When Antenatal becomes anti-natal

Recently a friend of ours asked us to pray urgently for a newly married couple they knew. The couple had been trying for a baby for some time, and finally, happily, managed to conceive. All was progressing well, it seemed, until they went for their standard 12 week scan. Alarm bells rung and prenatal testing followed, and the couple were told that their baby had Down’s Syndrome. Our friends asked us to pray, as the couple had booked themselves in for an abortion the following morning. Tragically, in spite of all our prayers, at 8am that following Monday morning, another precious child, whose only ‘crime’ was to have Down’s Syndrome, was pulled from it’s mother’s womb in a sterile hospital room and destroyed.

Silence.

What are you feeling when you read this? Anger? If so – where is your anger directed? At the mother and father who allowed this to happen to their child? At the doctors and nurses who were supposed to support life, not destroy it? At the society we live in that told these parents that she wouldn’t be able to cope with a Down’s child and therefore it was in the child’s ‘best interests’ they have it aborted? At the so-called ‘civilised world’ where babies are expected to be ‘perfect’, and not disabled. Or, are you feeling anger towards me for even writing about this issue? How dare I be so judgemental, how dare I use emotive terms like ‘mother’ and ‘baby’ and ‘destroyed’.

Of course, anger is not the only emotion I have experienced here. I have felt desperately sad for this couple, who longed for a baby, and were then put in a position where they were pressured into thinking this is the only option available to them. In truth, the decision, the ‘choice’ was still theirs to protect that life, to bring it into the world. They did not have to choose an abortion, no matter what emotional pressure was put on them. But the avoidable tragedy in this case makes me reflect on why a young mother would make this choice.

After we found out we were expecting our first child, we went to our 1st scan, excited at the prospect of seeing our little one on the screen for the first time. As new parents, we were on a conveyor belt ride, being told that we should have a ‘nuchal fold’ test to check for Down’s. We told the sonographer that it wouldn’t matter whether it had Down’s or not, so we weren’t fussed with the test. A bit more pressure was gently applied, and we convinced ourselves that it would be good at least to know, so that we could be prepared. Pressure. Seeds of anxiety were sown in the virgin soil of our expectancy. Needless to say, the measurements were ‘normal’. We were safe.

At the 12-week scan of our second baby, we were more wise to it, and told them we wouldn’t have the Down’s measurement test. Several times we were asked why not. We even had to fill out a form to say that we didn’t want the test. We told them that firstly there was no point. We wouldn’t do anything that would harm this child even if it were the most severely disabled. And what’s more, the tests are inconclusive, and there was no way on God’s earth we would risk miscarriage or harm to our baby by an amniocentesis test, even if we were in a ‘high risk’ category.

So what is the purpose of the tests anyway? What if Down’s Syndrome is detected? I am convinced, and the facts speak for themselves, that the purpose of these pre-natal tests is not to be able to offer support to the mother and father. [A 2002 literature review of elective abortion rates found that 91–93% of pregnancies with a diagnosis of Down syndrome were terminated.]
The ultimate action following a detection of Down’s, it seems, is to pressurise a vulnerable and distressed mother to do the unthinkable. To ‘terminate the faulty pregnancy’ and try again. The facts speak for themselves.

So what does all this say about a person who has Down’s Syndrome? The message is loud and clear and terrifying. When a hoped for baby is judged worthy of life on the basis of his or her ability or disability, what sort of a society have we become? That a mother could have an abortion for the sole reason that their precious child has Down’s Syndrome is truly terrible. Why is one innocent life worth less than another? Why can that child not have a place in today’s world? What have they done to deserve death? What does this say of the dignity of the human person, that we can decide whether a baby has the right to live or not? Who gives us the ‘right to choose’ to kill an innocent life?

