#Post Fetal Viability Abortion | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

surreality51 · 2 months

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My little boy turns 1 years old this week. He is a real miracle. I know people talk about the miracle of life etc etc. In his case, it really is a miracle that he is here, because we weren't at all sure he was going to make it.

(Long ass post under the cut. Warnings for discussions of pregnancy and pregnancy complications, consideration of abortion, infant medical conditions, childbirth, medical procedures/surgery, and religion)

When we went in for our 20-week anatomy scan, the maternal-fetal specialist delivered devastating news: our baby had severe heart abnormalities. There were parts of his heart she simply couldn't find on the scan, and parts that appeared to be on the wrong side. Her best guess: DiGeorge Syndrome. She recommended genetic testing and a referral to a regional specialist for high-risk pregnancies. She also gently offered to refer us to a clinic if we decided to end the pregnancy.

We took the sheet with the clinic phone numbers and walked out of the doctor's office stunned.

The next few days were the worst days of my life.

There were so many unanswered questions. Was it DiGeorge? If so, how severe would it be? Would he be able to walk? Would he be able to eat? Would he even make it to term?

On top of all these questions, there was that list of clinics sitting on our dresser and a ticking clock in our minds. Our US state allows abortions up to viability, which was generally 22-24 weeks. We were at 22 weeks. My husband and I stayed up for three nights debating what to do. We wanted this baby, but we didn't want him to live a life of suffering.

That Sunday, we went to mass as a family--us and our two girls. It was the first time we had gone since the pandemic started, our first time in three years. The girls talked about how excited they were to have a baby brother. My husband and I pasted smiles on our faces and said nothing about what we were considering.

At the end of mass, after the priest had given his final blessing and people were gathering up their things, a woman came up to us. We had seen her before at church, but we had never spoken.

"Congratulations!” she said, pointing at my round belly.

“Thanks,” I replied automatically.

“You don’t know me,” she continued, “but I remember you guys from before the pandemic. Your younger daughter was just a baby then. She’s a big kid now!”

We smiled and introduced ourselves and our daughters.

“Are you having a boy or a girl?” the lady asked.

“A boy,” my husband replied.

“How nice! I have three boys. This is my youngest,” she gestured to the young man beside her. He was taller than her, but they shared the same dark hair, mocha-toned skin, and broad smile. She patted him on the arm. “He’s home visiting during spring break from college. They grow up so fast.”

He waved hello.

Then she turned toward us, smiling kindly, and said, “You’re going to have so much fun."

We thanked her and said we hoped to see her again next time.

I didn’t think much about the exchange, as we had to get the girls some lunch and then go grocery shopping, but later at night after the kids were asleep and my husband and I were getting ready for bed, he turned to me and said, “I think we’re going to be okay.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. It had only been four days since the diagnosis, but those four days had felt like four years. I was still feeling like our whole future as a family was teetering on the edge of a great unknown.

“I think everything is going to be alright,” he said, “because of what that woman said. Did you hear? I was praying last night for God to send us a sign, show us the right path, whether it’s to continue on or to abort. Just show us which way to go. And then today a lady who has never spoken to us before, and hasn’t seen us for years, suddenly feels compelled to come up to us in church with her third son and tell us that we’re going to have so much fun with our baby, who is our third kid and is a son. She didn’t have to do that. There was no reason for her to approach us, she's never come up to us before, she doesn't even know our names. But something pushed her to speak up in that moment.”

I stared back at him, dumbfounded. I don’t know much about God or fate (he's the one who is religious, not me), but sometimes things are just a bit too on the nose to be a coincidence.

Ten days later, we got the first part of our genetic testing results: no major chromosomal abnormalities. A week after that, detailed scans with a specialist confirmed the severe heart defects, but no other visible defects.

Two weeks later, the rest of the test results came back: no DiGeorge Syndrome.

Our baby was going to make it.

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It wasn't all smooth sailing after that. There were still a lot of questions about his heart defects and how they would affect him. In all, the fetal cardiologists identified 10 things wrong with his heart. Usually they can show a standard anatomical drawing of a heart and point to what was wrong; with our baby's heart, they had to hand-draw what his heart looked like, because there were just too many abnormalities. It was that far off from a normal heart.

The craziest part was that he was still alive and growing. It took the fetal cardiologists--specialists who are part of a nationally ranked children's hospital and who see complex cases every day--nearly two hours to figure out how our baby was still getting oxygen circulated when his heart was so fucked up. (Usually a diagnosis takes 45 minutes.)

It turns out that his defects are a case of "two wrongs make a right." For example, he is missing his pulmonary valve (pulmonary atresia). This is Bad, because the pulmonary valve and pulmonary artery are part of what connects the heart to the lungs. No pulmonary valve or artery means the heart can't pump blood to the lungs to pick up oxygen. It can also lead to a weakened, underdeveloped right ventricle because no oxygen is going to that side of the heart (Very Bad). BUT, if you happen to have a hole in your heart wall (ventricular septal defect), then that hole acts like a back door for the blood to flow from the left ventricle to the side that's not getting any oxygen (right ventricle).

In other words, usually having a hole in your heart is Bad and can require open heart surgery to fix, but in this case is Good because it is a workaround for the missing pulmonary valve.

