If it's flawed, kill it.
A. Liberal
Posted on 07/12/2006 1:00:02 PM PDT by madprof98
We don't feel capable of raising a severely disabled child. It would be different if we didn't have a choice, but we do.
A tear creeps down my cheek when she says it's a girl. I don't know why that makes me cry.
I'd really rather not know. She assumes that like most expectant parents we want to know.
But as its turning out, we aren't like most expectant parents.
We could be, though. In many ways my 45-year-old husband and I could be perfect parents. We're professionals, with university degrees, own our own house, it's even paid off (we're financially careful yuppies). We're also fit -- we do Ironman events, marathons, play golf, travel and help support my parents. But being healthy, and looking 10 years younger isn't enough to fool the gods that govern genetics. It turns out my 40-year-old eggs don't give a hoot that I'm physically fit.
And now our unexpected late-life gift, our 19-week-old miracle is turning out to be tragically flawed. A dreaded extra chromosome -- a triple X -- has robbed us of a healthy baby, the geneticist quietly tells us our child will be significantly lower functioning than other children. Definitely not the treasured only child, the little athlete, we had only so recently and so tentatively allowed ourselves to dream about.
We leave the office in a fog. Instead of celebrating our seventh wedding anniversary this weekend, we now have to make a literally life-changing decision, one too sensitive to share with family or friends. No one has actually said the word, they don't have to. We know what our options: To continue the pregnancy or not?
I cry myself to sleep. My husband researches triple X on the computer. We have to decide quickly because it's already 19 weeks into the pregnancy. We don't feel capable of raising a severely disabled child. It would be different if we didn't have a choice, but we do. Isn't it more cruel to bring a child burdened with so many disadvantages into the world?
The geneticist's carefully chosen words describe the best-case scenario. What's the worst? my husband asks. Doctors won't speculate, but say if we decide to keep the child, they'd like to be "involved." (Ouch!)
We spend a tense weekend, each worried about the other's emotional state. We had already decided if it was a Down syndrome baby (one in 30 chance for a mother over 40) we wouldn't continue. I thought even my church-going mother (who goes door-to-door collecting money for those who are anti-abortion, and their pro-life campaign) could forgive that. But what about this situation; it's not quite Down syndrome, but it's close.
I already know we won't tell our parents.
My husband drives me to the non-descript house in a downtown Toronto neighbourhood. The security guard checks my name off her list and refuses to let my husband in (standard policy). I wait in the ominously quiet but cozy waiting room. I'm curious to see who else is here. A miserable-looking Asian woman, older and more visibly pregnant than I am studies her hands in her lap. I'm guessing she, too, has found something unbearable in her fetus. Two young women, with tattoos and a Queen Street vibe, seem nervous, but not grieving (I assume) unwanted pregnancies. I meet a lovely 47-year-old women from out of town. She has two children and a heart condition. She can't take birth control pills because of her age and health, and this unexpected pregnancy could be fatal. She's angry it took her doctor so long to figure out she was pregnant.
She had to drive two hours to get here.
The procedure is deceptively simple. Doctors call it a D & E , dilation and evacuate, better known as an abortion. The doctor inserts fragile slivers of seaweed into my cervix then waits for the porous pieces to swell and enlarge the opening. It takes two days. It's uncomfortable, but no worse that being pregnant. On the third day, when the cervix has dilated, the doctor clears out the uterus: the evacuation.
A nurse holds my hand throughout. It's oddly comforting. I keep my eyes shut, I don't want to see or hear anything. Afterward, I fight the urge to cry. Two women throw up -- a reaction to the medication. The nurse says they have 20 patients a day. I feel sorry for all of them.
Why can't we just go to the nearest hospital? I hate the sanctimonious people who have made this more difficult than it has to be. No one begrudges couples thwarting God's plan by spending tens of thousands of dollars on fertility drugs, in vitro treatments, donor eggs, sperm, and surrogate mothers -- they get sympathy. But if you don't want to keep a seriously flawed baby, you bundle your pain in guilt and shame.
The other woman waits for me to say goodbye. She whispers "Good luck, try again," and brings me to tears. My husband picks me up.
His work sends flowers to me: his wife who had a miscarriage.
That's what we tell our friends and parents as well.
C. Smyth lives in Toronto.
1. She blames the whole thing on her age. No indication that she could not have gotten pregnant earlier than the 7th year of marraige. Probably putting it off for career and financial security reasons (aka selfishness).
