Mom Refused Abortion When Told Her Baby Would Die After Birth: “Not My Right to Take Someone Else’s Life”

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Mar 8, 2023   |   1:56PM   |   Washington, DC

Writer Sarah St. Onge knew her unborn baby girl did not deserve to be killed just because she was dying.

But again and again, despite her and her husband John’s repeated refusals, doctors asked if they wanted to abort their daughter Beatrix, according to the Christian Post.

“We don’t determine somebody’s ability to overcome something before they’re even born,” St. Onge told The Christian Post in a new interview. “There’s only so much that testing can do. But the bottom line is that it’s not my right to take someone else’s life. Nobody has the right to decide if somebody else should live or die.”

St. Onge, a conservative writer and pro-life advocate, said she and her family still grieve for the loss of Beatrix, who died in 2010 after living only 1 hour and 47 minutes outside the womb. She emphasized that her daughter’s medical condition did not make her life any less valuable.

Doctors first detected problems with Beatrix when she was only nine weeks pregnant, her mother recalled. At 12 weeks, St. Onge said they found excess fluid at the back of her neck and thought she might have Down syndrome.

Then, at 16 weeks, doctors discovered Beatrix’s abdominal wall had not formed properly and her organs partially were growing outside her body, according to the report. Another test also found that she probably had Trisomy 13, a genetic disorder that causes severe disabilities and can be fatal.

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St. Onge said her daughter was described as “incompatible with life,” and a genetic counselor encouraged her and her husband to consider an abortion. They refused, but her doctors continued to suggest abortion even when she told them to stop.

At 26 weeks of pregnancy, Beatrix was diagnosed with Limb Body Wall Complex in which the organs develop outside the body, she continued.

Throughout the devastating ordeal, she said doctors did not seem to care about her wishes or her daughter’s life.

“When I brought doctors peer-reviewed studies detailing treatments for children with her disorder, & asked if we could try to save her, I was laughed at and called ‘tenacious,’” St. Onge said. “When … my water broke and I asked for steroids to promote lung maturity, I was told, ‘We don’t do that for babies who are just going to die.’

“At every turn, any effort which could potentially help my daughter was brushed off as me being overzealous and unrealistic,” she said.

Beatrix was born and died Dec. 12, 2010, and holding their baby girl was such a special time for St. Onge and her husband.

“It almost felt like there was nobody else in the world, just my husband, me and her, sitting in that room in the quiet,” she told the Christian Post. “She was beautiful and lovely, and it was good. It was all good.”

Far too often, abortion is portrayed as the most compassionate option in such situations. But St. Onge disagreed.

“Babies are not possessions,” she said. “They’re individual human beings. And part of being human is that we die. And the love that you invest in people before that point outweighs any pain and suffering that you feel when they leave.”