Have you ever been involved in a pregnancy you wanted to keep only to have it go horribly wrong at 23 weeks? I did.
I was pregnant with my baby girl. At our happy "let's find out the gender" ultrasound, it wasn't such a happy find. My baby girl had no brain to speak of, more than 1/2 was a water-filled cyst. It took many torturous days, multiple ultrasounds and an MRI to get as many details as we could. Her internal organs were functioning but she wouldn't be able to survive outside the womb with the brain issue. My life wasn't threatened, at least not physically.
We had to make the choice at 23 weeks to terminate the pregnancy. Not really a choice when you think about it. I had to travel to Stanford, check into the maternity ward, get induced, go through contractions, deliver and then not have my baby. It was traumatic enough to be induced and deliver over 1/2 way through the pregnancy. I can't imagine what it would have been like to carry to term and, at 40 weeks, deliver and have her die.
In addition, I was lucky my insurance paid for this or it definitely would have been adding insult to injury.
You can't make abortion a black and white issue. It's not just teenage girls who don't want their babies. It's not just something someone "irresponsible" uses as a method of birth control. Sometimes things are out of our hands and to force a woman to carry a baby to term who will die is just cruel torture.
I'm not trying to diminish anyone's beliefs, it's just not as easy as you think. That was the hardest experience of
my life and I relive it every day. I light a candle for my baby girl every year.
I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm just hoping my story my help people rethink their ideas that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, or funding should be pulled from anyone who is associated with abortion. It's not that simple.
