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Abortion's Causal Role in Trauma and Suicide
Published in Nicholas Colgrove, Bruce P. Blackshaw, Daniel Rodger, Agency, Pregnancy and Persons, 2023
Abortion providers—perhaps those least likely to stigmatize abortion—are likewise confronted with considerable distress at the basic reality of abortion, at least at later stages. A study of Japanese nurses found that abortion after six months was the single most traumatic event nurses experienced, with every nurse experiencing it rating the trauma of it as 10/10 (Komachi et al. 2012). Feticide—an injection to end the baby’s life before inducing an abortion in order to prevent it being born alive—is widely described in dramatic terms: “Over half of the [fetal medicine specialists performing feticide] expressed internal conflict about the provision of feticide and the need to ‘separate yourself from it completely’” (Power et al. 2021, p. 680). They described it “as ‘brutal’, ‘awful’, and ‘emotionally difficult’, referring to it as ‘stabbing the baby in the heart’” (Power et al. 2021, p. 680). Almost all fetal medicine specialists, the study found, have a line they do not cross—abortion on demand at any point in pregnancy is emotionally and ethically anathema even to most abortion providers.
Cancer
Published in Vincenzo Berghella, Maternal-Fetal Evidence Based Guidelines, 2022
Elyce Cardonick, Charlotte Maggen, Puja Patel
When opting not to preserve pregnancy: The gestational age at diagnosis determines the management choices for the pregnant patient. For operable disease (IA2-IB2) a radical hysterectomy with fetus in utero, or after hysterotomy (late second trimester), can be performed [21]. For stages IB3 and higher diagnosed before 18 weeks, immediate chemoradiotherapy treatment is recommended with the fetus in situ. Often a spontaneous miscarriage will occur within a short time after radiotherapy. With advanced pregnancy, a pregnancy termination by hysterotomy is preferred, as it reduces the risk of obstetrical complications (bleeding, rupture of the cervix, DIC) and the psychological impact on the patient [21]. Prior to treatment, a feticide can be considered for ethical and psychological reasons.
What are women’s legal rights when it comes to choice in pregnancy and childbirth?
Published in Hannah Dahlen, Bashi Kumar-Hazard, Virginia Schmied, Birthing Outside the System, 2020
Farah Diaz-Tello, Bashi Kumar-Hazard
In response, opponents of abortion set into motion a long-term plan, across the globe, to establish the notion of legal status for foetuses in as many places in the law as possible, including the criminal law, medical malpractice, inheritance and even public benefits. This plan began with seeking the passage of feticide, or ‘unborn victims of violence’, laws that treat harm to the foetus as tantamount to harm committed upon a born person. The aim was to develop a vastly changed legal landscape. That way, if the superior courts were to revisit the issue of whether foetuses were considered constitutional persons, they could rule differently, permitting the criminalisation of abortion not as an unlawful medical practice, but as a homicide. Currently, there are 37 US states with laws that criminalise harm to foetuses by conferring a legal status on the foetus. These laws are passed in the name of protecting pregnant individuals from violence, but in virtually every state where they exist, they have been used to justify criminalising women on the basis of pregnancy outcomes (Paltrow & Flavin, 2013).
Intraamniotic digoxin administration versus intracardiac or funic potassium chloride administration to induce foetal demise before termination of pregnancy: a prospective study
Published in Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 2022
Münip Akalın, Oya Demirci, Oya Gokcer, Hayal İsmailov, Ali Sahap Odacilar, Gizem Elif Dizdarogulları, Özge Kahramanoğlu, Aydın Ocal, Guher Bolat, Mucize Eriç Özdemir
Foeticide refers to the administration of a pharmacological agent into the foetus or amniotic cavity to induce foetal asystole. The main purpose of this procedure is to guarantee foetal death before delivery. Approximately 50% of termination of pregnancies (TOP) without foeticide between 20 and 24 weeks of gestation results in live birth (Springer et al. 2018). Since the main purpose of TOP is to ensure foetal death, this can be psychologically and emotionally difficult for patients and physicians. Additionally, advances in the neonatal intensive care unit have led some institutions to require resuscitation of newborns in deliveries over 22 weeks of gestation. Neonatal survival with severe functional limitations after resuscitation may have potential legal consequences. For these reasons, most physicians and parents prefer foeticide before TOP (Dommergues et al. 2003).
Women’s rights in Asia and elsewhere – a fact or an illusion?
Published in Climacteric, 2019
There are fewer women than men in India, the ratio being 933:1000. This is due to several factors, including infanticide among female infants, and poor care of female infants and childbearing women. Despite laws to the contrary, female feticide and infanticide are still carried out in rural India, often because families cannot afford to pay a dowry when their daughters get married. Like infanticide, the payment of dowry is illegal, but is still a frequent and prevalent occurrence in rural India23.
Bereaved parents’ unwillingness to participate in a joint research interview: The case of feticide
Published in Health Care for Women International, 2020
Ronit D. Leichtentritt, Galia Weinberg Kurnik
Researchers have made an important distinction between the experience of feticide and that of late-stage miscarriage and/or stillbirth, since feticide involves a parental decision to actively terminate the pregnancy (see, for example, Graham, Mason, Rankin, & Robson, 2009). Feticide “is distinct in that parents choose to kill the fetus” (Lafarge, Mitchell, & Fox, 2014, p. 191). This element of choice highlights the ethical complexity this experience represents for both parents.