A few weeks ago I spoke at a banquet in NJ where I met a couple whose daughter has trisomy 18.

Of course, they were pressured to abort and told their daughter would not live very long. Abortion however, was out of the question for them, and they had a lot of support in their decision. Unfortunately, many women do not, and are made to feel guilty for even consider having the child.

I just read this article from the NYT. Although my heart breaks for this family, I felt especially sad that they chose to abort "before a child had the chance to
win our hearts and let us hope for the impossible."

The article focuses on the refusal of the insurance company to pay for the abortion, something they see as an injustice.

My heart goes out to anyone who has gotten an adverse diagnosis, but from all the people I have met,both those who aborted and those who gave birth, the ones who gave birth always are doing better. As one of the women from our ministry said, they can celebrate the life of their child no matter how short. 

Praying for this family…

Egyptian Abortion, American Choice

Most
of our friends in Egypt had experienced some form of a pregnancy loss,
and we knew this going in. Here, pesticide use is rumored to be
responsible for the staggering number of miscarriages, birth defects and
stillbirths. Still, when I became pregnant for the third time, during
my husband’s first tour with the State Department and our second year
living in Cairo, I was thrilled. And when I reached the end of the first
trimester, we believed that we had overcome whatever the odds were. I
was confident as I lay next to the ultrasound machine. I was also alone.
I had done this twice before and didn’t think my husband needed to
battle Cairo traffic to be there with me.

My first stretch of
quiet in some time left me alone to contemplate this third child. I was
showing by then and enjoying the attention of my colleagues, hotel staff
and people on the street. I was given a free piece of falafel from a
vendor outside. A woman on the street told me I was having a boy, the
highest blessing she could have bestowed. I began, in a moment of
connectedness and spirituality that hadn’t defined either of my other
pregnancies, to love this child.

The technician was cold, quick and calculating with the results.
There was a sac present that indicated a cystic hygroma. The cranium was
too small and the heartbeat too slow. She told me that I could take two
minutes to cry, then could go in to see the doctor. In her words, it
was God’s will.

I told her that I was
not religious. She apologized. I waited to speak with the doctor, who
confirmed that the chances of a healthy baby were effectively zero. The
baby would likely be stillborn in the seventh or eighth month. If
carried, miraculously, to term, it would suffer from Trisomy 18, likely
Down syndrome and heart failure. It did not possess a nasal bone.

As
a society, we’ve characterized one type of pregnancy and one type of
abortion. A woman can keep a healthy pregnancy, or terminate one that
she had been forced to conceive, or that could potentially kill her. We
fell outside this dichotomy. But it was within its legal framework that
my husband and I accepted that to minimize trauma on my body, and on our
family, we had to terminate.

I don’t believe that we didn’t make a
choice. Other women may have carried to term, or as close to term as
possible, a child whose condition could allow it to live for a few days,
or weeks, or maybe a few years. But faced with the impossibility of
this loss, we chose to face it then, before a child had the chance to
win our hearts and let us hope for the impossible.

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/egyptian-abortion-american-choice/?smid=tw-share