A matter of the heart

“Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.
Children born to a young man are like sharp arrows in a warrior’s hand.”
Psalm 127: 3 & 4

Last Sunday a doctor known to perform late term abortions was gunned down while serving as an usher at his Church in Kansas. He was apparently murdered by an abortion activist who is said to be also anti-government.

Apparently this particular doctor and others who perform these kinds of abortions very often come under fire and have protests organized against them.

I was watching Anderson Cooper the other night on CNN and Anderson was talking to one of the colleagues of the murdered doctor, who apparently plans to take over his practice and he mentioned that only late term pregnancies that threatened the life of the mother or pregnancies with fetuses that were severely abnormal and could not survive outside of a woman’s body were actually aborted. Anderson specifically asked him if other abortions outside of this nature were also performed and he said flatly no.

Anderson interviewed one woman who opted to abort her pregnancy because her baby had a severe neural tube defect known as ‘anencephaly’ resulting in the absence of brain or skull. This woman and her family opted to abort their baby to cut down on the amount of pain and distress that they would have to face if they chose to prolong the baby’s life until its demise. This could not be done in her state however, because of laws against abortion, instead they advised her that she would have had to carry the pregnancy until her body ended the pregnancy or have the abortion done in another state that supported abortions of this nature. She was so outraged that she wrote a letter to then Senator, Barack Obama. I am a fan of President Obama, and I would love if he paid much attention to this letter and this woman’s issue and have the laws of the state rewritten to give women in this unenviable position, the right to make up their own minds about these kinds of pregnancies. After all, ‘only he who feels it truly knows.’

Another woman was interviewed who chose to keep her pregnancy even though her baby would not survive very long after birth, due to a chromosomal abnormality known as ‘trisomy 18’ which is incompatible with life. She said she and her family prefers that the baby goes the natural way, that is, die when it was time.

My problem then is, if this doctor only performs abortions of this nature, why then are people so outraged? I guess they probably know otherwise.

I am aware that there will always be people who abuse the system and make it bad for others so it is therefore up to the state and the doctors involved in this regard to ensure that this system is not used by others as a form of birth control but be reserved for people who actually have very good reason to use it.

My family could have been in this position in February 2006, when we learnt that our baby, which I was seven months pregnant with at the time, had a condition known as ‘hydrops fetalis’ where the fetus had too much fluid and also had multiple other disorders e.g. down syndrome and, severe heart conditions and was given only a 30% chance at life. Luckily for us, my body made our decision because the baby died in-utero, about a month after being diagnosed.
I know if our baby had not died, we would have been faced with the decision of whether to abort her and save her having to come into this world and live a compromised life or to let her live even when the odds were so high, and hope for the best.

I do understand the second woman’s position to have her baby go the natural way, but believe me, as per my experience, this wait is very difficult. I had to wait a whole month for tests to be done before I could choose which option I would take and this was painful. You go through a lot emotionally. First of all you are just waiting to hear someone come to you and say this is all but a cruel joke, your baby is fine. Then the days drag along and sometimes you feel like you cannot get up out of the bed to face another day. When those days came, I just lay in bed and stare at the ceiling and the walls, looking for some answer.

Everyone was praying for us, our families, friends, our church but one day I was lying there on my bed and it suddenly occurred to me that my baby was still sick, all those prayers were not answered and sure enough, our baby died shortly after. I even had a dream that our baby was born and was very weak but as each day passed, she became stronger and stronger. I said this to someone, who quickly cautioned me that dreams usually come in the exact opposite of their meanings. Understandably, I was crushed, because I was hoping that this dream would indeed become a reality.

If our baby had survived I believe we probably would have chosen the optioned that prolonged her life as long as possible because we were trying for a baby so long and would give anything to know that she would be around for as long as she could.

All in all, I just cannot understand not having the freedom to make these decisions yourself and instead have them made by someone else. This should clearly be a matter of the heart. Worst if they are allowed to be made by people who have never been faced with a situation as frightening and painful as this.

I therefore have no problem with these abortions if they are practiced within the parameters that they should.

My heart goes out to families having to make the very difficult decisions of whether to keep their precious little ones or not and for those who would give anything to becoming pregnant.

Keep clinging to hope.

Until next time