Posted on 10/23/2014 9:15:24 AM PDT by wagglebee
For the second time in two weeks, a mother has given a shocking and heartbreaking interview in which she admits she would have taken the life of her disabled son in an abortion if she had it to do all over again.
Gillian Relf, 69, regrets having her son, Stephen, who is 47, because he has Down syndrome and requires constant and daily care. She worries about what will happen to her son when she dies.
Relf starts with an embarrassing anecdote about how her son refused to sit in his seat on an airplane as they prepared to leave London for a family trip to Greece.
The pilot had been very patient but, after an hour of the plane waiting on the Tarmac at Heathrow, with my son Stephen refusing to get up off the floor, sit in his seat and buckle up, our bags were removed from the hold and he was carried off the flight, my husband Roy and I walking, hot-cheeked and humiliated, behind.
Our family holiday to Greece would not be going ahead, after all.
And no, Stephen was not an obstreperous toddler when this happened. He was 45 years old. This embarrassing scene happened two years ago and the episode is just one of the many challenges we have faced since Stephen, our second child, was born with Down’s Syndrome.
“So difficult has it been that I can honestly say I wish he hadn’t been born,” Relf continues. “I know this will shock many: this is my son, whom I’ve loved, nurtured and defended for nearly half a century, but if I could go back in time, I would abort him in an instant. I’m now 69 and Roy is 70, and we’ll celebrate our golden wedding anniversary next month.”
Relf recalls how when she and her teenage sweetheart-future husband considered having a family, they wished for a perfect baby.
We were childhood sweethearts and married when I was just 19 and he was 20. I sailed through my first pregnancy with Andrew a year later, and both of us were really looking forward to a second baby to complete our family.
There were no antenatal scans or blood test to detect abnormalities in those days and although I had a sixth sense, call it mother’s intuition, that there was something wrong with my baby, the doctors and midwives insisted I was being hysterical and refused to perform an amniocentesis (where cells are taken from the amniotic fluid and tested). A healthy 22-year-old, with a thriving baby, I was considered very low risk to have a Down’s baby.
Stephen came into the world one Sunday in January 1967 at the Kent & Canterbury Hospital.
The following Wednesday, I looked at him in his cot: his small, almond-shaped eyes, broad, flat nose and the one crease on the palms of his hands.
‘He’s a mongol, isn’t he?’ I gasped to my mother. It sounds shocking now but that was how we used to describe people with Down’s Syndrome in those days.
Relf eventually got confirmation from doctors months later that he son indeed had Down syndrome. Them for a second time in the article, she admits she wish she had killed him in an abortion.
Perhaps you’d expect me to say that, over time, I grew to accept my son’s disability. That now, looking back on that day 47 years later, none of us could imagine life without him, and that I’m grateful I was never given the option to abort.
However, you’d be wrong. Because, while I do love my son, and am fiercely protective of him, I know our lives would have been happier and far less complicated if he had never been born. I do wish I’d had an abortion. I wish it every day.
If he had not been born, I’d have probably gone on to have another baby, we would have had a normal family life and Andrew would have the comfort, rather than the responsibility, of a sibling, after we’re gone.
Sadly, just last week, another mother of a son with disabilities said she too wished she had aborted.
In a heartbreaking article in the Daily Mail, Jill and Iain Kelly admit that if they had known that their five-year-old son, Dylan, would be disabled they would’ve had an abortion.
Jill told the Daily Mail, “I love my son. He’s changed our lives. But if I’d known everything that Dylan would have to go through, and will have to go through, there’s no doubt in my mind that, given the correct information, I would have asked for a termination. I’m adamant about that. And it makes me feel guilty just saying it because Dylan is my world. I love him, he’s an amazing little boy.”
how can you call her selfish?....she didn’t ditch her son....he’s not in an institution...he wasn’t left on the side of the road...he wasn’t aborted...he wasn’t battered to death....
That was sarcasm right?
She didn’t choose convenience. She kept her child. She regrets that.
Pol Pot can only claim in the range of 1 to 3 million, a mere piker in comparison to NOW. I believe you meant Mao Zedong.
Some people are not fit to be parents. Period.
She is not a good person; just selfish to say that and don’t you think her son has not heard her say of this. Gaul, no, very sad for the son.
Shortly out of high school I worked with the retarded in an institution for a couple years. In many cases, bad as they are, the people are safer in there than being with their parents. Some parents are indeed great and very much ‘parents’ even if the child has to be institutionalized.
But many of the parents are vile. They really hate their offspring.
Mao.
Correct. Pol Pot is still trying to get out of the AA short season league.
Very true. And if she really feels unable to care for him further, there are humane institutions he could go to. No reason for him to be "alone" when his parents die.
You’re a whole lot more understanding than I am. This nutjob lady had better get her cards right with the Almighty prior to her death.
I can’t believe a mother would say this about her own flesh & blood!
These morons don’t realize that this life is but a vapor.
“She worries about what will happen to her son when she dies.”
Ergo, best to kill the little bugger
Oy!!!
Yes, she being honest in saying that she, "WISHES EVERY DAY" that she had killed her son.
just walk in her shoes, and do it every day for 47 yrs...
people that have perfect children have no idea what it is like to have a disabled child,
And it sounds as if YOU support her. EVERY women who has an abortion has a "walk in my shoes" angle. This pathetic excuse, which YOU are repeating all over this thread, is used to justify an abortion EVERY 24 SECONDS in the United States. Congratulations, YOU are helping to justify the most barbaric and horrific act of genocide in human history.
What she doesn't realize it that God gave her an innocent angel to care for to make her soul pleasing to Him.
She has failed the most important test of her life...
I am with you. I don’t see how any mother could say they wish they didn’t have a child. Thanks heavens, I had wonderful loving parents and never felt not wanted. That has to be a terrible terrible feeling even for this son with downs.
Sometimes it’s not a matter of knowing how to ask, but knowing who to ask.
You are right.
They tell us we have no say in the matter and then say we haven’t walked a mile in their shoes. As if we never tried to warn them.
so she would have preferred to kill him herself?
I don't hate her. She may even be a generally kind woman. But I greatly pity her for the burden of her corrupted and twisted thinking that puts a vacation to Greece as some kind of ultimate good, above that of the needs of her son.
Cherry, I’m not trying to be difficult. I am curious how you see these cases being handled in terms of policy. What kind of policy would you favor and how would you see it being implemented?
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