And where, in living memory, have we witnessed the disabled, the marginalised, those who don’t fit into the ‘perfect’-race mould eugenically destroyed in great numbers because they don’t fit, and seen to have no worth?
Substitute then, the cold dark gas-chambers of Nazism for the clean, sterile, abortion rooms of clinics and hospitals in your local town, and you have a daily Holocaust that has no sign of ending. Yet it is a Holocaust that is ‘civilised’ and lawful.

And silent.


+ Rest in peace, little ones. And pray for us, lest we forget.

continuing the Unbroken Chain of Weirdness

I was ‘tagged’ last week by Eric and John, fellow blogger friends, to put onto the blogosphere 6 ‘weird things’ about myself. The idea is that I then tag a further 6 bloggers, and presumably we all know each other a little better and the whole world becomes a little weirder as a result.

I’m not one to talk about myself ;o) but in order to keep the chain of weirdness unbroken, here’s my list of 6 (which, I might add, was very hard to come up with, being a normal and uninteresting kind of guy).

1. I won’t eat ice-cream if it’s served in a bowl. I’ll devour it any time of the year if it’s in a cone. But in a bowl, the whole thing takes on a sinister form and taste, and threatens to ruin anything else it is served with. So if I come to you for dinner, give me custard if you please. Or if it’s only ice-cream on your dessert menu, put it in a cone, and pass me my flip-flops.

2. I was actually known as ‘the weirdo’ during my last 2 years at high school (aged 16-18). I like to think (and hope) that this was because I was a Goth, dressed always in black from head to toe, with bangles around my ankles and wrists and chains around my neck. My hair would be sprayed red, purple, black and white on special occasions, and backcombed and sometimes crimped too on weekdays. I would also don a black trilby hat with a skull-covered scarf wrapped around it when driving my Morris Minor. I would stink to high Heaven of patchouli oil, and a melancholy expression was as de rigeur as my zipped-up black velvet winkle-pickers and fingerless leather gloves. I would often come out at night and shirk away from the sun lest I get even slightly tanned. To me I was ‘pale and interesting’. To my family I was just pale. To everyone else I was just rather weird.

3. No longer in the dark (Deo gracias), I am now rather slightly over-obsessed with the light. By this I mean ‘ambient lighting’. It disturbs me to a great extent if I come home and the main ceiling lights are on and the table lambs turned off. The first thing I will do, before even saying hello to my family, is go round adjusting the lighting. Then I can relax. Recently, one of the lamp bulbs went in our sitting room, and we had to replace it with one that was just that bit too bright and white for my liking. It occupied far too much of my thought life, and I found myself planning when and where to buy a low-wattage soft-glow light bulb to replace it. I like candles, soft lighting, and the pendant ceiling lights to be there but turned off, and cannot for the life of me understand it when people turn them on. Ugh.

4. I have been known – and seen – to read ‘Adventures in Tandem Breastfeeding’ on the commuter train. Not for any disordered reason, I assure you, but because I find it fascinating and can therefore feed back to my wife the titbits that I have read, as she herself is too busy breastfeeding and the like. I think it is important to be kept abreast of the issues so I can be a supportive husband. I have also read in public ‘The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding’ and am looking forward to the sequel (‘The Manly Art of Breastfeeding’).

5. I pride myself in having learnt several tongue-twisters in Polish, and say them often whenever I meet anyone who looks even slightly Polish. They are always very impressed. I also know the two longest medical terms (not in Polish), which are ‘aqueosalinocalcalinocreaceoaluminosocupreovitriolic’ and ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovulcanoconiosis’, which is apparently something miners get from inhaling too many coal particles. I also know how to pronounce the longest name of a town (the one in Wales..Llanfwahpll…). I won’t write it as I fear the wrath of the Welsh who despise English people knowing their words. I also don’t know how to spell it. I’m not that weird.

6. And finally, it has long been known in my family, and indeed I was brought up to believe, that we Fitzgeralds do not have a bottom.

I have been told by my wife, however, and other people besides, that the bottom I don’t have does look great in my pair of 32 inch waist Diesel jeans.