HelenM

I think Daleth was mostly talking about how other people viewed her stillbirth, when she wrote that people don't seem to view a baby as a person until it is 'born'. She also wrote:

I can understand why someone would be reluctant to risk riding the emotional roller-coaster of excitement and hope, only to be followed by despair and loss, after two stillbirths for which the doctors haven't been able to pinpoint a reason. I think it's often a lot harder to try something again that didn't work out, than to do it the first time.

Helen

ex-xian

Thanks to everyone for responding. Specifically, thanks to Daleth for your thoughtful post.

I do have a few more questions, if anyone care to indulge me, but, unfortunately, the contrainsts of a non-cyber life prevent from doing so right now. Be back tomorrow.

Bree

Thanks for sharing your experience. Recently a baby was stillborn to the daughter of a coworker and close friend of mine. She and I went out to lunch so she could get her mind away for a few hours. To my surprise she whipped out a few pictures of the baby, herself holding the baby, her daughter and son-in-law holding the baby. They were morbid, that's the only way to say it. I was confused as to why she would carry these with her and show them to me - all I could say was yes, yes, the baby was very pretty - but now I think I have a little more understanding as to why she felt the need.

Daleth

Hi Ronin. It's not hard to figure if you think about it for a couple seconds. Pregnancy sucks. I mean in varying ways for the majority of a year it hurts, makes you ill, changes everything in your life from your clothes to your sleeping patterns to the way other people treat you. All this time you have something that (in my case) you want very very much growing inside you. The average woman thinks after she makes it through the first 3 months she can at least relax about the result... she's going through this for something... but I can not. I have to worry through the full 9 months whether this time it's going to work. And it is meaningful to me. In my mind it's the child I've always wanted. So I spend most of 9 months worrying that it's all for naught, have the baby die inside me (putting my life in danger due to, well, you can figure out the gory details) and then go through all the joys of going through labor and delivery knowing that there is nothing good going to come of all that pain. After that not only do you deal with the pain of having lost that possible child, you do it through post-partum depression and your breasts leak and you bleed for weeks just to make sure you can't stop thinking about it. If it were only that I'd be scared to try again, but it's more. As I said, I think I know how to treat the problem. If I try it and it doesn't work this time, that's it. I'm done. No kids ever, and the end of a completely irreplacable dream.

Stillbirths, nearly full term. And because I lost something I wanted, something I'd invested a great deal in. Is it not appropriate to console someone when they don't get something they had their hearts set on, something they maybe even changed their lives to accomodate getting?

I don't think it's birth. I think it's having been actually known by other people. I think it's somethng like having been looked in the eye, having been known to feel, something like that. It's hard to express. It's especially hard because this is not my sentiment, but the sentiment that I have found projected at me. Again, in my mind, these were babies. They have names. But what exists in my mind does not necessarly exist in reality.

My point is that people did not and do not respond to me in the same way that they respond to someone who had a baby that shortly after died. If you have an infant who dies, no one finds it weird that the infant had a name and no one writes the name in quotation marks as if it's not a real name. People respond to the situations completely differently if you have a fetus die one week before birth or you have a baby die a week after. Something in people's minds shift after this creature has been born, as if crossing the physical threshhold changes something about that baby. We created the word "person" and we show in our (probably unconscious) behavior that before it is born, it's not a person. It's a term we define through our behavior.

As do I, for the most part. As I said, I don't care if it is not a person. Past the point that it is capable of suffering, it should be treated with kindness and dignity. I don't believe that past that point we should be able to abort for non-medical reasons (a decision that I think belongs with doctors and patients, not courts, due to the extreme emotion of the situations). I also don't think I should be allowed to kill my dogs for non-medical reasons. They have a life which has value to them. Past the point of possible viability, there is still a tiny chance that a choice will have to be made by doctors and patients. Risk losing both mother and baby, or sacrifice one to save the other (same choice that's sometimes made with conjoined twins). That choice still has to be available to those rare cases as well.

livius drusus

You are a remarkable person, Daleth.

Daleth

Not especially, but thank you, livius. I've had years to adjust to thinking and talking about it without letting emotion take over completely.

Daleth

Just wanted to add to this. I back slightly away from saying "full equal rights" and instead think about it in terms of the rights I feel are due to my dogs (for example). The reason for this distinction is that euthanasia is not currently considered a human right in the states. If, past the point of potential viability (6-ish months) it's discovered that the fetus has a defect that will cause it to die in utero or live a couple of painful days hooked up to machines before it dies, I can not accept the law or medical ethics insisting that the pregnancy be carried through anyway. The parents need to be able to decide whether to go through with up to 3 more months of pregnancy (and its associated risks) for that result. They need to be able to decide whether to risk an intrauterine fetal death. They need to be allowed to decide for themselves whether they want to see their baby born enough to let it suffer and know a life that is nothing but pain and fear, and whether they can handle watching that themselves. If equal rights for a fetus past the gestational age of potential viability would allow them to make those choices, I'd be OK with that, but as things stand, it would not.

openeyes

Daleth says it well.

Ronin

Everything in your response to me was wonderfully articulated, Daleth, thank you very much.

I have found that the following has become a key issue for me in forming my perspective ~

The 'hard issue' with me, and maybe what I see as the national issue, is what to do when...given our position that we don't believe that past that point (potentially self-sustaining life) we should be able to abort for non-medical reasons...a doctor and patient decide to do so anyway.

How do we guarantee a deterrent against violating the rights of the 'unborn', yet sentient (potentially self-sustaining life), without legal statute and the same court proceedings we accept when other life is put at risk or terminated?

Death always involves extreme emotion.

Thanks again for your insight.

ex-xian

{Private email exchange deleted}

Grizzly