Fed employee’s wife: “Tough” paying for abortion of “the fetus”
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….
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.
The abortion… happened in an understaffed hospital, in which I lay in bed with the fetus for 20 minutes after it was expelled, waiting for a nurse to remove it. I didn’t want to see it, and neither did my husband. That was another choice we had made…. In the coming days, as we collected and submitted the paperwork for our insurance company, the loss of a baby that we had briefly imagined began to sink in….
Then our insurance company responded. Our claim had been denied. Because the pregnancy was not the result of rape or incest and did not threaten my life, it was considered an elective procedure. We relied on federal insurance, the same plan available to all State Department employees. It’s a basic plan, adequate for our typical needs, but bound by legal restrictions concerning federal spending and abortion. We… began digging up $5,000 to pay for the abortion.
While the tone and content of the abortion debate has shifted and raged over the past several years, a steady 50% have believed that abortion should only be legal under the hardest of circumstances…. We can, by giving up a trip home, stretching our grocery budget and ending our date nights, pay for our choice. But what’s been lost in this compromise is how tough that choice can be.
~ Sheila Sundar (pictured), describing her abortion in Egypt, NY Times’ Motherlode, October 21
[Photo via propellerfilms.com]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
It’s heartbreaking and powerful how the more honest and emotionally connected pro-abortion writing often sounds like anti-abortion writing. Look at this clearly for long enough you see it for what it really is – killing a defenceless child.
This is truly a sad story. The comments are truly frightening, so dehumanizing towards the unborn and so nasty towards prolifers — we dont care about the child after its born, etc. I am so tired of hearing this crap because we all know its not true. But its the NYT — what else is new?
As long as I live I will never understand this logic: you’re baby isn’t going to live, so kill it now. I lost a full-term newborn to Trisomy 18. Sure, it was hard–to look at her broken body, to watch her being worked on by medical teams, to watch her die–but there was peace too. I did the right thing for her–I loved her whilst she lived. Isn’t that what we as parents are called to do? Who said there were any guarantees for length of days? So, I’m totally out of sympathy and patience with this apparently noble motivation for abortion. And I can see why Mother Teresa called abortion “fear of the child”. At least this girl was straight up–I had the abortion because I didn’t want to FACE this broken little human. None of this “I didn’t want her to suffer” crap.
“But what’s been lost in this compromise is how tough that choice can be.”
What has been lost is the parent’s innocence. They now have their child’s blood staining their hands.
They intervened, not to save their child’s life, but to end it prematurely, so that they could get on with theirs.
Now they are whining about having to make adjustments in their lifestyle to pay for their ‘choice’……..for a dead child.
How pathetically shallow.
How tragic on every level. Their child was denied love and humanity by his/her own parents because of illness. This couple chose detachment, fear, and self-interest over their own child. They blame federal law for making their “choice” difficult and costly for them… as though the government is obligated to give them the freedom of “choice” without any of the responsibility or consequence. See all the bitter fruits of abortion right here…
Every human being on the planet is dying. Some of us are just going to die a little sooner. If this woman wants to avoid watching a loved one suffer and die, she should hole herself up in her house and never interact with another human being, because, sooner or later, someone who has won your heart is going to die an unpleasant death.
Is there any other circumstance where you can kill someone and whine about how your insurance doesn’t pay for it? I hear hit men are pretty expensive these days, so clearly they should be covered by some form of insurance.
I also agree this kill them because they’re going to die stuff is really dumb. I hate to break it to this lady, but we’re all mortal. That’s right, that same line of argument can justify killing anybody.
Whenever I take too long to write a comment, someone else says my point first. All well.
She is grieving and doesn’t even know it. Her loss is evident. My heart breaks for her and her precious child. The child she calls fetus and it and that she has forsaken. (Though my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will receive me. Psalm 27:10)
This mom will compartmentalize this “episode” and frame it in the “it was for the best” terms for as long as it helps her to stuff her grief and “move on” and “try again” while complaining about her insurance.
Praying she seeks healing sooner rather than later.
and there it is, friends, that magical transformation from “Wanted Child™” to “fetus”. Right before our very eyes. Sad thing: she said she had more of a connection to THIS child than she did when she was pregnant with her other children. If she could do this to a child she feels connected to, I shudder to think of the manner in which her other children are raised.
“I didn’t want or expect a child with a learning disability!”
Ruh-roh.
I have friends who lived joyfully with their Trisomy baby for over a year. Zoe transformed their lives as well as hundreds of people around her.
It’s amazing what we can do to people when we start calling them “it.”
