A married woman who became pregnant at age 39 after she had already had all the children she wanted weighed the abortion decision and decided she would probably keep the baby. But:
“Unfortunately, she says, her maternal instincts did not respond to reason: when a young friend placed her baby in her arms, she found herself looking with distaste into “a little scrunched face inspiring no tenderness, only intense tedium at the thought of tending him. What was I going to do with the baby I couldn’t return to his mother?” She arranged to have amniocentesis once they got to England, though she was not sure – despite her reservations – what it would cost her emotionally to have an abortion if something were wrong. When told she had as much chance of having a miscarriage from the amniocentesis as she did, at her age, of having a Down syndrome child, she hoped for the miscarriage: “That is until, lying on the table where the procedure was to take place, I saw the ultrasound scan on a television monitor above me reveal the perfectly shaped head of the child I carried. I wanted that baby!”
Faith Abbott “a Tale of Two Women” Human Life Review, Spring 1993
Share on Facebook
I applaud this woman and the one who took her for an ultrasound. It i s a wonderful thing to save a child. Susan Noegel Pro lifer and a catholic!!