Mom who aborted baby with Down syndrome says she’s a Christian, so pro-lifers should support her

Live Action News ^ | April 14, 2024 | Nancy Flanders

[Morgana]

When Kelly Shannon learned her preborn baby had Down syndrome, she was upset to discover she wouldn’t be able to have an abortion under Alabama law. So she traveled to Virginia to have the abortion, and believes that her decision was the correct one — so correct, in fact, that she says since she is “a married, white, straight, Christian, grew-up-in-the-church woman,” pro-lifers should listen to her and change their minds about abortion.

Shannon spoke with the States Newsroom about learning at 16 weeks by ultrasound that her preborn baby girl had Down syndrome along with a buildup of fluid in her head and body, a heart defect, and a tumor in her abdomen. The news outlet reported, “Each abnormality on its own would possibly have been manageable, Shannon said, but the maternal-fetal medicine specialist told her the combination meant she would likely either miscarry at some point during the pregnancy or her daughter’s life would be short and punctuated by multiple surgeries. Shannon and her husband made the difficult decision at that point to terminate.”

She said the fact that the baby had more than one condition “made the decision [to abort] easier because it was like, well now if I know I’m going to lose her regardless, I can lose her on a controlled timeline, protect my health, start the grieving process, get healthy and then still be able to have another child.”

But her daughter wasn’t guaranteed to die; the medical ethics committee did not see her condition as ‘lethal.’

Beyond the failed logic of thinking it’s better to kill your child before they can die naturally, it’s also tragic and inconsistent to act as if, just because a child is still in the womb, it’s acceptable to ‘abort and start over.’ If Shannon’s child had been born and diagnosed with such conditions, it is unlikely Shannon would have rather her child die “on a controlled timeline” than receive proper medical care. She likely wouldn’t have thought, ‘Let’s start the grieving process as soon as possible by killing our newborn before she dies naturally.’

Pro-life, no exceptions

Shannon’s comments to the States Newsroom regarding why she feels people should support her decision are striking.

“I get angry whenever I see people with the ‘choose life’ bumper stickers and license plates, because they’re not thinking about me,” Shannon said. “They’re not recognizing that it’s not a black and white issue, it’s nothing but shades of gray when you’re dealing with pregnancy, particularly high-risk pregnancy.”

She went on to say, “I am a married, white, straight, Christian, grew-up-in-the-church woman who was attempting to grow her family within the bounds of marriage, and I just keep thinking, if anybody is going to be able to change a mind about this issue, shouldn’t it be me?”

But Shannon’s race, religion, sexuality, and marital status don’t make her an authority figure to whom pro-lifers should look as an exception to pro-life laws, and her statement comes across with a narcissistic, elitist tone. Her situation isn’t more significant or worthy of compassion than any other woman’s, regardless of race, religion, or marital status.

In addition, pro-lifers are truly thinking of women like Shannon, who are facing a diagnosis for their preborn child, when enacting laws to protect children from abortion. Those laws also protect women. According to Perinatal Hospice and Palliative Care, which provides resources for parents who are facing such a diagnosis, significant research shows that women who have an abortion following a prenatal diagnosis suffer “physical and emotional pain, with psychosocial and reproductive consequences.”

Additional studies show that aborting a ‘wanted’ baby due to a diagnosis can be a “traumatic event … which entails the risk of severe and complicated grieving.”

Abortion is traumatic, and aborting your baby due to a diagnosis can increase the risk of abortion-related trauma.

Alabama law protected her baby

Alabama’s pro-life law protected Shannon’s daughter and treated her as a valued human being. The law protects most children from abortion but has an exception for children who are expected to die before, at, or shortly after birth. Shannon hoped that the medical ethics committees that determine which babies can be killed would give them the go-ahead, so she scheduled the abortion.

But after the first hospital committee said she could abort, the second committee said she couldn’t. The committee determined that the baby’s condition was not ‘lethal’ as required for an abortion under state law, and therefore, killing the baby prior to birth was not an option within Alabama’s borders. They did, however, say that if the baby girl developed hydrops fetalis, an excessive buildup of fluid, then Shannon could have an abortion.

At 17 weeks, Shannon had an ultrasound to check for hydrops but it was not present. As the pregnancy progressed, the tumor grew .7 centimeters. These were not enough to deem her daughter’s health conditions ‘lethal.’

