This story deals with pregnancy loss.
'Justice for the 45' reads the sign being held up by what looked like a hundred people standing on the steps of South Australia's Parliament House. The sign was accompanied by 45 teddy bears in different colours laid out across the steps, like tiny plush victims of a soft toy massacre.
In the middle of the small, mostly female, crowd stands a beaming man in a suit, South Australian Liberal politician Ben Hood MP, holding one of the 'Fs.
What is Ben Hood's proposal for South Australia's current abortion law?
On 25 September, Hood tabled the Termination of Pregnancy and Live Births Amendment Bill 2024 in the SA parliament. The bill seeks to remove the right of a pregnant person to access a feticide procedure, whereby sodium chloride is injected into the heart of a foetus through the uterus, stopping the heart before birth. The baby is subsequently stillborn sometime shortly afterwards, either via induction of labour or c-section.
Currently, feticide is legal in South Australia and recommended for all termination of pregnancies that occur after 22 weeks and six days. It is only undertaken with the consent of the pregnant person, and if two doctors agree that the pregnancy or foetus meets certain criteria; either a significant foetal anomaly has been detected through screening, or the pregnancy puts the mother's physical or mental health at risk.
Any abortion, regardless of gestation, where an otherwise wanted pregnancy is ended due to medical reasons for mother or baby is called a Termination for Medical Reasons, or TFMR for short.
Hoods' Bill proposes that from 28 weeks' gestation, the start of the third trimester, labour would be induced without the feticide injection, so the baby is born alive.
Why I had to undergo a feticide procedure.
If you have never heard of feticide before this Bill was proposed you are not alone, I hadn't heard of feticide either, until I had one in 2022.
Toby was my second child, my first a bubbly almost-three-year-old girl, and I was 35 weeks pregnant when I attended a routine final ultrasound in May 2022. I was squeezing in the appointment in between dropping our daughter at daycare and heading to work to start drafting my handover notes for my maternity leave.
I had no idea my little world was about to come crashing down.
The ultrasound revealed fluid on Toby's brain that had not been present at a prior scan at 21 weeks. From the multitude of further tests then undertaken, we discovered that Toby had experienced a brain haemorrhage, likely at around 29 weeks, and the blood from this injury had blocked ducts, resulting in a gradual build-up of fluid which had eroded most of one hemisphere of his developing brain. The prognoses for Toby was dire; he would be completely paralysed down one side of his body, and it was possible that he would be quadriplegic. He would be blind and cognitively impaired. He would never walk, or talk, or live independently.
The doctors we met with all talked of 'ending the pregnancy' a euphemism for feticide. It was an expression I grew to loathe. A pregnancy is an anonymous bump under someone's clothes, indistinguishable from the next, a collection of symptoms that happen to the mother. Toby was my baby, a foetus yes, but he was my child, and what we would be ending was not a pregnancy, which was about to end anyway with his imminent birth, we would be ending his life.
Hood's bill recognises this but fails to grasp the complexity of the reasons why a person may proceed with a feticide.
Anti-abortion campaigner and Professor of Law Dr Joanna Howe accompanies Ben Hood on the steps of Parliament House, she's holding one of the 'Es. Howe has said that the Bill doesn't interfere with a woman's right to end her pregnancy, therefore it does not impede on abortion rights. It's just that the pregnancy will be ended with the baby born alive. She argues that the often used pro-abortion mantra 'my body, my choice' is not interfered with, as a women need not remain pregnant if she doesn't wish.
Once born if the baby's condition is fatal they would receive palliative care. But if the baby is healthy they would be rushed to the NICU. Toby wasn't healthy, but he wasn't terminal either. This bill has given little regard to babies in his circumstances.
Under the proposed changes, if I were carrying Toby in South Australia, I would be required to birth him alive. As his condition was not inherently fatal, he would then receive medical care to attempt to prolong his life as much as possible, which could potentially be years. Years confined to a bed or chair, unable to move freely, see anything, or communicate with the world around him. Frightening, confusing years.
