The stories of women who
receive a devastating diagnosis about their unborn child are heart-wrenching.
Some mothers wish to opt for ‘early delivery’ before 22 weeks. Often the child
doesn’t survive labour and sometimes they are born alive and live a few
minutes. Many women carry the baby to term.
Studies of women who carry to
later in pregnancy (when the baby might be born alive and can experience kisses
and cuddles) have shown that emotional healing takes place better if the baby
is allowed to be born, if the family has a chance to hold and cuddle and love,
until he or she passes away.
It shouldn’t have to be said
that babies are entitled to Tender
Touches Only. No lethal injections, no live dismemberment, which the NHS neatly
call ‘removing the pregnancy.’
Another woman on Courage To Love was told that one of her
twins had a serious heart condition and it was understood that she would want
to abort. She had a difficult time making the doctors understand that she was
not going to abort the twin. Later on in pregnancy, a doctor commented on the
baby’s condition and remarked that it could be fixed with surgery. It turned
out to be a small operation. The child is four years old now and in great
health. DriveTime
(I read once and I do wish I
could find the source – that if the fetus has an anomaly, in some cases it
produces cells to repair itself. As fetology develops, we’ll know more! Genetic
conditions of course can’t be modified. But an unborn child can have surgery
now for some conditions like spina bifida. Fetology is an exciting, developing
science.)
A recurring theme is that
doctors assume that a woman wants to terminate a child with an abnormality.
Mothers of Downs Syndrome babies complain about that. Sally Phillips’ ‘A World
Without Downs’ is an eyeopener.
Charlotte (Charlie) Fien is a
wonderfully spirited woman with Down’s. How sad though that she, along with
other adults with an extra chromosome like Dr. Karen Gaffney, Franklin Graham
and others, have to fight for their very right to be born alive. Charlie and Karen
were speakers at the Rally for Life in Dublin in 2018 & 2017 respectively.
They held press events afterwards. Only the
Irish Catholic came to Karen’s, and I never heard about Charlie’s.
These are two amazing,
strong, brave women. People with Downs’ Syndrome have a speech difficulty, yet
these women were confident enough to face tens of thousands of people in street
rallies. After the Rally for Life in Dublin, Charlie went to speak to the UN,
which she tweeted was easy ‘compared to
speaking to 100,000 screaming prolifers in Dublin.’ The Irish media didn’t
pay these women any heed, for all their lip service honouring disability. But
it was the media’s loss, because they are wonderfully funny and bubbly people. Karen
is a champion swimmer, outside of the Special Olympics. And they have a right
to be heard in a world that kills 90% of their kind before they are born.
Mainstream media do not want them to be part of the conversation.
Incidentally nobody knew
whether I was going to live after I was born. Or two of my siblings either. And
if we lived, whether we would be ok developmentally or physically. Years later,
a doctor asked our mother ‘and how are the children doing in school?’ He seemed
very surprised that we weren’t struggling, given the bombardment we got from
hostile RH-Negative antibodies prenatally!
If abortion had been
acceptable and available in the 1950’s and 1960’s for what they call ‘fatal
foetal abnormality’ my mother might have been strongly advised to terminate me.
It’s a misnomer isn’t it, I’m hale and hearty as are my sisters. And no, I
don’t think my mother should have ‘had the right’ to terminate my life, as I’ve
heard some people say about their mothers! What a sad thing to say about one’s
self-worth!
On Twitter, I had a spirited
debate with a young man who declared that he would be appalled to discover that
any woman in his family history, ever, had been forced to carry a baby she
didn’t want to term! It was news to him
that we are all descended from millennia of unplanned pregnancies. He went away
puzzling this over to himself, I’m sure. But sure he was young, and had a lot
to learn. What bothers me about young people is that they imbibe popular
thinking too readily; I did it myself. But these young people are going to be
voting on a Life or Death issue. Many of them live and study and work in an
environment that have written the unborn baby out of the conversation around
‘Choice.’ I do hope they can wake up before May 25th and ‘see’ the
baby, and instead of advising termination, to offer support and to help make
abortion unthinkable, not normal.
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