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.
Sorry, i realized that being upset had caused me to forget to mention that to which I was referring, I tried to stop it and do it over. Obviously too late.
OKAY! LAST TRY!
Her fetus was not affected with Down Syndrome, it was triple-X. And while I don't object as you do to parents choosing to abort for Downs, which inevitably results in significant mental retardation and life-shortening physical defects, triple-X females have no physical problems (just tend to be on the tall and slender side, but that's hardly a defect) and usually have low-normal intelligence (i.e. they are not retarded). They mature normally and are fertile, and unless they've been tested for chromosomal abnormalities, usually nobody knows they have one -- they're just tall and slim and not particularly smart. In other words, they have no characteristics which couldn't just as well appear in a chromosomally normal female. So it's pretty hard to grasp what this couple's reasoning process was. If it was that essential to them to have a baby that was as perfect as possible under current technology, why they heck didn't they do IVF with preimplantation genetic diagnosis?
When's your birthday? I have my "second 39th birthday" in September. :)
Because that's a bother . . . and might have interfered with a tennis match or a dinner party or a cruise. What you never seem to get (in this thread or elsewhere) is that the Culture War is about values and that what is at stake in it is our very humanity.
Just wait, they'll be able to genetically test for that.
Only a miscarriage of universal justice, perpetrated against one whose only "crime" was to be disabled.
The supposedly "less lovable" are at-large in this world because first of all, they are not "less lovable" in God's eyes, and secondly, their presence is a "live test" to the rest of us: A "loved" and "wanted" child says everything about us and nothing about the inherent value of that child; "unloved" and "unwanted" children likewise says everything about us and again nothing about the children themselves.
That's why, underneath the public relations, campaigns like the March of Dimes is really a campaign against the disabled, themselves. Ya "get rid" the world of disabilities, in part, by ridding the world the disabled themselves...All in the name of what again???
They could have had a supermodel.
Why? Do you also feel sad when you hear of a couple of the same age who are STILL having children, i.e. they started early and have several already and aren't stopping? This woman was 40 and her husband 45 -- it's not at all unusual for people to be having babies at this age with no assistance from fertility docs. A couple of years ago a childhood friend of mine had her unplanned, unexpected fourth child at age 44? Should I have felt sad about that? Little Anna's parents and three older siblings seemed quite happy about her arrival.
Where do you see that? If this had pregnancy had resulted from IVF or even some lesser fertility assistance, it's extremely unlikely that they would have gotten anywhere near 19 weeks before discovering a clear chromosomal abnormality. If they'd done IVF and knew in advance they wouldn't continue with a Down Syndrome pregnancy, they would have done PGD and never transferred an affected embryo. If they'd done fertility drugs and/or other non-IVF treatments, they would almost certainly have been advised to do a chromosomal test very early (it can now be done by 6 weeks), and since they were obviously firmly against continuing a pregnancy with any detectable abnormality, why would they have waited another 13 weeks? Most likely this was a perfectly natural pregnancy, and they didn't know much about the details of what tests can be done when, because they hadn't been involved in high-tech fertility treatment.
Next Saturday. My husband and 3 oldest children will be away at different things, so I'm trying to come up with something fun to do with the five younger ones (8, 6, 4, 2, 5 mos.)
I read a book a few years ago by a Jesuit brother who was born without an arm. He's a highly-regarded cook (specialist in soups) and runs a theater company for the disabled, as well.
If what they did was "OK", why did they tell everyone she had a miscarriage?
She kills her baby, then lies to family and friends that she miscarried. What a selfish, self-centered b!tch.
lol.... well then you know exactly what I mean...... Man I love my kids. That's the thing that know one really explains to you when you are pregnant. That you are gonna love your kids so much and it is a hard, scary, deep kind of love! I can't see why anyone would choose to kill their baby.
A lot of fear, and no faith, and no love, and no hope.
It is amazing when you realize how much you love your children, no matter what they're like.
I was pregnant last year and frequented an expecting board. Another woman the same age as me was expecting also. When I had a miscarriage, I read a few weeks later that this woman had tested and found out her baby had Down Syndrome. She had an abortion.
We were not going to do any testing, and wanted and loved our baby no matter what.
This woman willingly killed her baby because it was less than "perfect", while I wished every minute to have my baby back.
It was so unfair.
I just have to wonder....
What if their baby had been born "perfect". Then something happened and the baby became disabled in some way- a high fever that caused some type of brain damage perhaps? Would their baby be disposable then?
It's the same thing, imo.
btt
Is it OK to kill retarded, physically defective babies after they're born? If not, why is it OK to kill them before they're born?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.