A Parent’s Choice
I don't always know what is right but I can almost always tell when something is wrong. That's something I have come to recognize as I have built my career as a palliative care physician- working everyday with people who are suffering and reaching the boundary of death. Through my experiences I have seen tremendous suffering in people who can in no way be said to deserve it, which is wrong, (although who is at fault is a murky question). My mission is always to do what I can to right that wrong and improve that suffering; unfortunately, I can seldom make it go away completely.
My background and resulting world view came to play in my personal life when my son Peri was diagnosed with a severe congenital diaphragmatic hernia at 13 weeks gestation. In some mild cases this can be a survivable condition (with modern medical interventions) although with risk of numerous complication. In Peri's case it was exceedingly unlikely he would survive based on the severity of his his hernia, this despite the best technology and medical care in a major Canadian urban centre. What was certain is that if he was born he would suffer. I say this as a palliative care physician, suffering can be alleviated but can seldom be eliminated. As such, with this diagnosis I was faced with the image of my son spending his few moments on earth struggling for air that his body wasn't capable of taking in, and experiencing the burning pain that comes with suffocation. That is, if we had decided to palliate him. I can't even imagine (and don't want to think about) the suffering that would result from intensive intervention and intubation.
As we spoke with the radiologist my mind laid out Peri's medical road map. If carried to term he had a 100% chance of suffering at a level I would not wish on my worst enemy, and little chance of surviving. This would be wrong. I knew in my mind the best thing I could do for Peri was prevent that suffering and if at all possible before he had a nervous system that could perceive pain or discomfort. The only way to do that was to get an abortion. Now, obviously (to me at least, perhaps not the US Supreme Court) this was my wife's decision. I gave her my opinion but was clear that ultimately I would support her in whatever choice she made.
She didn't make a choice right away. The radiologist was fairly certain of the diagnosis but at 13 weeks Peri was too small to be 100% certain. So, they brought us back at 15 weeks and unfortunately confirmed everything we were afraid of. Peri had a very severe case and was unlikely to survive. With that confirmation my wife made the most difficult decision of her life to end this very wanted pregnancy.
That night we spent a lot of time crying and saying our goodbyes to Peri. My biggest regret in this whole experience was that because of my medical background I had fully expected something bad to happen in the pregnancy and so had tried to protect myself by not connecting with my son. That was wrong and it didn't protect me at all. So it was that I found myself on the eve of my sons death trying to make up for 15 weeks of emotional neglect, letting him know I loved him and that I would miss him, and that I would take care of his mom who loved him more than anything and would do anything for him.
It is strange to write that I am grateful to live in a place where I could arrange for my son to die. In no way do I seek to avoid that reality. I made a decision and supported a decision that that killed my son. But I know all too well that death can be a mercy. That was the choice we made, to carry a lifetime of pain so that he didn't have to experience any. It is not something that I am either proud of or ashamed of, it was simply what a father and mother had to do to save their son from suffering in the only way we could. If we had the misfortune of living in some parts of the US, I would still have a dead son but he would have suffered immeasurably. That is wrong. I mourn that many parents around the world can not have access to the medical assistance that can allow them to protect their kids from suffering in whatever small way they can.
I suspect that is where anti-choice individuals are losing the plot. Life is complicated, you may set out to protect babies but if you take away a parent's right to choose you are inevitably going to cause unintended consequences, and babies will suffer. Some people want to ban abortion and then decide where the line is, to decide who should get exemptions and why. My son might have lived briefly and died in agony under that sort of hair splitting and I would not have been willing to have him be a innocent victim in an unwinnable moral war. It is not for someone else to decide that my baby must suffer for their own beliefs. It is wrong for that decision to be made by church leaders, judges, or politicians- it can only be made by the people, the parents who love that baby. And in a situation that is wrong, that is the only right thing to do.
~Justin Black