Tag: pro-choice advocacy

Congenital Heart Defects

Parachutes

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Happy rainbow baby

My happy rainbow baby at 6 months. Why my “rainbow baby” owes his existence to legal abortion Grace O. About nine months after making my heartwrenching choice to end my 20-week pregnancy due to a combination Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome and Down syndrome, I conceived again. That was a tough decision, one I had to make all over again each month that I did not get pregnant. Getting pregnant again is not a decision I would have made if abortion had not been legal. After what we’d been though, it was terrifying to even consider trying again. I now understood only too well that poor […]

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My First True Act of Motherhood

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By Megan Padilla How making the most heartwrenching choice for my family’s future almost killed me, and why restriction to abortion access affects every parent. I am on my knees, my face in the seat of a rocking recliner. The clock passes midnight and it’s just the four of us—me, my husband, our baby and a nurse—inside an abortion clinic 90 miles from our home and friends. There is no bed or doctor to ease my way toward delivery of my son, whose life I am ending as my first true act of motherhood. The nightmare began unfolding for my husband, David, and me on […]

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This isn’t about Down syndrome

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By Grace O. Ending a Wanted Pregnancy isn’t about Down syndrome (trisomy 21). This needs to be said, because to hear just about anyone else in the media tell it, all prenatal tests are for diagnosing Down syndrome, and all terminations following poor prenatal diagnosis are because of Down syndrome. When and how did a single chromosomal disorder become the proverbial poster child for all prenatal diagnoses, all medical issues, all life-threatening disorders and all cognitive disorders? When I hear people fantasizing about how they would “never” end a pregnancy for poor prenatal diagnosis, invariably they bring up Down syndrome. They’ll trot out someone they know […]

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Abortion as a Moral Decision

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This open letter to religious leaders was is published here by permission of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing Scripture neither condemns nor prohibits abortion. It does, however, call us to act compassionately and justly when facing difficult moral decisions. As religious leaders, we are committed to supporting people’s efforts to achieve spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being, including their reproductive and sexual health. We assist women and families confronted with unintended pregnancies or pregnancies that can no longer be carried to term. We are committed to social justice, mindful of the 46 million women worldwide who have an abortion each year, almost half […]

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Why This Loss is So Hard

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 By Grace O. There is, unfortunately no shortcut through the grief that follows the decision to end a wanted pregnancy following a catastrophic prenatal diagnosis. This unusual form of pregnancy loss is often misunderstood by those who haven’t faced it. It can seem harder than other losses both because there is a decision involved, and because it involves us physically so much. The loss is from our very bodies; the baby we lost was still physically a part of our being. So in addition to all of the emotional pain of the loss of our hoped-for child, we have the physical loss of our pregnant state. […]

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Our Babies In Heaven: This I Believe Essay #63009

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I believe it is okay to say out loud that I have had two abortions. I believe I would make the same decision again. By Anne Entered on April 10, 2009 Themes: birth, faith & religion, values & spirituality I believe that it is the hardest thing I have ever done, to say goodbye to my babies because they had sad prenatal diagnoses. I believe it is harder than being my mother’s support person when she was hospice dying from lung cancer. I believe it is harder than all the children I helped take off life support, when I was in training to become a […]