Posted on 10/17/2008 9:39:59 AM PDT by truthandlife
Five years after a doctor aborted his son, who had been pre-natally diagnosed with Down syndrome, a grieving father, who asked to remain anonymous, spoke with CNSNews.com about the decision to end his child’s life and the aftermath of that decision.
The man and his wife, who was in her early forties when she became pregnant, already had a healthy daughter. For that first pregnancy, the couple did not have pre-natal screenings or testing. But after what “Joe” said was his wife having “an intuitive sense that something was wrong” with her second pregnancy, the couple agreed she would be tested.
A blood screen showed there was an increased risk that the child she was carrying had Down syndrome. The results of a subsequent amniocentesis confirmed that the unborn child had the genetic disorder caused by an extra chromosome that typically results in the child having some degree of mental retardation and certain distinct physical characteristics, including upslanting eyes and low muscle tone.
"Joe" agreed to speak with CNSNews.com about his and his wife's decision to have a doctor abort the life of their son and his experience in the wake of that decision.
CNSNews.com: “Did you and your wife agree on having an abortion?”
Joe: “Well, her case was pretty convincing. She felt that something was wrong, in addition with the child other than just Down’s.”
CNSNews.com: “Did you have proof of that?”
Joe: “No, no. Plus, the fact that we were older. We’re sure that our life expectancy isn’t going to be well into our 80s or anything considering our family background, and it would have been basically our daughter looking after him, making sure he was okay.”
CNSNews.com: “You knew it was a boy? Did that make the decision more difficult?”
Joe: “Any child would make it more difficult. You have to understand this. We spent three weeks from the time we found out the diagnosis and we researched both sides of the issue. What support was there for a child with Down’s? What degree of debilitation they may have? Because it is a throw of the dice.”
CNSNews.com: “But you didn’t know if he would be high functioning.”
Joe: “There’s really no way of knowing if he could be very high functioning. There’s no way you could determine that, based on the diagnosis we had.”
CNSNews.com: “Do you have regrets about this decision?”
Joe: “I always do. I mean, hell, I’ll cup a moth and let it outside without killing it. Don’t you think I would have afforded my son better?”
CNSNews.com: “It sounds like you do regret it.”
Joe: “Perhaps. But at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. We went to counseling before we went through with this thing. We were lucky in that we were well set up to get answers. And the counselor said that whatever you decide, either way, this could be very destructive for a couple if they kept the child and if they did not.
“You know what is the sickest part of all? He was about 20 weeks along. We went through the whole child-birth process after the fact. And when he was born, if you wish to call it that, the doctor that delivered him said there were no visible signs of Down’s. Tell me that wasn’t a knife through the heart.”
CNSNews.com: “What if your daughter came to you 20 years from now and said, this is what I found out (that my unborn child has Down syndrome), what should I do?”
Joe: “Like I’d tell anybody. Just make sure you can live with your decision because it’s irrevocable.”
CNSNews.com: Are you living with your decision?
Joe: “Every day. I’ve only told two of my friends about it and you don’t get that Christian backlash that you are vile, you are an agent of murder. Perhaps I do think that. But they said, ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t bring a child like that into the world.’
“You know what the strange thing is, it just made me pause when I thought about it, that less children are being born with Down’s--of course they are not because the parents are not carrying them to term.
“Believe me, if you would have approached me even before we found out, I would have said, ‘No way. No way. A woman has a right to choose.’ But both parties have to live with the decision.”
CNSNews.com: “It doesn’t sound like you were okay with that decision.”
Joe: “I’ve gone through four years of counseling so far. (My wife) has gone to a support group. I think she’s come a long way with it. But I think she’s surprised that I haven’t come as far as she has. Of course, she has regrets. Things are very sad in her life that she can’t say she’s had two children.”
Joe wasn’t asked another question, but he offered one final comment.
Joe: “I think the bottom line is you have to be able to function and live as you did beforehand with the decision you made. In fact, I’m not fully out of it yet and it’s been five years. It’s almost like a Jacob Marley-esque thing that I will drag around with me forever. If I could find some means of redemption I’d like to know how I could go about doing that.”
It does show how error-prone are doctors and for anyone willing to destroy their child under any circumstance is beyond my comprehension.
I'm so sorry I get emotional over this issue but it has hit so close to home and I know the absolute joy my niece brings to our family and to think of life without my precious grandson is unbearable.
Even though he was autistic as a little boy, he has gradually improved and he just started college this year to become a computer software engineer.
