[srmorton]

My mother lost her second child (a boy) also. They were afraid my older sister, who was born in 1945 and had a very severe reaction, would not live. They wanted my mother to have a tubal ligation. My father was a chaplain in the Navy and was not there to give his permission for the surgery, so I was born five years later. I also had a reaction, but they knew how to do an exchange transfusion by then so I fared pretty well. I often think about my father having to give permission when I consider that today's “modern woman” does not even have to tell the father of a baby that she decides to abort, although he would have to pay child support if she decided to keep the baby.

[Verginius Rufus]

You’re lucky to be here—but all of us are. The odds against any one person coming into existence are astronomical. In the case of my father’s friend, I think his older son must have been born somewhere around 1953-55, and the younger one who died probably a couple of years later. The mother would sometimes encounter people who would insinuate that she was selfish for having only one child (people who did not know the story). That must have been particularly painful.