Of the 10 things wrong with his heart, about half of them are workarounds that happen mitigate the other, more serious defects. The surgeon said that his heart is messed up in exactly the right way for him to survive.

It's amazing--miraculous, even--how the human body can adapt to survive.

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Despite reassurances from the doctors that our baby would most likely make it to term, I was incredibly nervous that he would be born premature or stillborn. At the same time, I didn't want to induce labor early because my husband and I believe that babies will be born when they're ready and it's generally not a good idea to induce labor unless you have to. But the doctors wanted to schedule an induction because they didn't know what our baby's condition would be at birth--would he be able to breathe on his own? would his circulation adapt to being outside the womb? They usually schedule an induction so they can ensure the whole medical team is available when the baby arrives. (i.e. so the baby doesn't come on a Tuesday and require emergency surgery but the head surgeon works at a different hospital on Tuesdays)

We didn't even have the option to pick the date, it was just whatever day during week 39 when the whole medical team--my OBGYN, the neonatologists, the respiratory specialist, the cardiac interventionist, and the cardiac surgeon--were available. Our case manager told us that we would be notified when a date was selected.

Funny enough, the one date where all the schedules aligned was August 8. (Federer's birthday)

Still, as the induction date approached, my husband and I felt conflicted about essentially evicting our baby from the womb. But we understood that it was about logistics and we didn't really have a choice, so we mentally prepared ourselves to show up at the hospital at 10am on August 8 for the induction.

The night before we were supposed to go in for the induction, I started feeling some tightness in my lower back.

"Haha, wouldn't it be funny if he decided to come on his own on August 8 anyway?" I said.

"'You can't evict me if I come out first,'" agreed my husband.

Two hours later, the tightness in my lower back hadn't gone away and in fact had started to spread to my lower abdomen.

"Hmm...maybe I should go shower right now," I said, remembering that I was too tired to shower for 48 hours after my second kid was born.

The first contractions started at 1am on August 8.

We headed to the hospital around 4am. He arrived on his own at 12:10pm.

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[My father told me a few weeks afterward that someone must have been watching over my baby, because we almost didn’t get ahold of my mom when I went into labor.

The plan was that I would call her when I went into labor so she could come watch my two girls while my husband took me to the hospital. (Just my mom; my dad was useless with me as a child and I wouldn’t trust him to watch my plants, much less my children.) But sometimes her cell phone reception at home doesn’t work and her phone goes straight to voicemail without ringing. It happened again when I called at 3am on August 8. I tried three times, getting more frantic with each call. Finally I called my dad’s cell phone.

He picked up on the first ring.

He later told me that he had woken up for no apparent reason and had picked up his phone to check the time. It was 3am so he was about to go back to sleep when he saw my call. His phone was on silent and he’s a deep sleeper, so if he hadn’t randomly woken up at that exact moment, he wouldn’t have seen my call nor gone to get my mom.

My dad is not religious, but he told me that someone must’ve been looking out for me and my son that night.]

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The delivery was the smoothest delivery of my three children, and I take that as another sign that someone was watching over him and me. As soon as he was born, the medical team was all over him. I got to hold him for a single minute before they took him, because given his heart anatomy, there was a small but real chance that he might not get enough oxygen to his brain or body and turn blue, in which case they would need to start emergency measures immediately. My husband and I knew this going in, and my only hope was that he would be alright and I could hold him, if just for a minute.

He came out beautifully, and my OB placed him in my arms and I got to hold him, touch his little hand, and tell him I loved him before they took him to the ICU. My husband went with him, as was the plan. I was wheeled into the recovery room alone.

With my first baby, I had a level 3 tear and could barely walk for a week after delivery. With my second, I had minor tearing but the anesthesiologist messed up the epidural and so I was laid low with an epidural headache for a week. This time, the delivery was so smooth that I had no tearing at all. I was up on my feet within 24 hours and discharged.

It was a lucky thing too, because I wanted to be with my baby. Most hospitals are not equipped to handle babies with such complex heart defects, so the plan was to transfer our baby to the children’s hospital within a few hours of birth, as soon as he was stable enough to be transported. By the time I was discharged, he was already there. My husband stayed with him the whole time and only left to pick me up and drive me over.

I feel like whatever higher being was watching over us knew that I needed to be there with him too, so they gave me the smoothest delivery possible so I could be on my feet and get over to the children’s hospital as soon as possible.

(I’m sure it being my third baby and not my first probably helped too.)

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Being a parent is scary enough, because you hold this little being’s life in your hand and all you can do is hope you don’t fuck them up too badly.

Being the parent of a baby with complex congenital heart defects is fucking terrifying.

On day three, our son had the first of his three planned open heart surgeries. I will never forget the helpless terror of knowing that doctors were going to cut my baby open and do heart surgery on him at three days old. They tell you about the risks and potential side effects or complications before asking you to sign the consent form. The risk of death was low for the procedure, with a 98% survival rate, but 1) we already knew that percentages suck because the chances of having a baby with congenital heart defects in the first place is about 1% and pulmonary atresia occurs in about 1% of that 1%, so we were already screwed by percentages, and 2) the bigger risk is that he would get a stroke or brain bleed or something from being put on the heart-lung bypass machine. They tell you not to Google the chances of complications from the bypass machine, but of course you do, and then you can’t unsee that the risk is somewhere between 40% and 70%.

