[ SECRET POST #4409 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4409 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 19 secrets from Secret Submission Post #631.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - empty comment ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Non-fandom secrets/unpopular opinions

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT but “against abortion once the baby can survive apart from the mother” is, idk, not a slippery slope, but—do you mean, survive unaided aside from stuff like food and diapers and people to bond with like a full-term baby? Or survive so long as the full panoply of modern medical science is brought to bear? I’m desperately hoping that either way, you mean so long as the fetus won’t have quality of life issues its whole life because it was born early.

I was three months premature back when my survival was by no means guaranteed—hell, it still wouldn’t be today, depending—and I’m really creeped out by the sort of person who thinks that women should have to birth babies that might have lifelong health issues rather than abort them.

That’s not what my mom did, I just popped out early, but for the first months of my life, doctors were preparing my parents for the idea that I might be a vegetable. I had jaundice and hydrocephalus and was on a respirator. I still have scars from all the tubing that kept me alive in an incubator for three months. I was given daily blood transfusions to replace what I lost to blood tests—and I was brought to the NICU at UC San Francisco in the early 80s, so for awhile everybody worried I might’ve gotten AIDS from a transfusion, and I couldn’t give blood myself until the early aughts when the ban was lifted.

It’s hard even for psychologists to tell if I’m some variety of autistic or just brain damaged from oxygen deprivation/an earliest childhood spent as basically a medical experiment in how to save premie babies. I had nightmares up through kindergarten of “the big hands” pulling me out of an incubator to draw blood/cause pain.

I know that thanks in part to teaching hospitals like UCSF, it’s now possible to keep kids born even earlier than I was alive and reasonably healthy, but there’s still a vast difference in outcome between “viable outside the womb with normal baby care” and “viable outside the womb with expensive round the clock medical treatment and probably lifelong lingering health issues.” And that’s without factoring that the first three months of my life cost my parents $150,000 in early 80s money—about $236,000 today—they sold their house and farm to pay it.

I think even most pro-choice people aren’t comfortable with the idea of an otherwise healthy fetus being aborted with three weeks to go, but that’s pretty much illegal already unless the fetus is dying or dead, the mom’s gonna die otherwise, or the potential kid’s quality of life is gonna basically be torture—there was a full term baby born at the same tiny hospital as me, on the same day, with only a brain stem but no brain, and he died within an hour, and in those or similar circumstances, I think if the mom wants to induce labor as soon as she finds out, it’s her choice.

But, and I don’t know how many people know this, abortions of close to full term but non-viable fetuses used to just be exactly that, in cases where it was possible. But anti-choice railing against “partial birth abortions” resulted in laws outlawing the practice.

Mothers who had made the choice to abort because they’d die otherwise, or their potential kid would, or it would suffer its whole short life, were no longer allowed to hold their poor kid for a couple minutes after the birth, and mourn, and say goodbye. Instead the fetus has to be broken up inside the womb and drawn out in pieces, even if it isn’t medically necessary. It’s more expensive, carries a greater risk for the mother, and in almost all cases is traumatising because the fetus was almost always a wanted pregnancy.

I just don’t understand people who say they’re against abortion once a fetus can survive apart from its mother, when that’s already illegal pretty much everywhere unless the mom’s gonna die, the fetus is gonna die, or the baby is gonna have a miserable life because some health problems aren’t caught until the third trimester.

Medical science has pushed “can survive outside the womb” back astonishingly far, but I’d much rather fetuses be aborted than become babies that need hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical care and are still guaranteed to have nasty health issues their whole lives—speaking as someone whose entire life is a preexisting condition.

Re: Non-fandom secrets/unpopular opinions

[philstar22]

Honestly I don't know. I haven't really figured out everything yet. I know I believe no one should be forced to carry a baby if they don't want to. But I'm also not sure that at the point of viability, whether some life is better than no life or not given that the fetus/baby can't decide for themselves. And and also at what point it becomes better to let them live, if viability is not the standard.

And yes, it is illegal now. But since I want the laws to change and be more permissive, I'm just saying I don't think I want them to be entirely open.