But If It's The Other Way? What Then? An Approach To Abortion Law That May Be Ignored

 

"Maze1" by Herr D on heromachine.com. Sometimes knots are good to unravel backwards.-Shelob

 

'A' and 'Q' have agreed to chat with me about their experience, briefly. Guys? Where do you want to start?

G'head.

My wife had  a troubled pregnancy. Placenta previa, gestational diabetes, and three other conditions.  It wasn't going well. She asked me whether I could honor her wishes. I told her I couldn't.

Why couldn't you?

She said they have to have the decision made of who to save before they go in, so if they can't save but one, the decision is made. I couldn't love a child I haven't met as much as I already loved my wife.

What did you do about it, Q?

I got my mom to be my medical proxy.

It was hard for her to do that; I mean, her mom's a good lady, but her mom stresses her out. She's since a little less welcome at the hospital. 

Did you fight about this?

No.

No. I told her the truth and let her do what she had to to follow her conscience. Some people would have called that passive suicide, but that's not how she saw it. She made what for her WAS a moral choice. 

And then?

Then the doctors went in and the baby wasn't going to make it. Malformed organs. It was going to die, and it was going to suffer till it died.

And the ultrasound didn't tell them that?

It was just too subtle to show up on the tests. So they were all ready to save the baby and had to swap out the surgical stuff at the last second, because my wife had a chance at a real life.

The doctors were straight with us, because they knew we are very educated. The baby had probably BEEN in pain, which is why he hadn't been moving much, had the variances in heart rate, stuff like that. They had thought it was the pregnancy conditions. It was too late to legally abort him, I mean during birth and all, they just gave some Tylenol and watched him die while they saved my wife.

Our second child is beautiful. She's smart and tall, like her daddy.

Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently?

Aborting my first baby would have been a mercy killing. The rare genetic transcription error or errors  couldn't have been prevented. Otherwise, I would do things the same way. I'm not likely to agree to have an abortion unless the baby is going to have a bad life. Spina bifida, maybe.

That does result in a low quality of life. Well you know why I wanted you to talk about this.

I can't imagine any sane woman voting Republican anytime soon.

I can't imagine any sane woman having SEX with a Republican anytime soon.

Yikes. Okay. It does occur to me that your situation is not unique.

The doctors said things like this happen. Frankly even my right to choose the baby over myself was second. If you can't trust medical people to do their thing, you shouldn't go to the hospital. They saw that they needed to override me because of information I didn't have when I made my choice. I was upset, but they let me hold him. He would have been miserable. I'm glad he never had anyone call him ugly or look disgusted at him. He deserved a better life than he could have had, and I'm sorry we couldn't give him a good life, or any life at all.

What would you say to anyone who says you didn't have the right to make the choices you made?

That they're wrong.

That they're crazy. And they're the ones with no right.

And if they made choices different than yours?

I'd say this is America, and it's wrong to control other people.

I'd say I might not want to talk about it, rather than argue, but that's THEIRS. Not mine.

Thank you both for this.

Shelob?

This is a contrapositive example, and perhaps not covered in the news. Thank you, Herr D.