FUCK.

But you have to sign the forms and let the doctors do their job, because if you don’t do the surgery and risk the bypass machine, the risk of your baby dying from their heart defect is probably 100%.

The hardest thing is knowing that everything is out of your hands, and you just have to pray or hope that your baby comes back to you alive and whole.

I remember seeing him afterwards, with all of the tubes and lines coming out of him and machines beeping everywhere and a gigantic ugly cut running down his chest with stitches holding it closed, and just bursting into tears, because he was so tiny and had to go through all that, and if I could have taken his place, I would have. But this was the hand he was dealt.

I cried again when he opened his eyes and saw us two days later, but this time it was tears of relief, because I could see in his eyes that he still recognized me. He was still in there. He was still whole.

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We were discharged from the hospital in mid September, just before my husband’s birthday. It was the best birthday gift ever, and a cause for celebration. But the months following were not easy. Besides the normal challenges of juggling three kids and surviving newborn boot camp, there were the additional challenges from his medical needs:

He was on oxygen support 24/7 because his oxygen saturation levels would drop without oxygen support. He had to wear a nasal cannula all the time, and if he pulled it off, we basically had a few minutes to get it back on him before he started turning a little blue (spoiler alert: babies are very grabby, especially when they have something taped to their face)

If we wanted to go anywhere with him, we had to bring his portable oxygen tank too. The oxygen tank has about 3 hours of oxygen, so we always had to bring a backup too. We were always on a timer for when we had to switch him to the backup tank or make it home in time to hook him up to the oxygen concentrator. My recurring nightmare was that we got stuck in traffic or caught out somewhere and his oxygen ran out and I would have to watch him die before the ambulance arrives. He was on 7 different medications, including 2 breathing treatments that had to be administered twice a day with special equipment. Some medications were twice a day, some were three times a day, some were every 8 hours around the clock, and you cannot forget or mess up the medication schedule. This was on top of feeding him every few hours and doing all the other things for our older kids so they don’t feel neglected. My husband and I joke that we must’ve had it too easy with our first two kids so this time we had to play on hard mode.

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In February of this year, we got the call we had been waiting for: our son’s second surgery was scheduled for the 12th.

We knew that his second surgery would be somewhere when he was 6-9 months old. The first surgery at 3 days old was to install a shunt, which is basically a connection that allowed him to get blood where it needed to go despite having no pulmonary valve. It was a workaround that would allow him to leave the hospital and grow until he got big enough for the doctors to do the actual repair of his heart. It was never meant as a fix for his conditions, and he would outgrow the artificial shunt somewhere at 6-9 months.

In December, we started noticing his oxygen levels dropping. In January, they were sometimes as low as the 60s. (Normal people are at 95-100% oxygen saturation. His normal target was 75-85%. Anything below 70 was bad.) I wasn’t sure if he was going to make it to his surgery. We watched him anxiously as the day approached, fingers crossed.

The second time is not any easier than the first. This was a complex surgery that would be done by the head surgeon; the first surgery was more routine and was done by one of the other surgeons on the team. Our surgeon was renowned in his field; he even had a procedure named after him. It heartened us to know that we had the best surgeon on our case; it also meant that our case was so complex that only the head surgeon could do the fix. When we asked him how many cases like ours he saw, he said “two or three per year.”

This is a surgeon who does multiple surgeries a day in one of the busiest hospitals in the country.

At least he had seen cases like this before.

The game plan going in was to either do a full fix (anatomical repair) or a workaround (physiological repair). The surgeon said he wouldn’t know which option to do until he got in there and saw with his own eyes what the situation required. Basically our baby’s heart chambers formed correctly (4 chambers in the right place and good size) but all of the major and veins are connected on the wrong side. Veins that are supposed to be on the right side are instead on the left. The aorta comes out of the right ventricle instead of the left as normal. The pulmonary artery, which is supposed to come out of the right ventricle, is straight up missing. So the surgeon could either make the connections go the right way, or make the heart go completely the wrong way. Either option was better than the current half right (chambers are correct) and half wrong (connections are on opposite side). We needed either all right or all wrong.

The risks with the surgery were also greater, because it would be a longer procedure and that meant more time on the bypass machine. The longer you’re on the bypass, the higher the chance of complications like stroke or brain bleed. This was a very long procedure.

The wait in the waiting room is a special kind of hell, because there is nothing to do but wait and think about all the things that could go wrong. When we asked about the risk of our baby dying during the procedure, the surgeon said 15%. When it’s your baby’s life on the line, 15% seems very far from 1% or 0%.

We were told that the surgery would be done around 11am and the surgeon would come to the waiting room to tell us how it went. By noon, he still hadn’t come, and I was trying not to panic that something had gone wrong. Finally he comes at nearly 1pm, almost two hours late, and tells us that our baby’s surgery was successful but they couldn’t do an anatomical repair. They had to do plan B, physiological repair, and make his half-wrong heart all the way wrong. Doing so was actually easier because the heart kinda wanted to go that way anyway, so apparently he got done early and jumped to another surgery. That’s why he was nearly two hours late coming out.

