Word came from Ireland today that a court has ruled a 17-year-old pregnant mother may travel to the UK to abort her four-month-old baby with anencephaly (no brain).
I wonder if the mother was told one gift her child would have given her was protection against breast cancer. She is not only throwing that gift away but adding to the risk by aborting.
Neither does she know how shattered her life will be on the other side. She thinks she is alleviating a a few months of grief but will instead incur a lifetime of regrets. I have spoken with women who aborted their terminally children, and they are broken.
baby angel 1.jpgOn the other side, I have never met a mother who was sorry she carried her terminally ill baby to term and cared for him or her for the short time s/he lived. The natural maternal response is to care for one’s sick child. Abortion is not.
Witness the touching syndicated Tribune story of May 3, entitled, “35 minutes to live, feel love,” excerpted here….

Jessica Weatherford lies helpless on the operating table, staring at a blue surgical sheet hanging inches from her face.
It blocks her view of the Caesarean on the other side, as a doctor reaches for her baby. A baby Weatherford has been waiting for. A baby she prays will live long enough to hold….
The doctor tugs, and between his hands a tiny head appears, covered in wet curls. Weatherford feels her husband’s hand gripping hers. He’s scared too.
Weatherford remembers her excitement in November when she saw an image of the 20-week fetus and the sonogram technician said it was a boy.
Then the technician grew quiet, and when the Weatherfords saw the doctor, his face wore the news.
I’m sorry, he said. There are abnormalities with your baby’s brain and abdomen. Problems too great to fix.
More tests brought more bad news: His heart’s veins and arteries were on the wrong sides. A a sack containing half his organs was growing outside his body.
Amniocentesis confirmed a non-hereditary birth defect: full trisomy 13.
Weatherford decided the best gift she could give to her unborn son was to love him until his death, even if the only fullness of his life would be in the soft cushion of her womb….
Zeke’s legs are moving as the doctor pulled him from Weatherford. It is 5:23 a.m.
Zeke doesn’t cry. His mouth, with a double cleft lip on either side, slowly opens and closes. He has no nose.
Zeke’s bluish skin begins to turn pink. Dave Weatherford places him in his wife’s arms.
“Hi,” she whispers. “This is Mommy. I love you.”
With a finger she strokes his cheek, seeing only a tiny baby, fragile and pure, with a mop of curly hair. A baby who has touched so many lives.
She kisses him.
“Ohhhh,” she coos, as if her lips had brushed against the smoothest silk.
Each time she speaks, Zeke moves his head just a little, jostled his tiny hand just a little.
Two, then three, then four more masked faces enter the room. They crowd around the bed: Weatherford’s twin sister, Jacquelyn; her father; her mother-in-law, Kathy Weatherford; her minister, Rex Bonar.
Aunts. Grandparents. Friends. They hug each other, reach out to pat her.
“Do you want some skin-to-skin contact, Jess?” her husband asks.
She nods. One tear rolls down her cheek, then another.
Dave Weatherford and a nurse pull sheets down so Zeke is lying on Jessica’s sternum. She smiles at feeling his little body.
But too soon, she realizes Zeke is leaving.
His cheek turns sallow, then a shade of blue.

baby angel 2.jpg

‘No, no, no,’ she cries
“No, no, no,” Weatherford cries. Softly at first, and then with a deep, sobbing grief, wails of pain. And every person moving or whispering or writing stops.
Dave Weatherford breaks down in his mother’s arms.
To confirm what Jessica already knows, a doctor listens for life.
“He’s done,” the doctor says. The digital clock read 5:58.

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