Posted on 07/18/2004 11:39:14 AM PDT by dennisw
July 18, 2004 LIVES When One Is Enough By AMY RICHARDS as told to AMY BARRETT
I grew up in a working-class family in Pennsylvania not knowing my father. I have never missed not having him. I firmly believe that, but for much of my life I felt that what I probably would have gained was economic security and with that societal security. Growing up with a single mother, I was always buying into the myth that I was going to be seduced in the back of a pickup truck and become pregnant when I was 16. I had friends when I was in school who were helping to rear nieces and nephews, because their siblings, who were not much older, were having babies. I had friends from all over the class spectrum: I saw the nieces and nephews on the one hand and country-club memberships and station wagons on the other. I felt I was in the middle. I had this fear: What would it take for me to just slip?
Now I'm 34. My boyfriend, Peter, and I have been together three years. I'm old enough to presume that I wasn't going to have an easy time becoming pregnant. I was tired of being on the pill, because it made me moody. Before I went off it, Peter and I talked about what would happen if I became pregnant, and we both agreed that we would have the child.
I found out I was having triplets when I went to my obstetrician. The doctor had just finished telling me I was going to have a low-risk pregnancy. She turned on the sonogram machine. There was a long pause, then she said, ''Are you sure you didn't take fertility drugs?'' I said, ''I'm positive.'' Peter and I were very shocked when she said there were three. ''You know, this changes everything,'' she said. ''You'll have to see a specialist.''
My immediate response was, I cannot have triplets. I was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year. There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, Do I want to?
I looked at Peter and asked the doctor: ''Is it possible to get rid of one of them? Or two of them?'' The obstetrician wasn't an expert in selective reduction, but she knew that with a shot of potassium chloride you could eliminate one or more.
Having felt physically fine up to this point, I got on the subway afterward, and all of a sudden, I felt ill. I didn't want to eat anything. What I was going through seemed like a very unnatural experience. On the subway, Peter asked, ''Shouldn't we consider having triplets?'' And I had this adverse reaction: ''This is why they say it's the woman's choice, because you think I could just carry triplets. That's easy for you to say, but I'd have to give up my life.'' Not only would I have to be on bed rest at 20 weeks, I wouldn't be able to fly after 15. I was already at eight weeks. When I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It's not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I'm going to have to move to Staten Island. I'll never leave my house because I'll have to care for these children. I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise. Even in my moments of thinking about having three, I don't think that deep down I was ever considering it.
The specialist called me back at 10 p.m. I had just finished watching a Boston Pops concert at Symphony Hall. As everybody burst into applause, I watched my cellphone vibrating, grabbed it and ran into the lobby. He told me that he does a detailed sonogram before doing a selective reduction to see if one fetus appears to be struggling. The procedure involves a shot of potassium chloride to the heart of the fetus. There are a lot more complications when a woman carries multiples. And so, from the doctor's perspective, it's a matter of trying to save the woman this trauma. After I talked to the specialist, I told Peter, ''That's what I'm going to do.'' He replied, ''What we're going to do.'' He respected what I was going through, but at a certain point, he felt that this was a decision we were making. I agreed.
When we saw the specialist, we found out that I was carrying identical twins and a stand alone. My doctors thought the stand alone was three days older. There was something psychologically comforting about that, since I wanted to have just one. Before the procedure, I was focused on relaxing. But Peter was staring at the sonogram screen thinking: Oh, my gosh, there are three heartbeats. I can't believe we're about to make two disappear. The doctor came in, and then Peter was asked to leave. I said, ''Can Peter stay?'' The doctor said no. I know Peter was offended by that.
Two days after the procedure, smells no longer set me off and I no longer wanted to eat nothing but sour-apple gum. I went on to have a pretty seamless pregnancy. But I had a recurring feeling that this was going to come back and haunt me. Was I going to have a stillbirth or miscarry late in my pregnancy?
I had a boy, and everything is fine. But thinking about becoming pregnant again is terrifying. Am I going to have quintuplets? I would do the same thing if I had triplets again, but if I had twins, I would probably have twins. Then again, I don't know.
I have an apple tree. I looked up yesterday and saw a clump of three tiny apples in a crowded bunch. I really see no difference between "selective reduction" and thinning apples. Except for the obvious fact that a baby is not an apple. God help us.
I will bet my bottom dollar she was taking Clomid to increase her ticking biological clock's chances of getting pregnant. As a mixed severe narcissistic/obsessive-compulksive personality disordered individual she dealt with the consequences in a grossly pathological, but totally predictable fashion.
In other less technical jargon, she is a severely self-centered control freak. Her actions are totally predictable given the nature of her mental illness.
Years ago (1980?) I remember reading an article in the Detroit News about fertility treatments and how one dr worked with a woman to conceive; she did and then she had an abortion. He said she told him she just wanted to know if she could get pregnant.
What a bitch.
bump for later reading
I'm beginning to think that abortion is as much a crime of anger, power and domination as rape.
I couldn't believe how she thought having the abortion cured her. She thought being pregnant with triplets was unnatural. Afterwards, she immediately no longer felt sick and her cravings went away.
Absolutely, positively disgusting. What a selfish, self-centered, murderous person.
She used "I" nine times and never once considered the other two lives she so casually snuffed out.
I know two people, my wife and I, who would have made excellent parents, for that matter. As it stands right now in the US, there's a waiting list for practically every healthy pregnant woman, which is why we're going to Russia to adopt an unwanted boy from an orphanage who managed to survive his stint in his mother's womb.
That seems to be the concensus around here. It was my first thought, too, with some additional, colorful adjectives.
Thanks for the ping.
Words fail me.
"I was tired of being on the pill, because it made me moody."
She goes off the pill not because they wanted a baby, but because it made her moody. Unbelievable.
I feel very sorry for the one child that narrowly escaped being killed.
My sentiments exactly.
"selective reduction"
Salinger, Hitler, and their eugenics people would be happy with this woman and her choice of words to justify and alleviate the pain of the word 'murder'.
agreed...this is just downright evil.
Devastating piece. The callous disregard for life in this country will be our demise. I have a lot of compassion. I even have compassion for people who have abortions. I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that if most people truly understood what they were doing, if the feminists hadn't brainwashed them into believing the death of their infants was about something benign like "choice", that most women would stay home and choose life.
But these two -- these two are absolute filth. They are lower than scum, and quite literally in concert with Satan. They are clearly aware they are "stopping two heartbeats". They chose material "convenience" over God's creation. They have paved their road to an awful place in hell, and I pray that God will mercifully show them their error before it's too late. I am not a fundamentalist. I am a Roman Catholic who isn't into the fire and brimstone approach, but this -- this is absolutely the worst of the worst.
These people are terrorists in their own right.
I know a woman who had an abortion because she couldn't handle having a third child. This was while she and her husband were building a four-bedroom, five bath stone-cold tomb of a house in a very very prosperous suburb of Chicago. I had the misfortune of attending a surprise birthday party for a mutual friend there, and I can tell you the evil present there was palpable...Their house was as empty as their souls...
Question:
Based on her statements to the affect of admitting that she was ending two lives, two heartbeats, can she be taken to court as an unfit parent of the surviving baby? I can imagine a million couples across this country would line up to take that child from her stinking claws.
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