I’ve only just come across this topic but have read it with great interest. I think that while the decision to terminate a pregnancy on the basis of a severe disability must be the most agonising one, and one which I have tremendous respect for, the more advanced science becomes, the more people will terminate pregnancies on the basis of even minor imperfections. In fact people already do, some may remember the case recently where a reverend tried to take some doctors to court because they had performed a termination at 26 weeks for a baby with a cleft lip?
My story is this, and before I tell it I would just like to point out that I am a regular on here, but have changed my name.
I have been totally blind since birth, when searching for a diagnosis, the specialists simply said that it was “corticle blindness” which basically meant that there was nothing wrong with my optacle nerves or my eyes, but that something in the brain was preventing the messages getting through to the brain. However, no one could ever actually tell me why I couldn’t see. There is apparently a name for it which basically just means that it’s one of those things that happened. It is very rare, and there is a list of people with the condition as there are so few in the world. Anyway, apart from being totally blind I have no other disabilities. However, because I was blind my mother then said that she would never have any more children because she didn’t want another baby with a disability. Then when I was 7 my mother fell pregnant, it wasn’t a planned pregnancy, she’d been talking about getting sterilised for years but never got round to it. We were all involved in the discussions about the pregnancy and what was going to happen, how my mum felt that she didn’t want another baby with a disability, even though doctors had told her the chances of having another child with something wrong were minimal as I had no genetic condition, and there are no genetic conditions in our family. She just didn’t want to risk it and so she had a termination. We all knew (bearing in mind I was 7 at the time) that mum was going into hospital to have her baby taken away. I remember going to school and telling a friend that my mummy was expecting a baby but she didn’t want it and so she was going to have an operation and then they were going to take away the baby.
As a small child this had a minimal impact on me, but as I grew up the implications of what my mum had done hit me very hard. For a very long time I felt responsible for the loss of that baby, if I’d been able to see then she would have had the other baby and would never even have considered having a termination, I had a sibling that I never got the chance to know because of my disability, thus, in my mind, it was my fault.
I totally understand why someone who has a baby diagnosed with a very severe disability might make the choice to have a termination, after all, as someone said it’s a life changing thing, but some disabilities are not that severe and do not, imo, warrant terminating a pregnancy. I am now 32 years old, I live with my DH and my 3 year old DS, and we are currently ttc for our second baby. I am totally independent, there is nothing, apart from driving a car, that I cannot do as well as/if not better than some who have sight. I do not have to rely on anyone for anything, and if my mum had had another baby with a visual disability that child would be grown up and living independently as well by now.