluding Trans men or non-binary persons), so that abortions shouldn't even be necessary. The illogic of the Dobbs "decision" will (hopefully) have legal historians puzzling over it for centuries.
Farmer-Rick
(11,127 posts)It's law created by religiously insane judges. Legislation from the bench is frequently incoherent.
Mad_Machine76
(24,766 posts)nobody who looks at their decision can come to no other conclusion than SCOTUS wanted this result and twisted themselves into pretzel knots in order to justify it (very reminiscent of the Iraq War and "fixing the intelligence" ). They had a case, they had the votes to do it, and they decided to go for it. End of line.
Farmer-Rick
(11,127 posts)Makes them look invincible.
Let's hope it enrages enough intelligent people to come out and vote against the people who appointed them.
brooklynite
(96,882 posts)Elessar Zappa
(15,369 posts)I assume that means that hes personally against abortion but believes its the womans choice?
brooklynite
(96,882 posts)Hermit-The-Prog
(36,304 posts)Roe, Roe, Roe your vote
against theocracy!
Republicans revoke your rights
and kill democracy!
THESE are the races that will determine control of the House of Representatives:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217175231
Stick 'em up for a blue wave: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217078977
hamsterjill
(15,440 posts)First, thank goodness your daughter was able to get the treatment she needed.
Pregnancy should be a private matter and no one elses business, whether continued or discontinued. Private. End of story.
niyad
(118,979 posts)for complete recovery and healing.
Like you, I hate them, because they would just as soon see us all dead.
Rebl2
(14,448 posts)to hear of her experience. Fortunately they caught it in time, but barely it sounds like. You are certainly correct that in some states she likely would die. I cannot tolerate or have any respect for these people who are making these laws putting womens lives in danger. It is nobodys business but the woman, her doctor, and who she chooses to tell.
dlk
(12,231 posts)It should be called out every time. Being able to make personal medical decisions without political interference is pro-freedom.