Murther
Yesterday’s murder of an abortion doctor has thrust the debate back into the national headlines. (One wonders whether the killer did so to affect the confirmation process of Sonia Sotomayor, but given the fact that he chose to advance his pro-life agenda by taking a life doesn’t seem to indicate a lot of intellectual depth.) Andrew Sullivan has been all over it, posting reader responses and emotionally draining stories about couples who have chosen to end a pregnancy despite their personal misgivings. One such story can be found here: Catholic Doctrine and Merciful Choice.
At 17 weeks gestation our baby had been diagnosed with major heart defects requiring a minimum of three risky open-heart surgeries beginning at birth, and would later require a heart transplant. At 19 weeks we were finally given our amnio results which revealed our baby also had Trisomy 21. A surgeon at the major teaching hospital where we’d had our fetal echocardiogram informed us that even if our baby somehow survived his palliative surgeries, this latest diagnosis meant he would not ever be eligible for a heart transplant.
As we sat talking quietly in our living room, our priest shared with us that he’d spent time at the same hospital where we’d had our fetal echocardiogram and where our son would have had surgery. He was there to support the family of a three-month-old who was having heart surgery. In the three weeks or so that he tended to this family, he also met 10 other families in the waiting room, each of whom also had young babies undergoing heart surgery. Sadly, within the short space of time our priest was there, every single one of those babies died.
Our priest came away from that experience feeling that this world-renowned children’s hospital was basically experimenting on babies. He saw their futile suffering and likened it to being crucified. The family he had gone there to support later told him that if they had only known what their baby would be forced to go through before dying, they would never have chosen surgery.
Our priest told us that he believed we were not choosing our son’s death, only choosing the timing of his death in order to spare him a great deal of suffering. Something he said that brought us great comfort was “God knows what is in your hearts.” God knows our choice was based on mercy and compassion. Who would better understand our hearts than God, who made the choice for His own Son to die?
I’ve made about a 105-degree turn on the topic of abortion, caused mainly by the births of my own kids. I had always believed that a fetus was little more than an organ, part of a woman’s body, to be discarded at her whim and without my or my government’s interference. But once you feel your baby move inside your wife’s belly, there’s no way to consider that as anything but a child. (Interestingly, I’m told that historically, the Jewish standard for “life” was when the fetus could be felt moving.)
I still think abortion should be legal in almost all situations (although I’m very, very squeamish about late-term abortions).
This contradiction stems from the fact that in the end, it’s both a woman’s body and a child. If I were a woman, I couldn’t end my own pregnancy (unless, perhaps, I was faced with the above situation). But I have no business forcing that position on a woman than someone else would have telling me I can’t eat meat on Fridays. Each person has to have their own conscience on the subject.
I pose the following query: which is the more compassionate action? Ending a pregnancy, or subjecting an infant to a month of suffering before letting it die on its own?