🤦‍♀️

Anyway, so my son has a backwards heart. His aorta is connected to his right ventricle instead of his left, and his pulmonary artery is connected to his left ventricle. The veins connected to his right and left atria were already switched at birth. Most people collect deoxygenated blood in their right atrium and pump blood to their lungs from their right ventricle, then the oxygenated blood comes back from the lungs into the left atrium, and the left ventricle pumps it out to the body thru the aorta. My son’s heart goes the other way: the left ventricle pumps to the lungs and the right ventricle pumps to the body.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at him now. He looks like a normal, happy baby. He loves to eat strawberries and watermelon, loves when his dad reads to him, and loves watching his older sisters. He turns one years old this week, on August 8. We weren’t sure when he was born if he had 6 days, 6 months, 6 years or 60 to live. He’s made it past the first two milestones; chances are pretty good that he’ll make it to 6 years. (Because of his backwards anatomy and the fact that the right ventricle is not designed to pump blood out to the body, there is a 15% chance that he’ll have heart failure and need a heart transplant at some point.)

I don’t know how long we have with him, but I’m grateful for the time we’ve been given so far and will take it one day at a time. He is a true miracle, my baby with the backwards heart.

#personal #tw pregnancy #tw childbirth mention #congenital heart defect #tw medical #it’a been a year

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rapeculturerealities · 1 year

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Two pregnant women with PPROM were denied care after Florida banned abortion - The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/10/pprom-florida-abortion-ban/

When abortion was legal across the country, doctors in all states would typically offer to induce or perform a surgical procedure to end the pregnancy when faced with a pre-viability PPROM case — which is the standard of care, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and an option that many women choose. Especially before the 20-week mark, a fetus is extremely unlikely to survive without any amniotic fluid.

But in the 18 states where abortion is now banned before fetal viability, many hospitals have been turning away pre-viability PPROM patients as doctors and administrators fear the legal risk that could come with terminating even a pregnancy that could jeopardize the mother’s well-being, according to 12 physicians practicing in antiabortion states.

The medical exceptions to protect the life of the mother that are included in abortion bans are often described in vague language that does not appear to cover pre-viability PPROM, doctors said. That’s because the risks of the condition are often less clear-cut than other medical emergencies, such as an ectopic pregnancy, in which a fertilized egg grows outside of the uterus, dooming the fetus and posing an immediate danger to the mother’s life.

A 2022 study on the impact of Texas’s six-week abortion ban found that 57 percent of pre-viability PPROM patients in Texas who were not given the option to end their pregnancies experienced “a serious maternal morbidity,” such as infection or hemorrhage, compared with 33 percent of PPROM patients who chose to terminate in states without abortion bans. According to 2018 ACOG guidance, “isolated maternal deaths due to infection” have been reported in early PPROM cases.

Florida’s abortion law, enacted last year, bans the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy except when an abortion would either “save the pregnant woman’s life” or “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” The law includes another exception for a “fatal fetal anomaly,” which generally would not apply in a pre-viability PPROM case, according to several doctors, because there is no fetal anomaly but a lack of amniotic fluid, which limits the fetus’s chances of survival.

The state’s Republican-led legislature is swiftly moving toward passing a far stricter law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. The new measure — which passed the Florida Senate last week and is awaiting final passage in the House — adds exceptions for rape and incest but does not address PPROM.

One of the sponsors of Florida’s 15-week abortion ban defended the current law as written, saying the existing exception should be sufficient to cover cases with serious health risks. An explicit exception for PPROM is not necessary, she added.

“The bottom line is we value life, and we would like to protect life,” said former Florida state senator Kelli Stargel (R). “We don’t want to give a gaping exception that anyone can claim.”

Of all the pregnancy complications affected by abortion bans, pre-viability PPROM is one of the most widespread, according to doctors interviewed for this story. The condition is common enough that one day after Cook was turned away from the hospital, the same thing happened to one of her closest friends. Shanae Smith-Cunningham, 32, was 19 weeks into her pregnancy when her water broke.

This story of what happened to the two friends is based on over 200 pages of medical records provided by the patients and on internal hospital documents, as well as text messages, videos and social media posts. In addition to Cook and Smith-Cunningham, The Washington Post interviewed friends and family members who witnessed the events, and several of the doctors involved in the women’s care.

#Abortion #Reproductive rights #Tw pregnancy loss #Health care #reproductive justice #reproductive rights

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vomitdodger · 6 months

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From Dr Malones substack.

Note 19 states allow abortion “from 24 weeks until viability”. That in itself is open to interpretation and semantic play as fetal viability is generally accepted as 24 weeks:

And 7 states are without limits. I suppose that means even during active labor? after birth?

Human life is exquisitely precious but not to commie libtards.

I’m sure there be a large response to this post. Most/all will have no clue to the merits of their argument if pro abortion. Their argument ultimately comes down to “I just don’t want to” once you do the science and term dance around it all. And that’s of course without consideration of the preciousness of life.

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secularprolifeconspectus · 2 years

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I truly appreciate the thanks, I've been feeling burned out and this helps to hear. (This is a repost because I made a mistake in the original and didn't want to allow misinformation to spread!)

First, I check to make sure the pro-abort who says "it's just a clump of cells" has a basic understanding of fetal development and embryology. I show them these illustrations of a fetus at 8 and 10 weeks from BabyCenter. And I show them these videos of a 7 week fetus and an 8 week fetus.

