CAITHNESS, Scotland, May 11, 2016 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A young Scottish mother of two who elected to abort her third child couldn’t be happier that the abortion failed and Jack has been born “healthy beautiful,” according to The Daily Mirror.
“I wouldn’t change it for the world,” said Vicky Harper, who was worried about her child being born with disabilities or causing herself injury right up to his birth. Once she saw him, however, she had no regrets. “He’s special and he’ll always know how much he’s loved.”
Ian Gentles,the co-author of Complications: Abortion's Impact on Women, told LifeSiteNews that Harper’s reaction is the flip side of the regret and guilt shown by all but one or two of the 101 post-abortive women interviewed for the book, which was published by the Toronto-based DeVeber Institute of Bioethics and Social Research.
“Two thirds said they were coerced,” said Gentles, a retired York University history professor. “But many were themselves bound and determined to have their abortion. They suppressed their natural instinct to do so, and felt relief when it was done.” But soon, said Gentles, most felt regret and for some this only got stronger as they got older and nearer to their own death.
Harper, 24, told The Mirror she wanted the abortion because the prospect of taking on a third child under five was overwhelming. “I just didn’t have the strength for another.” She is already the mother to Ross, two, and Leyla, now five. Her partner Keenan McIvor, 19, a carpenter, said he’d support her either way.
Though, “it wasn’t an easy decision,” she decided to go ahead with a surgical abortion. With Keenan at her side in the hospital, she “had a little cry” before she was put to sleep.
But after two pregnancies, she soon recognized the ongoing symptoms of a third. Her doctor tried to reassure her that the operation had been successful but she kept taking home tests – 15 in all – with positive results. “When I hadn’t had a period in two months. I knew the baby was still there,” she said, ultimately getting the hospital to do an ultrasound that confirmed her suspicion.
This began more soul-searching. Was the baby healthy? Would birth put her at risk? In the end she decided the risks of a second abortion were too big. “I felt like I was backed into a corner,” she said. “I was pregnant with a child I never wanted…But I had no other option than to have my baby.”
Now a happy mother of three, Harper admits she is not looking forward to telling her son she tried to abort him. At least she will also be able to say that “I love him more than I ever thought possible.”
One of the country’s two main abortion providers, Mary Stopes UK, advised the Mirror that only “around 0.2 % of women who have had a surgical abortion will require a further procedure.”
As uncommon as it may be statistically, there have been several well-publicized cases recently of babies surviving abortions. An American woman, Ariel Knights, was warned her pregnancy could threaten her life and was planning to sue the abortion clinic after last year’s delivery of a healthy baby daughter she calls her “miracle baby.
Also last year, a British woman, Catherine Urhegyi, wanted her baby but was told that an ultrasound showed it had died at seven months gestation. She took a pill that is normally used in an abortion simply to expel the body from her womb. But another ultrasound showed the child had survived—or revived. She immediately began to worry that the abortion pill might have injured it, a possibility the hospital staff confirmed.
“A consultant came in and said it was our decision,” she told the Daily Mail. “But due to the possible harm our baby may have suffered from the pill, it was still an option to continue with the abortion. However, there was no way, having seen my baby’s heart beating on a scan, I could carry on.”
Gentles told LifeSiteNews that misleading test results frequently lead to abortions. Unfortunately, only if the parents opt for life do they find they had been misled. He said he knew of three recent cases of parents who elected to have their babies despite indications the children had Down Syndrome. In all three, “It turned out to be a false diagnosis.”