I had my abortion at 21 weeks of gestation, which accounts for approximately 1% of abortions annually. It took my husband and me six months to successfully conceive our daughter and only a few moments to learn that she would never live. We found out halfway through my pregnancy, at a routine scan at 20 weeks of gestation to check the baby’s development and anatomy. Thanks to early genetic screening, we already knew we were having a girl and lovingly named her Evelyn. As the ultrasound continued, we found out Evelyn was not measuring where she should have been for 20 weeks. A doctor that specializes in high-risk pregnancies came in to look and told us that she had a lethal form of skeletal dysplasia, which is the medical term for dwarfism. We struggled to understand what this meant and how grave the condition was. The doctor explained that he believed our baby’s condition was not compatible with life.
Devastated, we sought a second opinion from a world-renowned children’s hospital an hour from our home. After eight hours of advanced testing, a group of specialists sat us down and told us that Evelyn had a condition called Thanatophoric Dysplasia. TD is a very rare, spontaneous genetic mutation that usually presents itself in the crucial fetal developmental weeks around the midway point in pregnancy. Because babies don’t survive TD, it’s not a recessive gene that can be passed down so it’s considered a complete fluke in the genetic lottery. The condition is characterized by misshapen and shortened limbs and a chest that is too small to develop lung growth. Evelyn had all of the textbook symptoms, and without proper development of her lungs, our daughter would never be able to breathe on her own. The options were bleak: I could chose to carry to term and see if Evelyn would even make it that far. If she did, she would likely live for a few hours, maybe even a few days. The other option was to have an abortion and spare Evelyn of any possible suffering she might face. Given that Evelyn’s condition was lethal, my husband and I made the gut-wrenching decision to terminate my pregnancy.
Once our decision was made, we were counseled extensively by doctors and nurses about what an abortion at my stage of pregnancy entailed, from the physical risks (which were smaller than a normal, full term delivery), to the emotional pain I would experience. I would be allowed to have my abortion in a large hospital, a safe environment, under excellent medical care. At 21 weeks gestation, I chose to carry a lifetime of pain to spare Evelyn one moment of it.