Second, I gently enquire if they have had a medication abortion, a miscarriage, or know someone who has. If so, they may believe the fetus was merely a clump of cells due to rapid decomposition in the womb before the remains were expelled and observed. Pro-life artist Bea explains why this happens, and sometimes I have to explain this to the pro-abort as well. This can be devastating for them to learn, so be very sensitive, and if they react defensively, show compassion.

Third, I explain why special human tissues are literally just clumps of cells. Let's break this up into steps:

I tell them the basic characteristics of life, and that NASA uses this criteria to determine if something is a discrete living organism. I show them that genuine human embryos (developed from a totipotent zygote) meet this criteria. They are human organisms.

I establish 2 alternate specimens for comparison: tumors and mock embryos (created from pluripotent stem cells).

I point out that tumors do not inherit DNA, they mutate and replicate DNA, ergo they lack the hereditary criteria of human organisms. They also lack the organized development of organisms. Tumors are merely clumps of cells.

I then explain that genuine embryos are actively attaining, retaining, or restoring the ability to reproduce a genetically distinct offspring, which is an inherent capability of human organisms.

I contrast this to mock embryos. They are not known to be capable of organized development to viability or hereditary reproduction, thus mock embryos are merely clumps of cells.

For good measure, I may explain that we know a brain-dead person isn't living because they will never restore ability, and an embryo is necessarily distinct from the parents but not a twin.

Thus I conclude, human fetuses are discrete living organisms, not mere clumps of cells. Note that this is not an argument as to why human fetuses are morally significant persons with an equal right to not be deliberately, violently killed. I go over some arguments for fetal personhood in this post.

#answers and submissions #hide

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mariacallous · 2 years

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In the latest reminder that the anti-choice movement won’t be happy until it stamps out every last shred of control that American women still have over their own bodies, activists are aggressively targeting abortion pills. Among their goals are to prosecute as illegal drug traffickers anyone who helps women in anti-abortion states obtain the pills and even censor online information about them. The urgency of passing national legislation to protect abortion rights becomes clearer by the day.

When the Supreme Court in June overturned Roe v. Wade, it eliminated the constitutional right to abortion and flung the door open for states to regulate the procedure in any way they choose. More than a dozen states immediately instituted stringent abortion bans — none more so than Missouri, where abortion is now illegal from the moment of conception, even in cases of rape or incest.

That ban includes drug-induced abortions via the federally approved abortion medications mifepristone and misoprostol. The two-step regimen is the safest way to end a pregnancy and works only in the first two months, long before fetal viability, rendering irrelevant the fictional right-wing bogeyman of selective late-term abortions.

To hear the anti-choice crowd tell it, a virtual Underground Railroad for getting abortion pills to women in abortion-ban states has sprung up in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling. If so, that should send a clear message: A great many otherwise law-abiding citizens in red-state America don’t recognize the legitimacy of a government ban on a woman’s right to control her own body — and will do whatever they must to step around it.

But instead of getting that message, anti-choice activists are plotting to go full “Handmaid’s Tale” in order to prevent abortion pills from getting to red-state women. As reported recently in The Washington Post, the multi-pronged effort includes such plans as testing cities’ wastewater for evidence of medical abortions, threatening doctors in abortion-rights states with prison if they help women in anti-choice states get the pills, and requiring internet providers to block information about the pills, the First Amendment be damned.

We’re not here to encourage people to break the laws of their states, though they are not necessarily obliged to obey laws imposed by other states in contravention of actions they are legally allowed to undertake where they live. But it’s worth noting that people in the past who broke unjust laws — by harboring those who had escaped slavery, by refusing to abide by racial segregation, by loving whom they chose — were in the right, and the oppressive agents of government who sought to persecute them for those choices were wrong.

Unjust laws erode the legitimacy of the rule of law itself. And it’s why pro-choice forces in Congress must not stop working to get abortion-rights protections pressed into federal law.

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hornedchick · 13 days

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From PolitiFact:

20:20 PolitiFact Trump repeats false claims about Democrats wanting "execution" of babies after birth Willfully terminating a newborn’s life is infanticide and is illegal in every U.S. state.

Situations resulting in a fetal death in the third trimester are rare, and typically involve fetal anomalies or life-threatening medical emergencies affecting the pregnant woman.

The majority of Democrats support abortion access up to fetal viability, when the fetus is able to survive outside of the womb, typically around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

For fetuses with very short life expectancies, doctors may induce labor and offer palliative care to make the newborn as comfortable as possible. Some families choose this option when facing diagnoses that limit their babies’ post-birth survival to just minutes or days after delivery, reproductive health experts said.

— Samantha Putterman

#fact checking the debate #trump #abortion

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moontyger · 2 months

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For nearly a year, I’ve been tracking this growing strategy: Some of the most powerful anti-abortion organizations in the country are using carefully-worded legislation and seemingly-credible clinical recommendations to codify medical atrocities—pushing doctors to force pregnant women into unnecessary labor and c-sections, even before fetal viability and sometimes even when a fetus has died.

Why would anyone do such a thing? The answer is as simple as it is awful: Anti-abortion groups and lawmakers want to prove that abortion is never necessary to save a person’s life. The problem is that they know pregnancy can be deadly, especially in the United States. Rather than admit abortion can be life-saving, their solution is to force doctors to end deadly pregnancies in any other way—even if it means torturing women in the process.