I struggle to comprehend how anyone could wish to do that to a child.
As I wrestled with my decision in 2022, feticide began to resemble a gift, a dark gift that I could bestow on Toby, a way to prevent his suffering, a way to give him peace.
Toby would not have had any of the measures by which I determine the quality of life. So I chose for him to be stillborn.
And it broke my heart to do it.
It broke my heart to tell my daughter that her little brother would not be coming home from the hospital to live with us, only for her, in her confusion, to ask me if he could still go in the baby room at her daycare, so she could show him off to her little friends.
It broke my heart to place his tiny body onto the cart that would wheel him to the morgue before we left the hospital, so reluctant I was to let him go, even though I knew he was already gone.
I grieve him every day.
This was not a decision made flippantly, birthing Toby alive or dead would cause me to suffer, to grieve the child I had imagined. The only difference these laws would make is that Toby would also suffer.
Watch: A tribute to the babies we've lost and the significance of remembering their names. Post continues after video.
Did the 45 babies being 'defended' have non-fatal foetal anomalies? Do they even exist? SA health has advised that in the 18 months since the new laws there were fewer than five feticides performed after 27 weeks, and none after 29 weeks. This would make sense; the majority of feticides occur after adverse findings on an ultrasound that takes place at approximately 20-22 weeks. After further testing has occurred, if a mother then elects for feticide, you can expect this would occur toward the end of the second trimester.
Toby's circumstances were unusual in that he was completely healthy until the third trimester.
The campaigners behind the bill are adamant that these 45 babies that they claim to speak on behalf of were healthy, that no foetal anomaly had been identified, and the mothers' lives were not in immediate jeopardy.
While later abortions, including in the third trimester, do on very rare occasions occur due to the mental health of the pregnant person, the decision to proceed with a feticide is not taken lightly in these circumstances either. I have spoken to hospital social workers and foetal medicine specialists who advise that the circumstances of women who typically present for later term abortions are dire.
Homeless, drug dependent people, perhaps in the grips of psychosis. People living 'lives of utter dysregulation' in circumstances that the majority of us find hard to comprehend, and whose healthcare is certainly none of our business.
These cases are extremely rare and are never the cause for the majority of feticides in any state in Australia.
Anti-abortion campaigners like Howe and Hood see this as a 'gotcha' moment, after all under their proposed changes a woman can still 'end her pregnancy' at any point.
But they appear to not understand either feticide or motherhood.
Yes, by the third trimester a foetus is very much alike to a newborn baby. Yes, they could very well live outside of the womb. But the mother-foetal dyad is more than just a gestational number. It is a bond forged by the mingling of blood, of cells passed back and forth through the two-way street of the placenta. The baby grows from the mother as she tends to her child through her pregnancy. While maternal foetal attachment is not a well-studied area we do know that as a pregnancy progresses a mother becomes increasingly attached to her child, and that this takes place through a mixture of preparations for their arrival and anticipating a shared future with the baby.
The decision to end Toby's life was the single most difficult thing I have ever done. As it would be for all mothers who are faced with this heartbreaking decision. But I did it because I loved him with every inch of my broken heart.
Women are not having feticides casually, and in the many conversations I have had with women who have made this heartbreaking decision never once have they used the language of women's rights, of their reproductive rights.
Rather they have spoken of compassion for their babies, of their desire to ease their suffering, to bring them peace. They speak more in the language used for euthanasia than abortion. And it is this that Hood and Rowe misunderstand. These mothers love their babies, love them so much that they would rather suffer through their loss then keep them alive. Feticide does not end a pregnancy; it ends the life of the foetus. We can acknowledge that and still defend it.
Howe said that unless the mantra is 'my baby, my choice' there can't be any issue with the bill. But in cases of termination for medical reasons the mantra is exactly that. I made this choice on behalf of Toby, because I believed, and still believe it was in his best interests. And I would do it again if I had to.
My baby, my choice.
If this has raised any issues for you or if you would like to speak with someone, please contact the Sands Australia 24-hour support line on 1300 072 637.
Feature image: Supplied.