Willing to play God, huh?
Do you really believe that anyone who aborts a child under any circumstance would simply not get rid of the evidence? I can’t imagine that there would be follow up on a dead baby to make sure they were correct in their diagnosis.
There certainly would be if the mother asked for it. Many would, some just to reassure themselves that it was indeed not a chromosomally normal baby, and in some cases because if an anatomical abnormality had been detected, but no genetic testing had been done before the abortion, the anatomical abnormality might have been due to some other kind of genetic disorder that is (unlike Downs) hereditary. Most women would want to confirm before attempting another pregnancy that the abnormality was indeed just due to randomly-occurring Downs.
And of course, there’s no shortage of unethical people who are eager to find some way to sue a doctor and hit the jackpot. If a doctor had actually suggested and proceeded with an abortion based on suspected Downs, without chromosomal confirmation, that’s practically winning the lottery in the malpractice-suit-for-profit business, because there IS a huge chance that the fetus was not Downs affected, and an absolutely guaranteed payout if it wasn’t.
Why didn’t they just have the baby and give him up for adoption? They really didn’t think the whole thing through, and now they wish they had.
I have great difficulty believing that any mother who had just killed her child would care if she had made the "correct" decision. She would want to get rid of it fast. She, nor the doctor, would not want to know the awful truth.
You seem awfully cavalier about killing unborn children. Is it just like treating any other malady to you? Shame on you, if you do not find the idea of killing unborn children abhorrent.
The baby didn't have to die even if he had Downs. What is so awful about Downs? The very idea that they are less worthy of life than anyone else is disgusting.
Give me a person with Downs any day over a liberal.
Now if we could abort liberals I might feel a little better about it. (sarcasm)
If I read the article right, they killed their son because they believed he had Downs. I don't agree with their decision, believe me. My nephew has Aspergers and my goddaughter is autistic. Thank God their moms wanted them or they would have been in the trash bin too.
Abortion is just plain sick, sick, sick and outright murder, and all those who perform, pay for and promote it will suffer!
I would be interested in knowing about your nephew. Tell me about him. Are they siblings?
If a woman’s attitude toward a fetus she’s carrying is that she just “wants to get rid of it fast”, it’s extremely unlikely that she would have undergone the preliminary ultrasound and blood test screening for Downs. If a woman IS having those screening tests, then it’s because she wants a baby, but just doesn’t want one with Downs. And if she does want a baby, and isn’t completely retarded, then she’ll realize that getting accurate information about what went wrong with this baby improves her chances of being able to have a healthy and genetically normal baby in the future.
Of course, since I don’t believe for a second that any woman in this country is being advised to abort based only on a preliminary Downs screening, the question is somewhat moot. I know plenty of women have post-abortion genetic testing when the cause of major and obvious fetal abnormalities leading to the decision to abort was unclear. But in cases where Downs was the only reason for the abortion, the chromosome testing would have been done before the abortion, so there would be no reason to repeat it afterwards (though occasionally it might be repeated if the aborted fetus showed signs of other abnormalities in addition to Downs).
Not everyone who aborts Downs fetuses is doing it out of selfishness and a belief that people with Downs are by definition more trouble than they’re worth. I used to communicate with a woman on a message who had a baby girl with Downs, even though the fetus had appeared perfectly normal on ultrasounds all the way through the pregnancy. Her doctors saw no reason to do chromosome testing for Downs, and were totally shocked when the baby was born. Not surprisingly, given the lack of abnormal ultrasound findings, the girl is on the very mildly affected end of the Downs spectrum, and her mother adores her, certainly doesn’t regret having had her, and is knocking herself out getting the best therapy for her and trying to ensure that she reaches 100% of her potential. However, when the mother got pregnant again about a year after this first baby was born, she did get full testing for Downs, and felt she would not carry another Downs baby to term (this one turned out to be a normal little boy). Her reasoning was that she couldn’t possibly give her existing daughter all the care she needed and deserved, if she had another infant with Downs, especially one more severely affected. And she was concerned about providing for her daughter after both parents were gone, as the girl is very likely to outlive her parents. High quality care is expensive, and must be paid for out of private funds. Medicare-only care for aging and disabled people with Downs is not high quality. And this woman and her husband did not anticipate having the means leave sufficient financial assets to cover high quality lifelong care for two children with Downs. Bottom line was she wouldn’t have carried a second Downs baby to term, because she didn’t want her Downs daughter to end up spending the last years of her life in some miserable Medicare-funded nursing home.
