No one wants to see their child suffer or die. Parents face heartbreaking news about their child often are left feeling hopeless, desperate and searching for answers.
Tragically, abortion advocates often prey on these vulnerable, grieving parents when their child is still in the womb. They try to convince them that aborting the child is more compassionate than allowing the child to die naturally. Implying but never saying that the unborn child is not a child yet, they push the lie that aborting the child will prevent him or her from suffering.
This is what Huffington Post writer Deborah Hitchins argued in a recent column. Hitchins was heartbroken when doctors told her that her unborn daughter had a fatal condition and probably would not live outside the womb.
Hitchins said she felt excited for her child from the moment she took the first pregnancy test. She followed her unborn baby’s development, reading about how her daughter grew from the size of a rice grain to the size of a kiwi then a grapefruit.
“We wanted our baby with every ounce of our being,” she wrote.
But when she and her husband learned that their daughter would more than likely die soon after her birth, they convinced themselves that it would be more compassionate to abort her. Hitchins wrote:
Having to choose whether to terminate your unborn child is possibly the hardest choice you will ever have to make in your life. I would not wish that choice on anybody. It’s not something that you’d ever imagine yourself being faced with and for me it’s something I will carry with me forever.
The worst thing is the judgement and opinions that society has placed upon you for your decision, and most often that opinion is formed without knowing the reasoning.
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… I didn’t choose abortion for any selfish reasons. For me, I chose selflessly to undergo a termination out of the love I had for my child, to stop their pain and suffering. The easiest option would no doubt have been to bring our baby into the world because I was selfishly unable to let go, into the world to exist without a quality of life, to live in a self confined darkness of pain and suffering, to not see or hear, not communicate, to not breathe unaided, to be trapped in a world of nothing, a void, to be totally reliant on others for every function to enable them to exist, if they were to survive the birth… would you want that for your child?
Hutchins said her decision to abort her unborn daughter smashed her heart “instantaneously into a million pieces.” Ten years after it occurred, she said she still misses her daughter and wants to hold her in her arms.
Hutchins wants compassion and affirmation for her abortion decision, not judgment. Her situation and her unborn daughter’s absolutely was heartbreaking and worthy of compassion – but Hutchins’ decision to kill her unborn child is not.
In that vulnerable, emotional time, what many parents like Hutchins fail to see is that their unborn child deserves the same treatment as a child who is born. Parents would never think of killing a 2-year-old who is suffering from a life-threatening illness. Why should a baby in the womb be treated any differently?
Born or unborn, children suffering from fatal conditions, illnesses, disabilities, etc., deserve to receive medical treatment, pain management and compassionate care. Thankfully, a growing number of communities are offering such programs to help babies with fatal conditions and their families. Perinatal hospice programs give families a life-affirming alternative to abortion during one of the most painful times in their lives. Most important of all, these programs treat babies in the womb just like any other child, working to alleviate their suffering and honoring them with the compassion and respect that they deserve.
