BOSTON, Massachusetts, October 24, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Up to 10,000 parents annually receive the dreaded diagnosis that their unborn baby is not going to live.
That heartbreaking news was tragically given to Abby Flanagan, who later wrote a blog post about her experience entitled “My Last Act of Love As Her Mother: Aborting A Daughter Who Could Not Survive.”
“I’d been an ardent supporter of Planned Parenthood for years because I believed it was important to protect the right of other women to have an abortion,” she first explained. “Abortion was a right I sought to protect.”
She and her newlywed husband joyfully conceived a baby, but 12 weeks along, the precious little girl was found with serious abnormalities. After weeks of agonizing, “the radiologist turned to me and said the words I had been expecting but dreading: 'Incompatible with Life.' And it was over. Just like that,” she said.
Abby then went on in her blog post to criticize pro-life laws that require an ultrasound before procuring an abortion, concluding, “Having an abortion and ending her life to save her from suffering and slowly dying inside of me was my last act of love as her mother.”
Others like abortion activist Wendy Davis also went public with their tragic decision to abort a much desired but terminally diagnosed child. “I made my decision out of love,” Davis claimed.
Though I disagree with equating abortion with love, I'm certain Flanagan and Davis were sincere.
But even in such unbelievably tragic circumstances, some women have decided they will not be forced into abortion. There are a growing number of parents who have made a different, life-affirming decision that powerfully changed their lives for the better.
Amy Kuebelbeck is one such mother. Her son, Gabriel, was diagnosed with a rare heart defect. During her second trimester, she and her husband were told that he would only live for a few days after birth.
Amy chose life, carrying little Gabriel to term, and she says his brief life gifted the most powerful meaning for her, her husband, their family, and the hospital staff.
One supportive nurse encouraged the family in their commitment to their son’s life from conception to natural death, telling them they still had an opportunity to love and parent Gabriel, even if it was just for a brief period.
Amy took that advice to heart. Though Gabriel lived for only 2½ hours, his family discovered moments of inexpressible beauty and deep, life-changing peace. Amy and her husband's experience taught them what faith is, and it exemplified real maternal love. She now encourages other expecting couples who have received terminal diagnoses by sharing her story in the book, “Waiting with Gabriel.”
Doctors often advise women who are given a heartbreaking diagnosis to immediately abort. “I think that choice is often offered out of compassion. I think the physicians do think that it’s easiest for all, so you can move on,” Amy says. “But I think it’s a profound misunderstanding of what parental grief is like. To terminate is not a shortcut through grief.”
“If your heart is going to break either way – and it will – why not do what you can to fill up your heart first?” the pro-life mother said. “Not in a selfish way. You’re allowing this child to have his or her natural life, you’re protecting them. You’re allowing them to have a natural death, not something that is unnatural.”
There are about 200 perinatal hospice care centers around the U.S., but they are spreading. “Some of our babies are stillborn, some live a few hours, some a few days, and some even make it home,” Geri Mendenhall of BJC Hospice perinatal hospice care told LifeSiteNews. “For us, it's about doing all we can to help bringing the child into the world be a positive experience.”
“Choosing to continue is a parenting decision that honors the baby as well as the parents,” Amy's website explains. “It allows you to parent your baby as long as possible, and to protect your child for as long as he or she is able to live. Ultimately, it allows you to give your baby — and yourself — the full measure of your baby's life and the gift of a peaceful, natural goodbye.”
It should also be briefly noted that prenatal diagnoses are not always correct. Some babies are less severe than predicted (some, more). Sometimes the diagnosis was ambiguous all along, and in rare occasions, the diagnosis was flat-out wrong and the baby is perfectly healthy.
Carrying to term despite dire medical predictions takes courage, faith, and maternal love, but it is not “an assault on the mother,” as presidential candidate Hillary Clinton put it while arguing for Partial Birth Abortion on the U.S. Senate floor in 2003. In fact, aborting a child diagnosed with an anomaly can and does have long-lasting negative consequences for the mother and the family.
Aborting a sick preborn is not a shortcut through grief, as Kuebelbeck's website notes. Studies show that women who abort because of terminal diagnoses experience grief every bit as intense as the death of a newborn. In fact, aborting because of congenital defects is a “traumatic event … which entails the risk of severe and complicated grieving.”
A 2009 study found that nearly a year and a half after terminating, 20 percent of women “showed pathological levels of post-traumatic stress.” Another study found that 14 months after terminating, 17 percent developed a psychiatric disorder such as post-traumatic stress, anxiety, or depression. “Persistent adverse psychological and social reactions may be much commoner in patients undergoing termination of pregnancy for genetic … indications.”
“Women who terminated reported significantly more despair, avoidance, and depression than women who continued the pregnancy,” a study published in Prenatal Diagnosis reported.
The researchers' conclusion? “There appears to be a psychological benefit to women to continue the pregnancy following a lethal fetal diagnosis.”
In contrast, parents who carry to term respond “overwhelmingly positively” to perinatal hospice care. Parents share that they feel emotionally and spiritually prepared, and have “a sense of gratitude and peace surrounding the brief life of their child.”
“It sounds counter-intuitive, but when you meet that baby, that moment is glorious,” Amy witnesses. “Often, it’s just a matter of cradling and kissing that baby, passing the baby around to grandparents, and having a baptism. That doesn’t cost anything. … And people describe delivery rooms that are just shimmering with love.”
“Continuing the pregnancy is not about passively waiting for death,” Amy explains. “It is about actively embracing the brief, shining moment of this little life.”
Tommy Tighe, whose newborn boy lived only one hour after birth, still thinks about “what I would tell him if I had the opportunity.”
“I would start by letting him know how strong his mother was through every stage of our journey … never thinking twice about continuing to carry him despite his prognosis.”
“I’d look down and tell him all about the time we had with him. The unexplainable emotions we experienced when the doctor laid him on my wife’s chest. The breathtaking feeling of seeing him for the first time after an entire pregnancy spent loving him, grieving over him …”
“I would share how it felt to baptize him … and how I experienced the saving power of baptism for the first time in my life as the water poured onto his head.”
“I would describe how for the rest of my life I will carry around the thought of every little sound he made, every attempt to clear out his throat and draw his first breath; how I rubbed his back, continuously kissed him, and cried tears inspired by a great love I didn’t even realize I was capable of.”
“I would remind him of the moment his brothers came running into the delivery room. Before his birth, they made it clear that they wanted to meet him. They loved him and prayed for him every night, and now we pray that his life will shape their lives going forward.”
“I would also want him to know how many people he touched with his life. Despite the fact he only lived about one hour after birth, he accomplished more of what God asks of us than I have in all my 34 years. He brought people who had drifted from God back to prayer … and united strangers from all over the world in a way that dramatically reminded us all of the strength of the Body of Christ.”
“He gave his mother and me an opportunity to feel a love like we have never felt before. The time we had with him was filled with the purest, most intense form of love we have ever been able to give, and we have been dramatically changed because of it.”
“And while we were afraid that we would never be able to let go, there was a moment we knew he wasn’t with us any longer and only his body remained. He had gone into the arms of Jesus and His Blessed Mother, and our time with him was over.”
Love goes the second mile, and life is always the best decision. We might not understand why in every case, but when God has bestowed the precious gift of life, it is not man’s prerogative to kill.