Pro-birth or pro-life?

I don’t normally write about political things, especially political things happening in other countries, but the subject of abortion and the rights of people having autonomy over their own bodies is something that I feel strongly about, so it’s prompted me to put my view out there.

When I was pregnant with Puds, Chris and I went for our 12 week scan. All was normal with the pregnancy up to that point, until the measurement for the nuchal fluid was taken (for those who don’t know, this is the clear fluid at the back of the baby’s neck that often appears in the early stages of pregnancy). A normal measurement is anything under 3.5mm. Puds was measuring over 7mm, more than double.

We were taken into a little room to have everything explained to us and I had my bloods taken to check for my hCG levels and a hormone that would indicate if we should be concerned. Both came back high. This meant our unborn baby had a higher than average chance of having trisomy 21, 18, or 13. The first would not have been an issue for us. A child with Down Syndrome would not have prompted us to terminate the pregnancy, all we would have required was a little more research and preparation, but nothing we would have been overly concerned about. The other two however, Edwards and Patau syndromes, were not something we had ever considered or even heard of before that moment. A foetus with either of those conditions usually has multiple severe birth defects, and will most often die during the pregnancy or shortly after birth. We were booked into see a specialist a week later who would be able to check our baby’s physical development in more detail and tell us if we should consider a termination. We also paid for a private blood test that would test the baby’s DNA for each trisomy.

As you can see from my previous blogs, and Facebook and Instagram posts we had a happy ending. Puds was fine, in fact by the time we had our 20 week scan the nuchal fluid had completely disappeared and he was developing into a very healthy and strong little boy, but for those three weeks between that first scan and receiving the all clear, the thought of potentially needing to abort this very wanted and loved little baby was at the forefront of our minds.

After hearing news from the US that their Roe & Wade law was overturned my heart goes out to all those who have a uterus. Because abortions are legal in the UK not once did I have to consider the need to carry a potentially non viable pregnancy to term, just because some men in power that didn’t know me or my life told me I had to. Not once did I have to consider that I might need to travel to another country, to pay extortionate amounts of money we didn’t have, to see a doctor and have a procedure in an unfamiliar place with no one around us. It never crossed my mind that my then two year old daughter would possibly need to watch my stomach grow each week, watch her mother go through a traumatic pregnancy and birth only to see her baby sibling suffer and die shortly afterwards, if they even made it that far.

Abortions are not easy procedures, and I am incredibly lucky I have never needed one and that it never came to that during my second pregnancy, but being forced to go through what we went through with the additional stress of no options to safely terminate is something I can’t even imagine.

I make no secret of it, before I had my children I wasn’t sure if I wanted them at all. I can’t imagine my life without them now, they are my whole world, but before them I was terrified of pregnancy and childbirth. I am not a naturally maternal person. I am very loving, and shower my kids with affection, but pregnancy and motherhood is not something that I find easy. I’ve had to work hard at it, and I know I’m not the only one. More and more women are being open about the desire to not have children and to force it on them because they made one mistake, or because they have been sexually abused or raped, or because sometimes contraception just fails, is surely subjecting them to a life of resentment and poor mental health. Neither of which are good for the child, and putting them into an already over stretched care system is not the answer either.

Abortion is never easy. I’m sure there will be a handful of people out there who do think of it lightly, but that will be very much the minority. I have known women who fell pregnant very young and chose to terminate their pregnancies. Still years later they mourned their babies. None of them regretted their decision as it was the right choice for them at that time, but they still grieved. It is not a choice most people will go into without serious thought. Having old men in the Supreme Court, and religious groups who conveniently overlook that the bible says nothing about abortions being wrong, but does emphasise that they should be kind and not judge, tell people that they are murderers for making the best choice they could for their own lives and that of their unborn foetus, is only going to increase cases of poor mental health and poor standards of living.

It seems to me that this whole thing has nothing to do with pro-life at all or they would care about the lives of the children beyond birth. They would care for the people with uteruses that would have their lives completely flipped upside down by being forced to go through with an unwanted pregnancy. Having children changes and often puts at risk your life, your body, your health, even your way of thinking. Everything changes. When the baby is wanted it is a sacrifice that is willingly made and prepared for, but imagine being forced to have all those changes happen to you when you didn’t want them to, when you weren’t prepared for it. Call me dramatic, but I see it as nothing short of cruel torture.

What this is truly about is control. We should all be granted the basic human right of autonomy over our own bodies, but by removing this law all the US government have done is declared that they see uterus owners as nothing more than vessels. Lowly animals who must do as they’re told or face the consequences. The “Land of the Free” has taken away one of its most basic freedoms; the right to have a say in what happens to your own body.

I hope with everything that is in my being that the UK does not follow suit, because I have no idea how I would explain to my daughter that her country has failed her. I am raising her to be sensible and smart about sex, but mistakes happen, violence happens, and as I almost experienced with my own pregnancy, unexpected health issues happen. Obviously I wish that nothing puts her in that situation in the future, but if it does I need her to be confident in the fact that there is a way out should she choose it.

At the end of it all that is all anyone is asking for. The right to choose.