The Conversation

Back Story:
One of our children is severely disabled. She has I.Q. of approximately 35, is considered profoundly retarded, and we adopted her when she was almost six years old.

True Conversation:

Pro-choice Friend: The absolute assertion that a foetus at every stage of
its development is alive in the same sense as a vital, thinking, functioning human being is historically, forensically and medically baseless.

Deputy Headmistress:
Using this reasoning has led some people to conclude that our daughter (We shall call her Cherub) and others like her is neither ‘alive’ or human.

Pro-choice Friend: I’m terribly sorry and deeply shocked. But what about compassion for the women?

Deputy Headmistress:

while I greatly appreciate your empathy regarding Cherub and those
people who would argue that she (and any other like her) is less than human, I am
afraid it is simply the logical progression of any argument that insists
unborn babies are less than human.

Cherub needed life support at birth. Unborn babies need life support, too.
It’s called a womb. Cherub has been diagnosed as profoundly retarded. A
good many people believe that her quality of life is bad enough that she
would be better off dead. They are wrong.

Cherub’s birth mother was sorry that Cherub wasn’t aborted. I am glad that she was not.

For me, extending compassion to the pregnant woman does not include refusing
it to the unborn child. I don’t believe abortion is a compassionate choice.
It is emotionally traumatic. It is not ‘safe.’ It can affect a woman’s
future chances of childbirth. It appears it can increase her risk for
breast cancer.

I believe there are individuals who are truly pro-choice out of compassion, however misguided I feel that compassion is. But it troubles me greatly that the single
demographic group most in favor of legalized abortion is young men in their
teens and early 20′s. I do not believe it is compassion that motivates the
majority of this group.

When I was 20 I conceived our first child. We were poor and not living in
anything close to ideal circumstances. Planned Parenthood offered free
pregnancy tests, so that’s where I went. They gave me the results of my
test and asked me one question- “Would you like an abortion?” When I said
no, the only response I got was a shrug and a dismissal. There was no
compassion, no desire to help. There wasn’t even a simple smile and
congratulations.

The pro-lifers do hold the high ground when it comes to compassion for the
mother. They offer assistance with medical care, maternity clothes, job
training, baby clothes, toiletries, and other support. They offer all this,
plus relief from the searingly painful regret so many women who ‘choose’
abortion will later suffer.

Pro-choice Friend:

Deputy Headmistress: Well?