Looking abortion in the face

Ayelet Waldman writes in Salon.com a very candid article about her abortion entitled "Looking Abortion in the Face." It is quite disturbing:

I had a second trimester abortion. I was pregnant with a much-wanted child who was diagnosed with a genetic abnormality. I made a choice to terminate the pregnancy. It was my third pregnancy, and I was very obviously showing. More important, I could feel the baby move. We had seen him on the ultrasound; I have a very clear memory of his two tiny feet, perfect pearl toes, footprint arches, round heels. This was, for me, a baby, not a "clump of cells" as an older woman, steeped in the arcane language of the early feminist movement, called him. He was my baby, and I chose to end his life.

This first paragraph sums up her entire experience. She admits that she not only felt the baby kick, but thought of it as her own child, her own son. She even recalls his delicate features in the ultrasound. She finishes by saying she chose to end her own sons life. She admits to thinking of him not as a "clump of cells" but as a baby, her baby. She instead decided to end his life. I find this quite disturbing. But she continues :

Let me be very clear here. I support absolutely the right to abortion. I give financial support to Planned Parenthood, to NARAL. I am fanatical on this issue. I believe that every woman is entitled to choose when and if to end a pregnancy. I also believe that to end a pregnancy like mine is to kill a fetus. Kill. I use that word very consciously and specifically.

Once again she reiterates that she believes that she was indeed killing a child, a live human being when she ended her pregnancy. She explains that she is indeed pro-choice, and still thinks that she is guilty of killing her child, having given it much thought.

I have no regrets.

I made a choice based on my own and my family's needs and limitations. I did not want to raise a genetically compromised child. I did not want my children to have to contend with the massive diversion of parental attention, and the consequences of being compelled to care for their brother after I died. I wanted a genetically perfect baby, and because that was something I could control, I chose to end his life.

Wow. So she explains it as putting her family's needs and limitations ahead of her own son's life. She claims she wanted to protect her children from a "genetically compromised" child. Is there such thing as a perfect child. I'm wearing glasses as I'm typing, there is one strike against me. But she wanted/deserves a genetically perfect child, and because her child wasn't prefect enough for her she killed her son. (Remember I'm using her words here.) Because her family would have been limited in it's activities, because her family would have had to provide added care, and attention would have been drawn away from her other children, she decides it is best to kill the "imperfect" child.

This decision was not without its terrible costs. I mourned this baby's death. The night before the termination I lay awake, feeling him roll and spin within my body. I wept for the death of the baby inside me, and I also wept for the death of the "fantasy baby," the perfect baby I lost when the amnio results came back. I was catapulted into a six-month depression after the abortion, a depression that ended only when I got pregnant again. On Yom Kippur I wrote an essay about what I had done and read it before my congregation. One of the lines in that essay asked how I could apologize for being so inadequate a mother that I would not accept an inadequate child.

She then tries to explain that she does have a conscious, I was beginning to wonder. It is not easy to dispose of your own child without feeling some guilt. She indeed felt sorry for the baby that she was about to kill, but also felt sorry for herself. She felt sorry that she did not get her "fantasy baby" that she desired. She even acknowledges killing an imperfect baby, even though she is far from a perfect mother.

It is quite shocking to me that Ayelet knows and can feel that there is a life inside her, and still chooses to selfishly put her interests ahead of her babies life. This gets at the heart of the abortion argument: Is an innocent child's life worth more than the happiness and quality of living of his or her parents. I would say definitely yes. No matter how regretful the mother is she still knowingly killed her own child. She put her desire for a normal life, her desire to not have to care for a disabled child over her own child's life.

This shocking disregard for life can only be compared to the holocaust. Although one could argue it is much worse - killing ones own child. Putting your own self interest over another life. We have now reached the point in the pro-life/pro-choice movement where people no longer care if the baby is a life.