“We made sure our son was not born only to suffer. He died in a warm and loving place, inside me,” she writes. This is surely one of the most morally confused and willfully self-deceptive sentences ever published in a major American newspaper. It might be the most painful thing I have ever read. You will not be surprised to learn that Times commenters lauded Nicastro for her courage and showered her with compassion. Not one mentioned her departed son.
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Big sigh.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea for the prolife movement to put some resources into developing and promoting palliative care and hospice programs for infants wih bad diagnoses. I think Ms. Nicastro here was choosing between a false dichotomy here: she could either carry her child to term and have him undergo one painful medical intervention after another, with dubious chances of ultimate success, or she could end his life and forego that suffering.
I’m actually sympathetic with Ms. Nicolasi here, although I’m pretty sure I would have made a different choice. A herniated diaphragm is a terrible diagnosis. People wih holes in their diaphragm simply can’t breathe. And quite often a baby’s organs will develop improperly, some inside the lung cavity and some outside. Repairing the damage is tricky, tricky work, and there is no guarantee of success.
But if she had the choice to deliver her baby, and, instead of having him whisked away to the NICU, and kept on tubes in an incubator for months and months, if he was simply allowed to die in her arms, would that have been so bad? At the very least, she wouldn’t have been the one to kill him.
Hi Melissa,
That’s a great point re: palliative care. I know at least one activist is working through that idea. I’m hoping it comes to pass.
My sister has a niece who had CDH…it definitely was a long road for them, though she’s a happy healthy 4 year old now. http://rubyhope.com/archive/200901