Anti-abortion lawmakers and activists are so desperate to divorce abortion from health care, they’d prefer to see us dead than allow critically ill women to get care they disagree with.

I mean that literally. This is how they kill us. With the sly shifting of medical standards and surreptitiously-placed legislative language. Because while these people are cruel, they’re certainly not stupid. Anti-abortion extremists know the only way to normalize medical torture is to move quietly and slowly.

...

It’s not a coincidence that reports coming out of anti-abortion states show a sharp rise in c-sections. With their license and freedom on the line, doctors and hospitals are falling in line. One Texas OBGYN who was directed to give a septic patient a hysterotomy told researchers, “The morbidity is going to be insane.”

To people who value fetuses above women, that’s a price they’re willing to pay. Indeed, all of this cruelty starts to make morbid sense when you understand that the broader anti-abortion goal goes beyond forced c-sections or redefining medical standards. They are trying to make Americans numb to women suffering and dying during pregnancy. They’re treating it as unpreventable—natural, even—so that voters don’t bat an eye when the maternal mortality numbers skyrocket.

There’s a reason that Texas has put an anti-abortion extremist on its maternal mortality review board and Idaho has disbanded their committee altogether. Conservatives know what’s coming, and they’re determined to make sure it seems like business as usual to the rest of us.

My worry is that it’s working. After all, did you ever think that you’d watch the Supreme Court hear arguments about how many organs a person can lose before they’re given an abortion? It took less than two years from the demise of Roe for Republican leaders to oppose laws requiring hospitals to save women’s lives.

If women’s deaths are already normalized, what chance do we have of making our suffering seem urgent?

#abortion rights #reproductive rights #US politics #misogyny #Jessica Valenti #read the whole thing #but I'll warn you this one is hard to read because it's so awful #US politics 2024

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dbunicorn · 5 months

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Equal Rights Amendment | Smithsonian Institution

Fetal Viability. Use basic logic

Abortion arguments should be based on science/ logic, not religion. By those arguments everyone having premarital sex is going to hell. Our species would not have survived such cruelty.

When the courts uphold women's RIGHTS as vehemently as they propose control over our bodies we will finally effectively communicate.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2023-06-20/rape-kit-backlogs-remain-in-states-despite-funding

My being pregnant does NOT negate my rights as a human being. Nor does it allow the state to track my movements. A clear violation of the constitution. It certainly doesn't allow a corporation to do so. That's an utterly vile proposition.

So unless your true intention is to make rape legal so women can get back into the kitchen where they belong and you don't have to deal with your immigration issues and declining fertility rates you should reconsider your position. It has no real merit. If you want women to have more children, make housing affordable, have excellent healthcare and education. It's not rocket science.

If you want to talk historical context. Why can't we get the ERA ratified? Because vested parties had an interest in that not happening. Global women's rights are a juggernaut that will not be held back.

Equal societies are more economically prosperous, children have better outcomes, societies are more resilient....on & on

Dinosaurs thinking

#abortion #womens rights #social policy #economics

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justinspoliticalcorner · 12 days

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John Knefel at MMFA:

Right-wing media figures responded to former President Donald Trump’s poor debate performance on Tuesday night by spreading falsehoods about Minnesota’s abortion law. During the debate, Trump made false and misleading assertions about legislation enacted by Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. “But her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine,” Trump said. “He also says execution after birth, it's execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born, is okay.” As ABC News moderator Linsey Davis noted after Trump’s comments, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born.”

Trump’s comments about “abortion in the ninth month” are also misleading. In 2023, Walz signed the Protect Reproductive Options Act, or PRO Act, into law, further codifying the right to an abortion in Minnesota. As KARE11 reported this April, Minnesota healthcare providers performed only one third-trimester abortion in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available. The same was true in 2019 and 2020. In 2021, a single Minnesota resident was listed as having received a third-trimester abortion, but it was performed out of state. Generally, only about one percent of abortions nationwide occur after 21 weeks. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, right-wing figures took Trump’s comments and ran with them.

Right-wing media spread inane falsehoods about Minnesota HF1 to falsely insinuate that Kamala Harris VP pick and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) supports “post-birth abortions.”

Moderator Linsey Davis at Tuesday’s debate rightly noted that “there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born.”

#Tim Walz #Donald Trump #Kamala Harris #Minnesota #Abortion #Post Fetal Viability Abortion #2024 Presidential Debates #2024 Presidential Election #Post Birth Abortion Myth #Minnesota HF1

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sakrumverum · 1 year

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Secular Pro-Life

If abortion were only about the right to refuse the use of your body to another person, there would be no justification for inducing fetal demise before a post-viability abortion. https://t.co/vSFLkbrki7

https://secularprolife.org

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texaxwib · 2 years

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I posted 2,152 times in 2022

That's 961 more posts than 2021!

