It is time to once again share my abortion experience.
This is my baby Flora. I loved her. I love her. I aborted her. My husband and I held her until her body was cold.
I aborted her because she had suffered significant brain damage that probably wasn’t life threatening but which would probably have put her in the lower 15% of those with mental disabilities and have given her physical limitations that meant that she could not do intense physical activities – even headaches or mild fevers would have meant hospital trips.
I aborted her because I have an older child, and for every touching story of a sibling who learned compassion having a sibling with similar scale of health issues, I read many more of children who were neglected because their parents had no time for them. They often ended up with addiction and emotional problems of their own. I read about how some of these siblings came to hate their parents and/or sibling because of the caretaking duties forced upon them when the parents could no longer fill that role. And if they don’t take on this role, either personally or financially, they have to live with the guilt of putting their sibling into an institutional situation where they are all but certain to experience abuse, neglect, and poverty. I could make a choice to be a lifelong caretaker for myself. I did not feel I had the choice to make it for my other child.
I aborted her because the vast majority of marriages with children like Flora end up divorced, often after extreme economic hardship. Even if not, the parents end up suffering from social isolation as their friends and even family drift away.
I did not make this choice easily. Years later, I still wonder if I did the right thing. Maybe the fiveish percent chance of her being relatively high functioning would have come to pass. Maybe we would have been one of the minority of families that can go through this and have everyone come out stronger. But at the end of the day, I do not regret my choice. And I am grateful that it was *my* choice, not the choice of some legislators going on generalities and assumptions about how there are no good reasons to choose this heartbreaking choice. Today, many women lost that choice.