Jay, I like you. I just want to caution you that right now, with no wife and baby, you feel this way. Circumstances can and do change...and so does our actions. Sometimes the mother truly may perish. That does happen. But the mother does not always have to perish to bring a child to birth without the child dying. It is medically complicated to explain. Not sure I have the capacity to do that as I am not a dissertation writer.
Again, this "gray area" you post of...
If it is known that a woman has a certain disease that may pose a great risk of dying to her and/or the baby if she ever gets pregnant, I would think that she should know all her risks beforehand. Some women have been told by their physician about the possibility of not being able to withstand a full-term pregnancy, with the possibility of dying...these women know the risks and many have taken steps to ensure they never become pregnant. They instead become mothers by adopting.
The issue we have recently been discussing is that at times, healthy, pregnant women rapidly develop life-threatening illnesses such as eclampia/toxemia, DIC, placenta abruption etc during their pregnancy. Nobody knows why this illness develops. It is a complication of pregnancy that sometimes happens. The body reacts and some women retain water and develop blood pressure so high to be "stroke level"..and some women do have strokes.
Disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) is a pathologic disruption of the finely-balanced process of hemostasis (blood clotting). Massive activation of the clotting cascade results in widespread thrombosis (also blood clotting), which leads to depletion of platelets and coagulation factors and excessive thrombolysis (dissolution of a blood clot). The end result is multiorgan failure and
hemorrhage (profuse bleeding).
DIC was first described in 1901 as a state of "temporary hemophilia" in two pregnant women; one had a retained fetal demise and the other had a placental abruption [1]. Peripartum hemorrhage is estimated to account for 1 to 5 percent of all cases of DIC in high-resource countries; the frequency is higher in low-resource countries [2].
Any patient in DIC presents a major management challenge, and this challenge is further complicated when a viable fetus is also present.
For example, delaying delivery [not abortion] to transfuse the mother in DIC may not be in the best interest of a fetus with a nonreassuring fetal heart rate tracing, whereas performing an emergency cesarean delivery [not abortion] on a mother in DIC may not be in her best interest. Even in the setting of fetal demise, labor and delivery of a woman in DIC carries the potential for catastrophic hemorrhage.
Note: comment in brackets is mine.
www.uptodate.com/ contents/ disseminated-intravascular-coagulation-during-pregnancy
That introduction to DIC is a very short explanation of what it is.
There are other pregnancy complications but I can't put them all on here.
In many these cases when treatment does not help, the baby must be taken in order to save the life of the mother. Where it gets complicated is that frog wants to call this medical procedure "an abortion" because it does terminate the pregnancy. But giving birth also terminates a pregnancy if you want to split hairs. The medical community considers the medical procedure to take the baby as a "premature delivery". Many times the medical procedure to take the baby will result in saving the life of both the baby and the mother. Sometimes the baby does not make it...but in cases of full-blown DIC, placenta abruption, eclampsia, if they do not take the baby, the mother will die and the baby will die anyway. If the mother does not live because of physiological/hemodynamic changes in the body, the baby will not live. Simple as that.
Titus2woman, please feel free to correct me if I am not totally correct in the above. You have a lot of experience in this and I know new treatments have come into the medical practice that I am not aware of.
Frog says all abortions are willful. In the frame he/she puts this in, he/she may be correct. But I do not consider the above scenario to be a willful abortion. I consider it to be a medical procedure of delivery in the attempt to save the lives of both the mother and the baby.
So...I just want for you to be open to the difference between willful abortion because somebody does not want the baby, or the abortion doctor just wants to defend his money-making position by scaring the woman into thinking she cannot bring a baby to full term.
And the difference in the medical procedure delivery to save the life of a baby because of a medical emergency that cannot be turned around through medical treatment.
It is very important for couples contemplating marriage and children to educate themselves in medical care for a possible pregnancy as much as they can. Every woman should have a pre-marital gynecological check up.
Side note to Jay: I attended TCM for morning service today. They have moved their church to the other side of town.
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