How best to deal in RootsMagic with aborted children? To create an association type (mother and father) would be possible, but, as far as I know an association can not be marked “private”. To use the normal “spouse” relationship doesn’t make sense either, because this child hasn’t been welcomed into the family. I know traditionally people don’t talk about such “events”, but things change and they can be more impactful on and more crucial for the understanding of a life than many other events.
Well this is sensitive subject but “aborted” (abortion I assume) means they were never born … no birth certificate etc. The other issue is privacy ( if family still living especially).
Kevin
1 Like
As Kevin suggests this could potentially become a minefield. Personally, if I chose to do this, I I would design a new fact type for the ‘mother’, as opposed to adding the aborted child as a person; ticking the date, place and description fields and unticking all those options under the ‘include when:’ section to prevent accidental disclosure. You can then choose who you share your database with (probably best not to upload to Ancestry via treeshare too).
1 Like
Along the privatization path are a few small aids for filtering reports/exports:
- Fact Types have a Private checkbox
- {braces} around segments of note text can hide sensitive details
- Fact Types allow for careful wording via Sentence templates
- Fact types can be excluded selectively from various Reports, GEDCOM & RM-generated web sites
I probably wouldn’t put this into RM at all. There is too much possibility for data that is marked private to leak through anyway or by accident. For example, my tree on Ancestry is there only for getting hints and I have it completely private. I don’t trust making it public and having Ancestry to do the privatization. I have found too many cases where I myself can see around the privatization in someone else’s tree on Ancestry. And TreeShare doesn’t support filtering an upload by a group. And even if it did, I might forget to use the group filter when I was using TreeShare to do an Ancestry upload.
For another example, I have a murder/suicide situation that I have chosen not to put into RM. I have an obituary for the person in RM. But the obituary was written by the family for public consumption, and it simply says that the person died “suddenly”. I figured that whatever the family was willing to publish publicly in a newspaper was safe enough for me to put into RM.
2 Likes
Your approach is going to be determined by a key personal philosophy: Do you view life beginning at conception or at birth?
If you believe it begins at conception, then the aborted individual gets their own person record and associated facts. Since they weren’t born, per se, you could either not have a birth fact and only have a death fact OR you could create a new fact type such as ‘Conception’. Of course, you can’t just use the prototypical 9 months to calculate a factual date of conception.
If you believe it begins at birth, then use the ‘Medical’ fact. Attach one to the mother with the relevant details. Mark it private if you feel that’s necessary.
Genealogy is a sub-branch of history. Like any good historian, either way you’ll have to provide evidence otherwise it’s just hearsay and doesn’t meet the Genealogical Proof Standard. Since death certs aren’t typically issued for abortions, that means you’re looking at things like medical charts or receipts for service that explicitly confirm the procedure.
If the fetus was over 20 week gestation use the stillborn option. If they are under 20 weeks its considered a miscarriage or aborted. I personally would consider recording miscarriages on the mother’s health history.
1 Like
I would also consider recording miscarriages But in three of the cases I would record them as a deceased child due to miscarriage Because they were given names–one was donated to science one was buried in a local church cemetery with his grandfather and we don’t know what happened with the 3rd who actually died after birth but nobody has a record on them…
I have to agree with @marcelma when they said:
I know traditionally people don’t talk about such “events”, but things change and they can be more impactful on and more crucial for the understanding of a life than many other events.
Back then, they didn’t talk abt such things, so I was an adult before I even knew abt the baby who died ( many many years later) and the impact it had on the family and the parents-- it was many years after that when the mother died that we finally heard the whole story..
So yes while most of you wouldn’t record an abortion, there just MIGHT be a good reason to do so in some cases…
great way to describe it … such facts probably should also be private.
Kevin
1 Like
agreeing with @thejerrybryan - not too mention that including this type of information for a “living” mother would certainly be a violation of trust if not HIPPA.
As someone who has worked with “unwed” mothers for decades, I am appalled at the idea of sharing such information - Abortion is not a disease where having it in the person’s meidcal information is helpful.
Unless it is YOUR medical records, I cannot see how including this would benefit anyone and many ways it would be harmful. Some things should remain private.
Although I have mixed emotions, I can see including some possible benefit to including something like “given up for adoption” for those in search of birth parents.
3 Likes
Agree. There are some things that should remain private.
2 Likes