(LiveActionNews) – A story on Yahoo! Parenting tells of a woman who chose to have an abortion at 36 weeks, believing it was the right choice for her situation. Writer Rachel Bertsche shares the story of Kate, a 29-year-old mother outside Boston, who had a late-term abortion after she learned her daughter had a brain abnormality. Kate chose abortion even after she was offered adoption as an option.
The story is heartbreaking — almost as if it were about a woman who had a miscarriage and is grieving. But despite the circumstance of a baby who suffered from a brain malformation, the truth of the matter is that Kate and her husband opted to kill their daughter.
Baby Rose was, indeed, sick. She had a “severe presentation” of Dandy-Walker syndrome, which is “a congenital brain malformation involving the cerebellum (an area at the back of the brain that controls movement) and the fluid-filled spaces around it.”
The Dandy-Walker Alliance website has many stories of families who chose to keep their child, despite recommendations to abort late into pregnancy; however, Kate says her decision was the best option for her. Kate says her husband first suggested abortion:
“On the way home, even though I knew what I wanted to do, I couldn’t say the word. What kind of mother is eight months pregnant and wants an abortion? I turned to my husband and said, ‘Tell me what you think we should do.’ He said, ‘Kate, you do not have to do this, but I think we should ask about the abortion.’
“It was a gift. It felt like light and fresh air. I had been feeling so dark and so trapped, and when I realized we were together on this, I felt free. I knew what to do. It didn’t matter anymore that people were going to call me a murderer, or that I’d never heard of anyone doing this. It didn’t matter that we didn’t even know if it was legal. If I had my husband, I could do this.”
Kate admits something else, too, as she describes her resolve to get an abortion. Because Kate believed it was perhaps too late to get a legal abortion, she decided if she could not get an abortion, she would leave baby Rose alone to die after birth:
“If we can’t get the abortion, I’m going to run away somewhere rural and I’m going to have this baby by myself and let her die without intervention.”
But for $25,000, the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Colorado was willing to do an abortion for Kate, who was on a plane with her husband a few days later. Her parents took the $25,000 from their retirement fund to pay to abort their grandchild. The procedure took four days:
“The second and third days were short appointments, so we took a nice drive through the Rockies to pass the time. Then on the fourth day, they induced my labor. I got Pitocin, and it was actually a very natural birth. It was quite healing for me.
“I couldn’t do anything for this baby — I couldn’t fix her brain or make her well, but I could deliver her from my body. I chose to view her, so they cleaned her up and brought her in and she looked a lot like my older daughter. She was beautiful and she was whole. I got her footprints and had her cremated and they sent us her ashes in the mail a few days later. We wanted to name her after a flower, so we called her Rose.
“Ten days after we had that 35-week ultrasound, she was gone.”
Soon after, Kate says:
“My 30th birthday party was scheduled for the Sunday after we got home — two days after I gave birth to Rose. It was only for close family and friends, so I decided not to cancel. I told people that the baby died and that we induced a stillbirth. I didn’t tell them I went to Colorado. I didn’t tell them the baby died because we gave her an injection.”
The mother’s narrative almost sounds like a tragic miscarriage, rather than a miscarriage of justice for an innocent child.
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While it’s clearly understandable that Kate and her husband felt intense grief, confusion and devastation, her open attitude that her baby would die one way or another — even if it meant leaving the child alone to die — is devastating.
In this case, medical personnel even offered to arrange an adoption, but that was not an option for Kate. Without question, this was a tragic pregnancy; however, the tragedy lies in the parents’ decision that baby Rose should not have a chance to live.
As Kate told her eldest daughter who asked about the baby in her belly on a regular basis: “No, honey. Baby died. Baby’s all gone.”
It is heartbreaking that late-term abortions are a legal procedure in our nation.
Reprinted with permission from LiveActionNews.