Probably, apart from some ignorant folk who fully support the anti-abortion movement in America, most of us have heard of ectopic pregnancies. The medical term "ectopic" comes from the Greek word "ektopos" which means "out of place" but in emotional terms the word could just as easily mean tears and bitter disappointment mingled with fear of dying.
An ectopic pregnancy usually involves a fertilised egg attaching itself to the inner wall of a fallopian tube. Over the last hundred years, the only medical response has been surgical removal of that fallopian tube. If allowed to grow, the tiny foetus would, in almost all cases, put the unlucky woman involved in serious danger of death.
In early 1986, I remember Shirley telling me one day that she believed she was pregnant again. She had noticed the early physical signs that she had experienced just two years before after our Ian was conceived. We were both delighted and Shirley's smile was for a brief period as angelic as only an expectant mother's smile can be.
But a week later, at the doctor's surgery, though a pregnancy was confirmed, something was wrong. It turned out that her pregnancy was ectopic and emergency surgery was required. The potential human being inside her didn't have a name and we don't know if it was male or female. I was just thankful that Shirley was alive - that she had survived this serious threat to her existence.
In 2019, a bill to ban abortion introduced in the Ohio state legislature requires doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into a woman’s uterus – a procedure that does not even exist in medical science – or face charges of “abortion murder”. The legislators pressed on without paying heed to the fact that there had never been a successful reimplanting in such circumstances. Plain crazy. I guess the reality of ectopic pregnancy does not fit comfortably into the anti-abortionist, "Pro-Life" narrative.
Fortunately, healthy women have two fallopian tubes and after Shirley had avoided possible death, our lives continued till in 1988 we were blessed with a second child - this time a beautiful daughter who we named Frances Emily. Fears about the possibility of another ectopic episode evaporated at the end of the first trimester.
In late 1989 or was it early 1990, Shirley told me that she was again pregnant. After all, she knew the signs. Instinctively, I was anxious and I even asked if it could possibly be another ectopic pregnancy but she she assured me that such a tragedy could not befall us a second time. However, my worry was ominous and after some discomfort and bleeding a second ectopic pregnancy was diagnosed and once again emergency surgery was required.
As in 1986, we never knew the gender of the wrongly placed embryo - no bigger than a small pea and we never gave it a name. Sadly, just like the other fertilised egg it was one of Nature's errors, a stray bullet, a might-have-been. Of course this second episode meant that Shirley could never again naturally carry another child.
- Overall, ectopic pregnancies annually affect less than 2% of pregnant women worldwide.
- In Great Britain, between 2003 and 2005 there were 32,100 ectopic pregnancies resulting in 10 maternal deaths
- In the developing world, however, especially in Africa, the death rate is very high, and ectopic pregnancies are a major cause of death among women of childbearing age.
- In women having had an ectopic pregnancy, the risk of another one in the next pregnancy is around 10%
It has taken me almost nineteen years of blogging to tell this story but it has been lurking inside me for much longer than that.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/8QSnrF3
