Abortion Activist Says Aborting Her Baby Was “the Kindest Course of Action”

Opinion   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Oct 3, 2016   |   1:20PM   |   Washington, DC

A British TV personality shared the details of her abortion experience this week ahead of the release of her new investigation of so-called “abortion extremists.”

Cathy Newman, a presenter on Channel 4 in England, wrote a column for the Daily Mail on Sunday, accusing pro-lifers of making an often “hugely upsetting” decision about abortion worse for many women by sharing about the risks of abortion and their unborn babies’ lives.

Newman said her decision to have an abortion 10 years ago was “one of the most traumatic I’ve ever made.” At the time, she and her husband had a daughter and recently had experienced a miscarriage when they became pregnant again. When she was 13 weeks pregnant, however, Newman said doctors learned that her unborn baby had a rare, possibly fatal condition.

“All these years later, I can remember the desolation we both felt – and the conviction we shared that the kindest course of action was to terminate the pregnancy,” she wrote.

“If it had survived, we were informed it would most probably be paralyzed, deaf, blind and unable to speak,” Newman added.

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The couple decided to abort their unborn child rather than give him or her a chance at life – a “traumatic decision,” she said. But Newman avoided explaining why her abortion was a painful decision, choosing to blame pro-lifers, waiting periods and health care workers instead.

Newman said she was “distraught” by the news that she might have to wait two weeks and have two doctors sign off before she was allowed to have the abortion.

“In the end, we did manage to secure the termination with only a week’s wait,” Newman wrote. “But it was the longest seven days of our lives, as we wrestled with the emotional turmoil of what had happened.”

She said she felt even more upset when a health care worker gave her advice about contraception, assuming that she was dealing with an “unwanted pregnancy.”

Later, Newman wrote that her abortion would have been even more painful “if I’d had to run the gauntlet of protesters, questioning my decision, issuing me with misleading advice about the medical risks of terminating, showing me gruesome pictures of aborted foetuses, or comparing abortion to the Holocaust.”

The painful truth is that Newman had her unborn child killed because the child might have died or lived with a number of disabilities. While her baby’s diagnosis was tragic and dealing with a child with disabilities is not an easy task, her child’s life still was valuable. In modern society, it has become acceptable to discriminate against people with disabilities while they are still in the womb. As long as a disabled human being is still in the womb, abortion activists say it is OK – even “kind” and “compassionate” – to kill them.

Fortunately, there are an increasing number of life-affirming options for families when their unborn babies are diagnosed with fatal disorders or disabilities. For example, perinatal hospice programs help families make memories with their baby and plan for the baby’s death, just as the family would with any other child. These programs provide emotional support, counseling, help with making plans for the baby’s life and death, and even photography, funeral plans and other services to help memorialize the baby’s life. Some states in the U.S. also now require that parents be informed of such resources when their babies are diagnosed with fatal anomalies.

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