Choice means killing the "treasured only child"
By Joanne Byfield

The Globe and Mail newspaper ran a column in mid-July by a woman who signed herself C. Smyth. I don't know if that was her real name or not. Her column was about her and her husband's decision to abort their child at 19 weeks' gestation.

The column was striking in that she was clearly struggling with guilt about the decision but at the same time she was madly trying to justify and elevate the pretty flimsy reasons for their choice.

She said that she and her husband "could be perfect parents. We're professionals, with university degrees, own our own house, it's even paid off (we're financially careful yuppies.) We're also fit - we do Ironman events, marathons, play golf, travel and help support my parents.)

They are in their 40s and unexpectedly became pregnant. At 19 weeks, they discovered that their daughter had an extra chromosome. They had already decided that if the baby had Down's syndrome, they would abort. Their little girl, who Ms. Smyth described as "severely disabled" did not have Down's. Her extra chromosome would mean the child would "be significantly lower functioning than other children," according to the geneticist who told them the bad news.

"Our 19-week-old miracle is turning out to be tragically flawed…not the treasured only child, the little athlete, we had only so recently and so tentatively allowed ourselves to dream about." One wonders: Was the "miracle" that the child was an only child, an athlete or that it was a child, a tiny human being and gift to a couple married later in life?

"We don't feel capable of raising a severely disabled child. It would be different if we didn't have a choice, but we do," she said in the column. It is a telling comment. If they did not have the choice to abort, would they suddenly become capable of raising the child? Or would they just grieve and get on with the job, taking responsibility for their child and providing the love and physical necessities of life?

Ms. Smyth had her abortion at a private clinic in Toronto which she described as "cozy," with a nurse who held her hand. It seemed, as she told it, to be a fairly unexceptional event. Yet she raged. "Why can't we [women having abortions] just go to the nearest hospital? I hate the sanctimonious people who have made this more difficult than it has to be. No one begrudges couples thwarting God's plan by spending tens of thousands of dollars on fertility drugs, in vitro treatments, donor eggs, sperm, and surrogate mothers - they get sympathy. But if you don't want to keep a seriously flawed baby, you bundle your pain in guilt and shame."

Guilt and shame. It's odd that she blames pro-life people (They must be the sanctimonious people she hates) for private clinics. Pro-lifers have opposed them from the start. It is the pro-abortion crowd who loves them.

She got an abortion, paid for by taxpayers for no medical reason. She herself said she is healthy and fit. She and her yuppie husband (her word, not mine) did not want to have a child that didn't fit their "dream", again, her word.

They wanted a "little athlete" and apparently assumed because they were educated, well-off and athletic themselves, they would get what they wanted. Of course, they would not have known until the child was at least 5 or 6 years old if she was athletic (and still might have been even with her disability. Of course the test could have been wrong and the child might have been "normal.) What would they have done at that point if she was a klutz on the basketball court or the ball diamond? Would they have had a "choice?"

The "choice" creates the problem. Women over 35 who get pregnant are urged, encouraged and often aggressively pushed to have amniocentesis to determine if their child has a genetic problem. This raises fears and leads almost always to the debate over whether to abort. There really is almost no other reason to have the test. It also promotes the idea or dream of the perfect child, the acceptable child and the corollary - the unacceptable one.

I sympathize with Ms. Smyth's grief over whatever problem her child might have had. No one hopes for a child with a disability. The guilt and shame are signs of her humanity. She knows what she did was wrong. Blaming others for these emotions will not heal her spirit. For that, she needs to acknowledge what she did and seek forgiveness.

Forgiving oneself is often the hardest thing for a post-abortive woman to do. I hope she seeks help