Culture | Politics | Parenting
Please Stop Demonizing Late-Term Abortions
Contemplating one family’s heartbreak
Many years have passed since the story I’m about to tell you. I didn’t understand the impact, then. I was just out of college, rather naive, a bit cynical, and still too hip to let the pain touch me. I approached life with an intellectual coolness that’s since been replaced with a stark reality.
My neighbors upstairs
Chris and Pat were expecting their first baby. They excitedly shared their evolving list of favorite baby names and asked everyone they knew to vote on them. Every weekend found them either at Home Depot, where they browsed for paint and stencils, or Babies R Us, where they were interviewing cribs. The soon-to-be grandparents swung by frequently with goody boxes. Chris’ and Pat’s baby shower was at a local inn where we neighbors got to meet both extended families, as well as college friends.
Her baby bump was growing faster than normal, and the buzz started circulating that she must be carrying twins.
Chris was wearing a romantic white maternity dress with blue flowers the day she got the news. She wasn’t carrying twins. In fact, she wasn’t carrying a baby.
What was growing inside her was a mass of undifferentiated tissue.
When I came home from work that afternoon, Chris was sitting on the steps to our building, keys in her hand. She didn’t want to cross over the threshold of her door. She didn’t want to carry the terrible news inside and let it pollute her home.
I put my arm around her and we sat there together for a long time on the steps. Yes, she had called Pat. No, he didn’t know the full story yet, but he was on his way.
I struggled to find a way to help, but there was no fix. Words of perspective and wisdom would have been great but I had none. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be married and expecting a baby, much less approach this emotional firestorm.
She tried to parse what the doctor had told her. Was it a mass of floating brains and hair and teeth and skin — all the parts that would normally make up a baby — but instead forming a lump of chaotic tissue? Could that possibly be true? Might she have misunderstood?
“It’ll be all right,” I said and hugged her close.
All I could think was, “Gross. Gross. Gross.” I wanted to run screaming down the street at the thought of having a monster like that inside me.
“It’ll be okay.” We both knew that was a lie, but it was comforting to hear. Comforting to say.
Molar pregnancy
Although many molar pregnancies have symptoms in the first trimester, Chris’ had none. Up until that awful moment in the doctor’s office, hers had seemed like a normal pregnancy. Testing has improved since then, but there are still hundreds of women every year who, in the second or third trimester, receive this diagnosis. Many, like Chris, do not have any of the known risk factors.
The risks of carrying a molar pregnancy through to late-term include a rare form of cancer. Also, after being removed from the uterus, molar tissue might remain and continue to grow. Repeated molar pregnancies are also a risk. Chemotherapy is widely recommended, and hysterectomy is often a result.
The risk to Chris’ health was grave, and the prognosis got increasingly grim with each passing day.
Chris and Pat didn’t talk to us, or anyone for several days. They needed time to mourn, to let the long list of potential names dissolve and float away to other people’s healthy, viable babies. They put the goody boxes, paint cans, and rolls of wallpaper in the room that would have been the baby’s, then closed the door.
Making the impossible choice
Chris and Pat are parents who chose a late-term abortion. They had to.
Testing has improved since that time. Molar pregnancies, and other birth defects that risk both baby and mother, are easier to detect today. They aren’t all found promptly, however.
Other parents are beset with other cruel diagnoses. Sometimes, a fetus can die for no identifiable reason. When this happened to I Dream of Jeannie’s Barbara Eden, she had to continue carrying her dead baby for six more weeks.
Here are a few examples of other parents who ended their pregnancies after receiving a diagnosis of fetal acrania, anencephaly, and trisomy 18.
Here’s a sobering National Institutes of Health article describing what happens after parents receive a fatal fetal diagnosis, with outcomes.
There’s a woman who is in the news right now, fighting the Texas Supreme Court to protect her fertility and potentially her life by terminating her nonviable fetus.
Years later
Chris and Pat each went into their own emotional tailspin. We were worried about their marriage surviving. They were right to be concerned because 22% of those who lose a baby end their committed partnership.
Thankfully, with a lot of time, mutual patience, and counseling, Chris and Pat pulled through. They eventually were able to have one, and then another healthy pregnancy, resulting in what are now two happy high school girls.
In the intervening years, I matured as well. Married and a mother now too, I was haunted during my pregnancy by the memory of Chris and Pat. Luckily, the dice rolled in our baby’s favor. I’ll never take that for granted, though, because I’ve seen the alternative.
Your Cliff Notes for this story: The longer a woman carries a dead or unviable fetus inside her uterus, the more dangerous it is for her health. The emotional devastation increases with each day as the mother and child approach what essentially is a death day, not a birthday. Families can heal from this tragedy, but it takes time.
I pray that lawmakers understand and voters follow the path of compassion.
- Symptoms and causes of Molar Pregnancy
- Images of Molar Pregnancy
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