1,027 posts created (48%)

1,125 posts reblogged (52%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@texaswibcryptoccnooze

@museiums

@international-network

@earthveins

@aurorant

I tagged 857 of my posts in 2022

#entertainment - 255 posts

#celebrities - 101 posts

#korean drama - 90 posts

#flowers - 74 posts

#kdrama - 70 posts

#travel - 68 posts

#art - 59 posts

#flowers lovers - 57 posts

#flower photography - 52 posts

#music - 44 posts

Longest Tag: 36 characters

#may is mental health awareness month

My Top Posts in 2022:

4 notes - Posted July 1, 2022

Every once in a while, a photographer captures that "one moment in time" in the lives of celebrities. A moment that is golden and priceless! (Image credit @ ElonMas64700858 on Twitter)

5 notes - Posted July 13, 2022

My Mother Gave Me Life (A Fact Piece)

Most of the time when I publish content because I feel strongly about an issue that is being hotly debated and the battles lines are drawn, and it’s crystal clear that no matter who says “what”, neither side really has any intention of being persuaded to change their mind or position, I let readers know that I’m publishing “An Opinion Piece”. But I’m making an exception because I feel so strongly about this issue that I’m calling my position “A Fact Piece”.

There are a variety of hashtags in various social media posts:#Abortion … #AbortionIsHealthcare … #AbortionBan … #ProLife … #ProChoice … etc.

Why do all the commercials for any prescription medication have a WARNING which says “Do not take if pregnant or even thinking about getting pregnant as it may harm the unborn”?

They don’t indicate how many weeks or which trimester or moment of conception. In fact, they back it up all the way to BEFORE you even get pregnant.

I’ll tell you why they say that. For the drug companies, it’s not about PRO-LIFE or PRO-CHOICE. It’s not about their ethics or morality or beliefs. They just don’t want to get SUED! They know that the science proves that an “unborn” is living and can be harmed or injured.

You could argue with the drug companies. But I’ll bet they won’t delete that WARNING from their advertisements. No way! When there is a potential for a lawsuit that might result in them paying out millions of dollars in damages … MONEY TALKS!! In the business world, it’s simply a matter of “Risk Management” and protecting their profits.

Anyway! Regardless of what the drug companies say or do, I only have two words for those who support abortion and demand the right to shed innocent blood.

“YA MOMMA!!”

That’s right! ALL you people arguing about your reproductive rights are ALIVE TODAY because YA MOMMA (your mother) exercised her reproductive rights and LET YOU LIVE!! She gave you the gift of life.

♥♥♥

Mother’s Day honors mothers and motherhood, is observed in 50+ countries and is celebrated the first Sunday in the month. Happy Mother’s Day!

CURRENT NEWS REPORTS REGARDING ABORTION (FOR AND AGAINST):

Abortion advocates’ strategy depends on pills. An information gap threatens their efforts. — POLITICO

The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Post-Roe Agenda: Inconvenient, Illegal, Unthinkable | National News | US News

Abortions Before Fetal Viability Are Legal: Might Science and the Change on the Supreme Court Undermine That? — leaps.org ~ “Viability-the potential for a fetus to survive outside the womb-is a core dividing line in American law.”

The word “viable” is from French, from Medieval Latin *vītābilis (“capable of life”), from Latin vīta (“life”). If something is not living, then it can’t die! What is “key” in the legal definition of “viability” is THE FACT that the fetus is ALIVE! The baby is living INSIDE the womb. However, if you remove the fetus from the womb prematurely, it could or will result in DEATH.

Abortion Laws by State 2022 | World Population Review

If I were create a hashtag, it would be #AbortionIsMURDER.

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(Originally published at https://read.cash.)

5 notes - Posted May 8, 2022

Very few TV couples had the kind of onscreen chemistry that Tom Mison (”Ichabod Crane”) and Nicole Beharie (”Grace Abigail Mills”) had. They were “magic” together! There was no way that TV series would survive after they killed off Abbie Mills. Here’s her story as t why she left. (via Nicole Beharie Gets Candid About 'Sleepy Hollow' Exit | Entertainment Tonight)

Were you a loyal fan of the FOX Sleepy Hollow TV series?

7 notes - Posted May 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

To honor his memory, watch Goodfellas (1990). Watch everything. Don't turn it off when the credits start rolling. WATCH ALL OF IT!!

‘As far back as I can remember…’: Goodfellas is still the greatest gangster movie ever made | The Independent

Image credit: Unholy trinity: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in the poster artwork for ‘Goodfellas’ (Warner Bros)

103 notes - Posted May 26, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 3 years

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It’s almost opening day for the most important court in the land, the U.S. Supreme Court. While there might not be a marching band present to usher in the first day of the new term on Monday, there will surely be some fireworks this Supreme Court season.

This year we barely had time to miss the Supreme Court. Typically, justices sign our yearbooks in June with a perfunctory “HAGS!” (Have a Great Summer!) and disappear for months as they give well-paid speeches in far-off places. This year, they stuck around, busying themselves with many so-called shadow docket decisions. They allowed Texas’ restrictive abortion law to go into effect and gave a big thumbs down to President Joe Biden’s attempt to extend the federal eviction moratorium and to his effort to end former President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.

Now they return to their regularly scheduled programming. They’ve already set oral arguments in a number of key cases that could reshape our legal and political landscape and exacerbate society’s existing fault lines.

On Dec. 1, the court will hear arguments about the constitutionality of Mississippi’s law, which bans almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The law is at odds with current Supreme Court precedent, set almost 30 years ago in a case called Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the court upheld the “essential holding” of its landmark decision in 1973 in Roe v. Wade. The Casey court held that once a fetus is viable, states can ban abortions, but pre-viability, states can only implement restrictions that do not present an “undue burden” on a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion.

