This morning while waiting at the blood clinic I saw a Chatelaine magazine from a while back on the table. An article on the front cover was advertised as something like “the baby I didn’t have.”
Turns out it was an article about a young mom facing a terrible diagnosis of anencephaly at 17 weeks. A little girl. They wanted her, cherished her, named her and induced labour so she was born at about 18 weeks and died the same moment she was born.
Why do I post here?
First of all, I do so without linking to the article because I do not want the mother to be linking in and reading this. There is no way this post would not appear judgmental to her. I do not think that the written word from a stranger, the blogosphere, Facebook or Twitter are what she needs to break through her mentality that inducing early labour was not actually an abortion, that it wasn’t taking life.
But it was, wasn’t it? How did she know this baby wouldn’t be miraculously healed? A woman in my peripheral circle recently also tragically lost her child after carrying to term due to a different pre-natal condition. She didn’t try to beat the judge to the verdict. Is that not fairer to yourself and the baby?
The woman in Chatelaine is surrounded by all things pro-choice, all the time. There is no doubt she knew this is a baby–she held her daughter and they took pictures. So I’d argue what we need to overcome is not necessarily the pro-choice culture, though it is that too. It’s a culture that cannot cope with the unexpected, that needs to know exactly how the story will end. When we don’t know or are unsure or it is scary, we bring about an end just to make the insecurity stop.
In short, pro-life or pro-choice–we need to be more zen and go with the flow.
I also write this blog post because it is an outlet. It pains me to hear about “early inductions” that are abortions but called something else so we feel better about it. It pains me because we, all of us pro-life readers, unlike the bulk of the western world, think that child’s life mattered even if it was intended to be only nine months in utero.
I’m not saying it’s not hard all round.
I’m simply saying I read those stories and I mourn, right there in the blood clinic.
by 
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