2. Those who demand a perfect kid do not understand what it means to love.
3. To write an essay about this indictes that the authoress is properly troubled by her choice to kill her imperfect child. I hope it nage and nags on her to the point that she eventually realizes the selfish error of her ways. That is the only way she will become healthy again.
There are those who will choose to raise that child. No excuse for killing him/her.
Besides, doctors have given dire predictions about the health of an unborn child before, and when born, the child was healthy or at least not nearly as handicapped as predicted.
My wife and I would dearly love to adopt another child. We have several friends and some family that have Downs kids. Despite their learning disabilities, they are without exception the nicest, sweetest kids I have ever seen. It just burns me up when I see this wanton destruction of another innocent human life.
I wish I had a written out copy on the web of the testimony I heard one day, from a woman who was pregnant with a baby who they discovered, late in pregnancy, was anecephalic (no higher brain, I think they simply have a brain stem). She gave the most incredibly moving testimony of continuing the pregnancy to term, delivering her baby and then holding her as she died. And then I read about a woman who is so selfish, she is willing to kill her child because she is not up to a less than perfect child? Amazing.
BTW I have a niece who has Downs. She is an incredible girl, she can read, she holds a job, finished high school. Certainly she will not be able to do what most children do, however she has certainly enriched the lives of everyone around her.
susie
The doctor gave me the results of the first ultrasound with my first child. He said she had a possible heart defect and possibly downs syndrome because she never opened her fists during the ultrasound. I prayed and believed G-d for a healthy child, and she was born healthy and strong willed (probably why she keeps her fists balled).
If it's flawed, kill it.
A. Liberal
I hope they run a follow-up piece by Karla Homolka on how difficult but necessary it was for her to rape and kill her own sister.
Or maybe a peek into the troubled yet hopeful soul of Susan Smith?
Or perhaps some original verse by that tortured troubadour Charlie Manson?
Downs is no walk in the park.
Beautiful, and exactly right.
susie
Amen. Love is a choice and a decision to be faithful no matter what. This is why God is love. As wretched as we are He has decided to love us.
I expect the follow-up will be: "A tear runs down my cheek as I place the pillow over Grandma's head. Poor old thing is in bed all day, can no longer participate in Ironman events and doesn't look 10 years younger...what other choice did we have?"
God bless you and your sweet, wise little girl.
A tear creeps down my cheek when I learn that her beautiful face will continue to look serene as the unexpected reality of what we cannot see, but what we are being told by the experts, sinks in. We go home and I quietly cry myself to sleep as my husband searches for more information on the internet. What we should do haunts us throughout the weekend and, of course, we don't want to discuss it with our friends, as it is such a private decision. I think about what I had always envisioned; she would bake cookies for her grandkids, take them for walks, read them stories. Most important, she would be there for me as I told her about my challenges as a mother. But our dream was not to be. On Monday, we drive to the address we have been given and the security guard carefully checks off our names, but won't let my husband go with me. There are other people waiting too, and I scan their faces for signs that they have struggled with their decision as we did. And then, so shortly after they took us into a clean, well-lighted room, it was all over, and I was free to leave, by myself. Several people ask me if I am OK as I leave, and assure me that they will take care of whatever paperwork may be required.
Alzheimers. What's a child to do when faced with the inconvenient and terrible impact it would have on our future?
Neither is life in general. Cancer could strike anyone of us at any time without warning.
Kids in general are not.
susie
A nurse holds my hand throughout. It's oddly comforting.
How deceptively simple it is, if you gloss over the evacuation, if you look at it only through the eyes of self. No one to hold the baby's hand.
Mrs VS
Here's the crux of it. The child would not be the perfect person they dreamed about, so they have "no choice" but to kill it. Nice.
Asked the genetic counselor what therapies there were. She said none, but that we could "explore our choices."
My wife and I told her we were Catholic, and that we did not see the point in a test that served no purpose other than to convince people to murder a child.
There is a special spot in hell for such people.
She had to drive two hours to get here.
I cannot find the words to describe the anger I feel right now...
I, too, have known several people who were told that their baby would be born with serious defects only to have the baby be born perfectly normal.
One doctor "showed" the mother on the sonogram that the baby "didn't have a head." The baby was born with a head and perfectly healthy.
Another one was told that she would die if she took the baby to full-term and didn't abort it. She said no. She didn't die, and the baby was born just fine.
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