Because fetal viability typically begins at about 24 weeks of pregnancy, there seems to be no way to honestly square Mississippi’s law banning abortions at 15 weeks of pregnancy, with the Casey standard. Twenty-four weeks is more than 15 weeks, and a ban is more than an undue burden. By agreeing to review Mississippi’s abortion law, at least four members of the court have almost certainly signaled that they’re comfortable overturning Roe and Casey. That number is likely closer to six, the same number that voted to allow Texas’ abortion law to remain in effect.

On Nov. 3, the court will hear arguments in the second most controversial and consequential question facing justices this term: whether the state of New York can mandate that people who want to obtain a license to carry a concealed gun show good reason, such as self-defense.

The Supreme Court, much to the chagrin of some of its more conservative justices, has largely shied away from taking big Second Amendment cases since it struck down a District of Columbia law in 2008 that banned the carrying of unregistered handguns and barred the registration of handguns, but allowed the chief of police to issue one-year licenses for handguns. The D.C. law also required that people who legally own registered firearms keep them in a nonfunctional state (for instance by binding them with trigger locks) in the home. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a majority of the court, famously concluded that the Second Amendment includes an individual right to bear arms, as opposed to a right given only to the militia, and that this right includes the ability to own a functional gun in one’s home for self-defense.

The court’s decision in the gun case it will hear Nov. 3 will tell us how much power states have to restrict a person’s ability to carry a gun outside of the home. In addition to New York, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island also place restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons outside the home. All of those laws could be on the chopping block.

The court will be addressing much more than abortion and gun control this term.

On Wednesday, the court will consider whether the government can prevent a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay from obtaining information in a suit against CIA contractors who tortured him. The legal issue in the case is whether the government can use the “state secrets” privilege to prevent the release of national security information. The court’s decision could affect other pending cases, such as the separate case of five men being charged in the U.S. Military Tribunal at Guantánamo Bay for aiding the men who perpetrated the Sept. 11 attacks.

A week later, on Oct. 13, the court will hear arguments in a case concerning Dzhozhar Tsarnaez, who, along with his brother, is one of the two Boston Marathon bombers. Tsarnaez’s death sentence was thrown out by an appeals court because the trial court failed to ask potential jurors about the media coverage they had consumed about the case and excluded evidence from the sentencing phase about his brother’s involvement in a separate murder case. The Supreme Court will determine if the death sentence should be reinstated.

November will be First Amendment month at the Supreme Court as justices hear one case addressing the freedom of religion and two dealing with the scope of the free speech clause. On the first of that month, the court will hear the case of death row inmate John Ramirez, who claims, in part, that he has a constitutionally protected right to have his Baptist pastor put his hands on him and pray out loud while he is put to death. Texas has thus far denied those requests. The previous cases to reach the court in this area address whether a death row inmate can have a spiritual advisor present in the execution chamber, not what actions that advisor can take once inside.

On Thursday the court agreed to hear a challenge filed by a Christian group, Camp Constitution, against the city of Boston. Camp Constitution wanted to use a City Hall flag pole to raise its flag, which bears a Latin cross. “What about the separation of church and state?” you ask. Well, Camp Constitution complains that Boston allows tons of other groups to use its flag poles, such as those celebrating gay pride and Juneteenth. Both lower courts to review the case ruled in favor of the city.

In a case regarding the free speech clause of the First Amendment, on Nov. 2, the court will consider the Houston Community College System’s Board of Trustees public censure of one of its members for things he said about the other board members. That member claimed the censure violated his First Amendment rights, a claim the federal district court dismissed, finding that the censure was no more than a “statement” of the board’s dissatisfaction. The court of appeals disagreed. The case asks more broadly whether a local elected body has the power to censure one of its members as a result of that member’s speech.

And there is another yet-to-be-scheduled case dealing with the free speech clause, this one addressing the ever-expanding problem of money and politics. When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz loaned money to his re-election campaign in 2018, he admits he did so to challenge a federal law that caps at $250,000 the amount of money candidates can raise post-election to repay their personal loans to the campaign. Cruz loaned his campaign $260,000 the day before the election and wants to be able to raise money after the election to pay back his full $260,000 loan. He says the law violates the First Amendment by burdening political speech without a sufficient reason. The government says the law is necessary to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption that could occur when candidates fundraise after the election to help retire their personal debts to the campaign.

This is the Supreme Court’s first full term with its new list of players and a solid six-to-three conservative majority. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in a few weeks after last year’s term began.

Only fools make predictions, so here we go. Ten months from now, when the court's term ends, Roe and Casey will no longer be the law of the land. They will either be expressly or implicitly eviscerated. States will no longer possess the authority to restrict people's ability to carry concealed weapons outside the home, or that authority will be severely narrowed. Cruz, and his colleagues, will be able to raise as much money as they want after an election to repay their personal loans to their campaigns.

There are other consequential cases that the court will consider that could change our understanding of the contours of the First Amendment and the state secrets privilege. But if the only two cases the court heard all term were the abortion and gun control cases, we can already predict that thanks to at least five people in a country of almost 330 million, our world is about to look a lot different.

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