You really do believe that it’s ok for humans to play God, don’t you? You must have no faith. I feel very sorry for you.
You have no clue what faith I have. But I’m quite sure that any God worth worshipping certainly wants humans to use their intelligence to get the best outcomes possible for all sentient creatures. Reasonable people may differ in what they see as the best outcomes.
Many very religious people are totally opposed to war, on the grounds that it involves deliberate actions that will certainly kill some innocent people. Better to let Hitler keep starving and gassing Jews by the millions, than drop a bomb on a Nazi military target that could have innocent people in the vicinity, because it should be up to God whether to stop the starvings and gassings. I don’t happen to agree with that. Some people think if you take your acutely ill child to the hospital for medical treatment instead of just praying and relying on God to get whatever outcome he wants (even if this means the child’s preventable death), this means you have no faith. I don’t agree with that either. Neither do I agree that it’s more virtuous for a woman pregnant with high order multiples having complications like fetus-fetus transfusion to stubbornly refuse to do a selective reduction, when this means a 99% chance that all the babies will die, than to do her best and let her doctors do their best to save as many as possible. You may call that “playing God”, but I’d call it using the tools God has provided.
He needs to sit down with a priest and talk, and then seek the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
What a blessing both parents and children will be to one another.
You Tube - Over 1,500 Black Babies Per Day Are Killed In The USA / Pro-Life Anti-Abortion Video PSA
No, they are from two different families. I pray for them both.
I know that it seems so simple! A doctor gives you his diagnosis and you are left with the decision! You are also faced with your beliefs! I went through a heart breaking decision also. First, my sister had just lost her baby due to something not seen in her scans before her baby was born and after her baby was born he was seen several times, she knew something was wrong. She kept taking him in. They lost his scans and never diagnosed his condition until after he died. A tumour was taking up two thirds of the interior of his heart. He also had kidney hydroneuphrosis and cysts which had gone untreated. He died of a heart attack at four months old. My sister in law to the day had lost a baby daughter the prior year to a birth defect of a missing artery to the heart which caused further complications at 7 1/2 months old while on a donor wait. Her baby died after splints were put in to try to open up the remaining arteries which closed up on her didn’t work. She died of organ failure on a heart lung machine. Back to my decision, two babies exactly one year to the day, tragically gone, both my sister and sister in law were in mourning. I thought carefully about what I was risking. My son had down’s syndrome and hydroneuphrosis of the kidneys. I could not ignore that our family had just lost these other two babies, was I next? Trust me, people did talk to me about this! My sister was grieving so badly she had trouble acknowledging my pregnancy at the time. Then the amazing feeling of two moving butterfly feelings! Not long after this I lost amniotic fluid and sat shaking. I had miscarried, I knew it. My doctor examines me to find a strong heart beat still there! He again does an ultra sound, my son was really low in my abdomen so this will make more sense soon. I was reassured that the baby was still alive but again the blood test, the large head and short femur length, the kidney issue, the doctor leaned on me even more heavily to have an abortion which is against my beliefs. Stating that my own body was trying to tell me something. I opted to carry my son to term and changed doctors. I never once believed he would be down’s syndrome But I accepted this risk, I prayed and the day my water broke was the day this breach baby that was supposed to be turned around came two week early on HALLOWEEN! My sister took my girls out trick or treating and I headed to the hospital determined to avoid a c-section. I had a flawless breach delivery of a bottom first baby while the back of the room was line up with medical students! My son, named after his birth doc, is perfect in every way except he does not have down’s syndrome. He was spared of any kind of defect or challenge. He had a big head, yes and a large torso, with shorter legs. He grew out of the kidney issue as an infant. I had to have the twin remains removed by a surgical dnc after my son was born. The AFP test that was the other factor the prior doctor had used to conclude my son was down’s syndrome was wrong! All because I was carrying twins which messes up the levels of that test! Incidently my big headed boy was very unbalanced as a baby, with short legs that were slightly inverted at the hip bone(we did special exercises to straighten them out)! As an infant he slept with his eyes open. It turns out just like his birth doc told us, it was a sign of intellect. Josh is extremely intelligent, musically gifted and wonderful in every way. He is perfectly proportioned now, from head to toe! A football player build and a great looking guy! To look into his beautiful sparkling blue eyes, I could not love him more! I would have accepted him either way, my love knows no bounds for my children! I don’t judge what others do but to make a decision based on medical information that can be wrong? Well I chose not to and recieved an incredible gift! I am also a TWIN MYSELF!
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