Opinion – removing abortion rights is fatal for diabetics

That night, I did a quick Google of diabetes and pregnancy complications – like looking up medical symptoms, it’s not something I would recommend – and I realised that with my new diagnosis, the idea of having a baby was suddenly much, much further away.

I’m not your classic “baby person”. Unlike a lot of girls in my class, I didn’t play pretend-mum or have a baby dolly to bathe at bath time. But having a real, human baby is still something that I would have liked to have done eventually. Especially after I met my current partner.

Now, the thought of conceiving a child is not only distant, but it feels impossible, scary, and even more out of reach.

Don’t get me wrong, Type 1 diabetics can have children. I follow many parents on Instagram who are Type 1 themselves and often have Type 1 children too. All of them beautiful, all of them perfectly healthy. But I am sure that if you asked them what pregnancy was like, what giving birth was like, and even what being a mother as a Type 1 is like now – they wouldn’t say it’s all rainbows and butterflies.

Diabetics just have a lot more rules to follow than those without chronic conditions. Even as a young, active and single woman, with no children, pets, or even plants to look after, I find it hard to deal with the 24/7 job that is diabetes. And again, I am not dealing with the extra hormones that come with pregnancy, or the part of myself I’d have to give to childcare.

Before even considering the mountain of new things that diabetics need to consider with children, there are a number of risks that put them in serious medical danger if they weren’t expecting that child.

Diabetics are more at risk of having miscarriages or give birth to a larger baby, and the latter can elevate the risks of having a more difficult birth, or needing a caesarean section.

In more severe instances, when diabetics have had high blood sugar around the time of conception, they face risks of spontaneous abortions and major congenital malformations. According to some reports, mothers with diabetes are three times more likely to pass away from complications at birth than those without.

The problem with the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade is that millions of US-based Type 1 diabetics will no longer be able to even risk getting pregnant without following an extremely strict regime. Removing that option won’t just mean a stark rise in people with Type 1 diabetes because they will be passing on the gene, but a stark surge in maternal mortality too.

It frightens me that one law can destroy the lives of so many people and that such a controversial shift in human rights has been allowed to pass in 2022. But deep down I hope that girls and women like me will manage to get the help they need – whether that’s from an understanding doctor, or through foreign aid.

Either way, it is clear that if those who had voted to overturn Roe v Wade had even considered chronic conditions and other medical issues, we’d be living in a very different world.