Shannon was “… angry… that I wasn’t going to get to handle my pregnancy and my termination in the way that made the most sense to me …”

An out-of-state abortion

So, at 19 weeks, unable to abort in her home state, Shannon drove to Virginia with her parents to have an induction abortion.

An induction abortion involves injecting feticide, typically digoxin, into the baby’s head or heart to cause cardiac arrest. The mother then delivers a stillborn child, though there are cases in which the baby survives and is born alive.

“There was so much decision-making and processing, and you’re still feeling the baby kick the whole time,” Shannon said. “And every time she would kick, I was just sitting there like, ‘I’m so sorry. I wish I got to be your mom, but I don’t get to be your mom.’”

Shannon already was her baby’s mother. Many parents find themselves under significant pressure from the medical community in situations like hers, instead of finding the support they need to choose life.

The States Newsroom reported on Shannon’s abortion, “After a long day of waiting, Shannon gave birth a few minutes before midnight and got to hold her [stillborn] daughter.”

“I kept her with me until about 2 or 3 in the morning,” said Shannon. The baby girl was buried in Virginia with other babies who had been miscarried, aborted, or died from premature birth.

Where is the support for life?

It is unclear if Shannon sought the advice of pediatric specialists before having the abortion. Were there treatment options that would have allowed pediatric specialists to provide her daughter with some level of care and possibly help her survive? There are doctors who perform surgeries on babies in the womb to remove tumors. There are doctors who specialize in heart surgery on newborn babies. Was Shannon given the opportunity to talk to even one? This is never mentioned.

Pro-lifers know that every human life is inherently valuable and equal to every other human life. The baby isn’t more important than the mother and the mother isn’t more important than the baby. A baby with Down syndrome isn’t less valuable than a baby without Down syndrome. Every child, regardless of the circumstances of their conception, their health status, their age, their gender, or their mother’s financial or educational status is worthy of life and worth fighting for.

[grcuster]

Her god is Molech which is abhorrent. Churches are being invaded with leftist views as they can’t stand the idea of abiding by GOD’s love and laws.

[super7man]

Oh man, ya had to go there. ;0)

[Gil4]

I can add one to your list. We were told by doctors there was a high risk of Downs with child #5, and they provided information on abortion, which we promptly threw in the trash.

She is 21 now, 4.0 GPA in college, valedictorian when she graduated high school, and she is the nicest of the kids (and they all inherited a good bit of the Minnesota nice.)

[lula]

She’s upset because pro lifers aren’t thinking about “Her”? She wasn’t thinking about the child inside her. God knew the child, Good luck on judgement day. Selfishness is what is being heralded by our immoral society. Lord help us!

[RasterMaster]

Even these closet Democrats are upset that fewer people are choosing to sacrifice their child to moloch and its getting harder for them to earn a profit from selling the baby parts.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/health/planned-parenthood-undercover-video/index.html

Call yourself a porcupine...doesn’t make you anything but a baby murderer for your own CONVENIENCE. #Ghouls

[RasterMaster]

Take a good look at any democrat "cause" and you can see that it is just another COLOUR REVOLUTION paid for by COMMUNISTS...Gather a bunch of rent-a-mob union thugs, fill the ranks with a few screeching skanks well-beyond child rearing years (add a few indoctrinated lesbians from the teachers unions) and use photography tricks to make a couple hundred paid actors look like an organic mob. They've had to reduce the number of matching t-shirts and posters since people were beginning to see them as too staged, coordinated, and far too-well-organized. The number of abortions has been in free-fall since the eighties...so the the demand is down and they just want federal funding to keep them afloat. Their case is built on so many lies it is almost unfathomable.

[nwrep]

What about after 2005? This graph is 2 decades old.

