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.”
Just look who this compassionate Freeper argues to the death for politically on FR. Regularly. Mitt Romney.
All you need to know.
Fathers are powerless in the face of a mother's decision to abort or not to abort. Ultimately, the life or death of the child is in the mother's hands, legally and morally. Therefore, she bears the brunt of making ugly self-centered statements about wishing she'd aborted her child because she's the one who makes the decision. Not the father. Like it or not, that's the way it is.
I wish her mother had aborted her.
Why am I not surprised? They probably think Myth will have a better chance if he just announces that he's always been pro-abortion.
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Well said.
Well many of them including the recently departed Hildy sure seems to have shared his love of it. I think it carries to a lot of them. Otherwise why do they keep fighting for Rs squishy on social issues?
It’s distressing to see someone writing something like this about her son, and why? To support abortion, imho. I could certainly understand her talking privately to her husband, priest, friend or relative when things seem overwhelming, but why do this publicly?
It’s wrong.
The “selfish bitch” has been caring for this 47-year-old child day after day, morning til night, f0r 47 years. He’s healthy, doesn’t look abused.
I don’t want to judge her.
Because ‘they’ are wrong. They bought the lies of the left and think they are supreme. All must make them happy.
they are an affront to the natural order. They want their participation trophy and it’s unfair that they are so burdened.
Plenty of battered women look fine and happy too.
My youth gave me a lot of experience with Downs kids, or TRs as I heard them called back then, and a perspective to appreciate some of her challenges, but I have no idea what sacrifices she and her family have made and how much love and stamina she has left.
I can appreciate her concerns for his care after her death and the helplessness she might feel with that challenge.
I imagine she faces quite a few similar level challenges on a routine basis. Those can take a toll on one's attitude and outlook as demonstrated by the sentiments she expresses.
I know it’s trite, but whenever I think I am overly burdened, I realize very quickly by just listening to other people that I am really very blessed.
This woman’s husband and two children are still living. She and her husband are in fairly good health. They are not poor. That is much to celebrate.
Of course it's about supporting abortion.
This woman wishes EVERY DAY that she had killed her son. It's not a passing thought that she sometimes feels in moments of extreme anger or frustration, it's what she has felt every day for 47 years.
My BFF walks in her shoes. Walks alone mind you because she’s a widow. Everything this couple talks about, I have seen first hand.
I would have more respect for this woman if she said “I wish I had given him up for adoption” or “I wish we had put him in an institution” or even today says “we can’t take it anymore” just out right puts him in a group home with other Trisomy 21 people. Anything but says “I wish I had aborted him” That so send the wrong message to women who are right now pregnant with a baby with Trisomy 21.
Yes. It could have been far worse for her. But like many she is too stupid to realize that.
I lost my wife at 29 to cancer and had to raise a daughter as a single parent. When I look at this idiot whineing about abortion and how she wishes her son were dead, and when I look at people on this thread excusing her comments, it really takes me back.
I’m very sorry, Norm.
You gotta deal with what you’re given. I did. Millions have. And damn few us ever sought death as the answer. The ones that dis are no better than she is.
Is anybody throwing stones at her offering to adopt her son after she dies? I don't see any volunteers stepping up to the plate here.
I refuse to cast stones at this woman. I'm only about 50 years old and I raised two healthy sons who are now out of the house and on their own, which allows my wife and I to pretty much do whatever we please. This woman is 70 years old and has probably not had a carefree day since I was a toddler myself. Hell, she couldn't even go on a vacation with her husband to Greece.
I'm not casting stones at her. She has my sympathy.
Uh...no. Not nearly as shocking as hearing you reiterate that you wish every day that he was dead.
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