PS–all love eventually ends in loss, except for Christ’s. You become an adult and learn how to heal. But you DO NOT KILL to keep yourself from heartbreak.
Amen Courtnay. Amen.
Dear Jamie,
Thank you for sharing about your precious daughter. Yes. You did the right thing for her.
Hmm so my uncle has been given 3 months to live because of his cancer. With that kind of mentality, we should kill him now, instead of appreciating the time we have left…
Considering the fact that many babies with chromosomal abnormalities are lost in the first few days/weeks after conception, any baby that makes it past that critical period still alive is MIRACULOUS. That’s a baby that “fought” to live.
Of course, ALL babies are miracles, but when one starts out with “obstacles” and overcomes them, that life was “meant to be” – for however long they are meant to be here.
It’s bad enough for DOCTORS to play God, even worse when parents do it.
Doctors have been proven wrong MANY times in their diagnoses…who’s to say they weren’t wrong in this case? Down Syndrome in itself is not fatal, and people with DS have been known to live into their 60s.
That’s a lot of life to deprive somebody of, just because YOU can’t deal with “imperfection”.
There are a great many people who will use this story to promote taxpayer funding of abortions for federal employees.
We have to answer this by telling our stories of the handicapped children who were born and loved for a few hours, or a few years, or for a lifetime. Not just here, but OUT THERE, in the NYT and wherever people read and hear.
My sister lost her firstborn son, who survived a few hours. He was born without a diaphragm. That was 20 years ago. We still count Adam among the grandchildren and remember him at family gatherings.
Hey thanks, Carla! I frequently reflect upon how happy she must have been in the womb, swimming about, having all her needs met. THAT was her little life! Who am I to bust in on that?
If a child has a parent(s) who is all about themselves, shouldn’t the child be given a “choice” too?
Here’s an idea — let all the pro-choices from the NYT, etc. contribute to raise the $5,000 so this woman won’t have to forego vacations, scale back her grocery list, etc. Sorry, I don’t want to pay for anyone’s abortion.
(Though my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will receive me. Psalm 27:10)
Simon . . .
It frightens me the reasons people use to not have a baby. I understand the fears of saying goodbye to a loved one, but it doesn’t give us the excuse to play God. Only God can be God and He knows way more than any of us.
I shudder to think how much further our society as a whole is slipping. It’s a scary, scary prospect. We must pray hard for people to have the grace to see the truth.
Although this happened in a foreign country, it highlights the fact that we must engage the medical community. Too many ob/gyn’s are giving dire prognoses to their patients and their patients’ parents and pushing them to abort. Baby less than perfect? Abort now. Even vaguely pro-life women can be pushed to abort by doctors and family members when ‘birth defects’ are even suspected, not even proven yet.
If you really want your baby, why not get a second opinion? Isn’t it a matter of life and death?
We must pray for healing for families and pray for healing for doctors who advise their patients to abort ”less than perfect” children.
It frightens me the reasons people use to not have a baby. I understand the fears of saying goodbye to a loved one, but it doesn’t give us the excuse to play God. Only God can be God and He knows way more than any of us.
She says she is not religious, so God isn’t a factor here.
She was obviously showing, so she was quite a bit along in the pregnancy. I just wonder how she told her children that the life of their unborn sibiling had been terminated because he or she — not an it — was imperfect?
The child and her mother were made in the image of God. All of us were.
God is always a factor whether we acknowledge Him or not.
It is interesting that after the baby arrived, neither she nor her husband wanted to look at the little one. They had rejected their own child … and that is so sad. Poor wee thing -
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2008/08/john_mark_stallings_the_son_of.html
http://babyfaithhope.blogspot.com/2008/12/our-journey-so-far.html
@Lee — they had dehumanized the baby to the point where they thought of him or her as just an IT.
Trisomy 18 and Down Syndrome (trisomy21) are two different issues. What does she mean “it would suffer from Trisomy 18, likely downs syndrome.”
It’s just repulsive to me how they justify this by saying they basically didn’t want to fall in love with their baby so they killed it.
@phillymiss – it does not matter whether they had “humanized” the baby or not. It was tragic that the baby was not wanted by them and they had her killed and then could not look at her. That was my point – poor wee babe.
“before a child had the chance to win our hearts”
We didn’t give our three children “the chance to win our hearts” – we just gave them our hearts. I understand that it’s a phrase people use, but especially in this context, it represents a whole messed up mindset: I will love you if you deserve it … little tiny beautiful baby who just wants love.
I am thinking right now of all the people that I have ever loved and grieved for in my life…and what I would have missed by never knowing them…