[RasterMaster]

Excerpts from Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World by Michael J. Gorman

Top Highlights:

“Why did both Plato and Aristotle support abortion? It is highly unlikely that either philosopher condoned abortion generally or for personal convenience. Rather, each held a utilitarian view of the individual, born or unborn, seeing that individual as existing for the state. No rights granted to the individual were absolute. All rights—even the right to life—were subordinate to the welfare of the state (or the family, the religion or the race) and had to be sacrificed if the best interests of the state demanded it.” (Pages 22–23)

“Both Plato and Aristotle recommended family limitation by abortion (if necessary), and the declines in population of the Roman Empire at the time of Augustus and again after Hadrian were probably due in part to such action by both rich and poor.6 The wealthy did not want to share their estates with many offspring,7 while the poor felt unable to support large families.” (Page 15)

“We will see that three important themes emerged during these centuries: the fetus is the creation of God; abortion is murder; and the judgment of God falls on those guilty of abortion.” (Page 47)

“Abortion in the early stages of pregnancy, ‘on demand’ or as a means of birth control, ‘is very likely not even contemplated in the Mishnaic law.’15 This is important to realize in reading the Talmud and the Mishnah, since most English editions of these works use the word abortion as a synonym for miscarriage or miscarried fetus.” (Page 38)

“If medical ethics opposed abortion, social and philosophical ethics to some extent endorsed it. The ‘Greeks enjoy the dubious distinction of being the first [in the Ancient Near East or Western world] positively to advise and even demand abortion in certain cases.’” (Page 21)

[RasterMaster]

What about since 2005, you ask?

The demand for abortions is STILL DECLINING...

https://www.mdch.state.mi.us/osr/abortion/Tab_US.asp

Why the left have to pump it up every couple of years and scream that the right is “taking away your rights to healthcare” BS.

[RasterMaster]

“Guttmacher says that in 2020 there were 14.4 abortions in the U.S. per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. Its data shows that the rate of abortions among women has generally been declining in the U.S. since 1981, when it reported there were 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women in that age range.”

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/25/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-us/

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the agenda....follow the money.

[RasterMaster]

The left are so worried, they put a microscope on a 3-year period (2017-2020) and extrapolate that data into a “steep rise” in the demand for abortions...Can you see now that YOU’RE BEING PLAYED????!

Long-Term Decline in US Abortions Reverses, Showing Rising Need for Abortion as Supreme Court Is Poised to Overturn Roe v. Wade

https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2022/06/long-term-decline-us-abortions-reverses-showing-rising-need-abortion-supreme-court

[circlecity]

Why would someone decide to make a public issue of such a private matter if they didn’t have an agenda?

[RasterMaster]

The left have even played the RACE CARD to manipulate their base...The graph I posted above (and Margaret Sanger’s own words) show that they target poor blacks and Hispanics more than affluent whites.

“How the Texas Abortion Ban is Really About Preserving a White Majority”

https://urge.org/how-the-texas-abortion-ban-is-really-about-preserving-a-white-majority/?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrOG5zrjYhQMVh8zCBB20gAxkEAAYAyAAEgKACfD_BwE

Democrats have already aborted their future...that’s a primary reason there is a constant need to import more slaves who can be indoctrinated for the DNC plantation. If they can’t sell your baby’s body parts, then they want to keep a fresh supply of children for their elites to abduct. You can see why the issue is all they have left to run on as a party.

https://youtu.be/IaHioK3Ljz0?si=nR4xqy4JNQa1bKS2

[RasterMaster]

Roe v. Wade didn't start this war. The satanists have been using the same playbook against God's creation for centuries....

Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World

[kawhill]

My youngest child, my daughter, was born perfectly. As a baby the doctors told my wife and I that her brain was growing too rapidly for the size off her skull and they wanted to fracture her skull in several places to relieve the pressure. I told my wife that isn’t going to happen. She is now an MD, a neurologist, she studies the human brain. This child may have become someone truly special in some facet of life if it hadn’t been murdered.

[faucetman]

“”says she’s Christian””

Yeah, then I am a woman.

If I can become a woman just by saying so, then I guess she can be a “Christian” just by saying so.

NOT!

[faucetman]

Jesus decides whether you are a Christian or not. No other opinion matters.

[moovova]

I tell you what lady...i will personally hold your hand as you walk up to the Gates Of Hell. I’ll even wave goodbye as you enter.

[NorthMountain]

she says since she is “a married, white, straight, Christian, grew-up-in-the-church woman,” pro-lifers should listen to her and change their minds about abortion.

Why should we listen to her? She flagrantly refused to listen to us.

[NorthMountain]

The Alan Guttmacher Institute is a radical pro-abortion arm of Planned Parenthood.

I’s always fun to shove their own statistics down their throats.