Linda Dunn
While the anti-abortion groups prepare to celebrate, the rest of us are trying to sort out how this leaked Supreme Court ruling is going to affect our lives and the lives of those we care about.
I recognize that those opposing legal and safe abortions have good intentions and a firm belief in the sanctity of human life. I fear, however, that the law of unintended consequences is going to lead to results that many of many of them would strongly oppose.
My youngest grandchild is a modern day medical miracle, the result of IVF that followed years of medical issues and surgeries. She’s not the only embryo that successfully implanted and had a heartbeat. However, she is the only one that survived through that critical first trimester when so many pregnancies fail.
It troubles me greatly that many people – including a few I otherwise dearly love – would have, if they could have, prevented my granddaughter’s existence. Their faith-based belief that life begins at conception leads them to favor laws that could criminalize miscarriages in addition to eliminating IVF as an option for infertile couples.
The Catholic Church – of which six members of our Supreme Court are members – views IVF as “immoral and illegal.”
Of course, not all Catholics – let alone all Christians – agree with this. However, it is still alarming to those of us who hold different religious beliefs to see so many members of one faith or another attempting to make law for the rest of us based upon their doctrines while dismissing our own beliefs and sometimes even scientific reports as “wrong.”
It is especially troubling when our legislators, either due to deeply held personal beliefs or because they want the support of voters who hold those beliefs, try to pass off wishful thinking and outright falsehoods as potential solutions.
When Ohio legislator John Becker proposed dealing with ectopic pregnancies by “moving the embryo to the womb,” I could not help but wonder if he’d confused science fiction with science fact.
If our medical technology were developed to that point, we’d have artificial wombs as well as flying cars and space colonies.
We live in the real world in 2022 and real-world options for those doomed fallopian tube pregnancies unfortunately always result in the loss of the pregnancy and can be fatal for the woman as well.
It’s understandable that we want positive outcomes for all pregnancies, but the reality is that approximately 40-60% of embryos are believed to fail between fertilization and birth.
Far too many of us want to ignore this uncomfortable fact, but medical advances have allowed us to buy tests over the counter and routine scans can show us our future child about a week after the stick turns blue.
This has led to an era where miscarriages may feel far more like a death than they did for me and my peers.
We had a hope and an expectation and then a disappointment. We grieved privately and were given scant comfort. Today’s generation shares videos and pictures on social media and chatters back and forth about progress and plans that are sometimes tragically followed by tears and public grieving.
It’s understandable with these changes that our society has shifted to viewing the “pre-born” as a person deserving of protection but in that process, we seem to have also shifted to seeing the pregnant woman as little more than a birthing pod with no rights beyond those deemed necessary to assure a safe birth.
Even then, we’re not giving women the tools necessary to achieve that goal. Maternal-fetal grants often focus more on “fetal” than “maternal” and pregnancy complication rates are continually increasing.
Professionals estimate that 20-50% of maternal deaths are due to preventable causes, such as hemorrhage, severe high blood pressure, and infection.
Why aren’t we focusing more upon positive outcomes for all active participants in a pregnancy?
I remember well what it was like being a teenager in the pre-Roe v. Wade era where abortions were illegal and dangerous but not uncommon.
This is not a future I want for my granddaughters.
I want abortions safe, legal, and never viewed by anyone other than a team of licensed and respected medical doctors as “necessary.”
A lifelong resident of Hancock County, Linda Dunn is an author and retired Department of Defense employee. Send comments to [email protected].
