Abortion FAQ - What Are Your Options?

What are your options? At NOVA Women's Healthcare, we provide you with information and counseling about your health and options to consider. Below, you will find questions and answers regarding pregnancy, birth control, abortion and alternatives.

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What is Pregnancy?

Pregnancy is a normal condition in the reproductive cycle of a woman's life. Having a child growing inside you can be an exciting and happy event. But it can also be an unexpected and unwanted event. Childbirth typically occurs about 38 weeks after conception.

The beginning of pregnancy may be detected in a number of ways, including various pregnancy tests which detect hormones generated by the newly-formed placenta. Clinical blood and urine tests can detect pregnancy soon after implantation, which is as early as 6-8 days after fertilization. Blood pregnancy tests are considered to be more accurate then urine tests. Home pregnancy tests are personal urine tests, which normally cannot detect a pregnancy until at least 12-15 days after fertilization.

An early sonogram can determine the age of the pregnancy fairly accurately. In practice, doctors typically express the age of a pregnancy (i.e. an "age" for an embryo) in terms of "menstrual date" based on the first day of a woman's last menstrual period, as the woman reports it. Unless a woman's recent sexual activity has been limited, or she has been charting her cycles, or the conception is as the result of some types of fertility treatment (such as IUI or IVF) the exact date of fertilization is unknown.

At NOVA Women's Healthcare, we believe that getting informed is the first step in preparing yourself to make an intelligent and ethical choice about having a baby, terminating a pregnancy or preventing pregnancy.

What is Birth Control?

Birth Control is used to deliberately prevent or reduce the likelihood of pregnancy. Different methods of birth control have varying characteristics. Condoms, for example, are the only birth control method that provide significant protection from sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Birth Control is also known as Contraception.

At NOVA Women's Healthcare, we want you to be informed so you can make the better decisions about your body, health and life. Click here to learn more.

What is an abortion?

In the event of an unwanted pregnancy, a woman has the right to choose to voluntarily end her pregnancy. An unwanted pregnancy can be terminated by surgical or non-surgical means such as the Abortion Pill or Methotrexate Injection. Surgical procedures are administered with anesthesia (Deep IV Sedation, Intramuscular or Local).

At NOVA Women's Healthcare, we provide surgical and non-surgical pregnancy termination services for women with unwanted, early term pregnancies. Our abortion clinic provides these services with understanding, care and confidentiality. The doctors and staff at NOVA Women's Healthcare support your informed decision without judgment. Click here to learn more.

Are there alternative choices to abortion?

An alternative to abortion for an unwanted child is adoption. There are two types of adoptions — open and closed. With an open adoption, the birth mother, and possibly the birth father, knows something about the adoptive parents. They might even meet and exchange names or addresses. In a closed adoption, the birth mother and adoptive parents do not meet each other or know each others' names. We recommend the website The Adoption Guide at www.theadoptionguide.com for more information.

The Virginia Department of Health, Division of Women's and Infant's Health at www.vahealth.org/wih has important information for educating young adults about the benefits of having children within a marriage and educating young parents about raising healthy babies.