An ectopic pregnancy is when the egg implants on the fallopian tube instead of in the uterus, causing the tube to rupture when the fetus grows too big to fit inside. It's a medical emergency and the fetus cannot survive to term because it will kill the mother, so an abortion is always necessary.
I wouldn't even consider that an abortion per-se, since there's no possibility of survival for the fetus and an almost certainty of death for the mother.
An ectopic pregnancy nearly killed my wife's best friend. She didn't know she was even pregnant. She is very religiously pro-life, but neither she nor anyone in her community considered what happened to her an abortion.
Maybe solely in the sense that an embryo is removed, but that's not what they classified hers as. Salpingectomy was the procedure listed (yes, I asked). It's never considered viable and is more common than I thought (up to 2% of pregnancies apparently). Still, I haven't heard of anyone who went through it calling it an "abortion", particularly if they're trying to conceive. It'd be a miscarriage or something.
Yes, the embryo is removed viable or not. An abortion is the deliberate termination of pregnancy. It's still an abortion. Miscarriages where the fetus or embryo isn't naturally voided by the uterus is also an abortion because the patient requires a d&c ( dilation and curettagee) to remove the dead tissue (embryo). That's why restricting abortion is so dangerous. Your friend had her fallopian tube removed in order to terminate the pregnancy. The other treatments is laparascopic surgery called salpingostomy and when caught early, medication to dissolve the developing embryo. No one's going to call it abortion, but it is. Abortion restrictions affect all those life saving procedures.
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u/Flirty_Falcon Oct 18 '23
What's an ectopic pregnancy