I’m very sorry your wife has difficult pregnancies and that you went through all this. However I feel the need to address several things, not as judgements but as facts:
1) Your medical situation is not the same as the vast majority of those who have abortions. Over 50% of all abortions performed are because women don’t feel “ready.” The remaining 50% of reasons include finances, not having support from a significant other, and feeling pressured by other people to have the abortion. About 1% are for medical reasons. You can get the hard numbers by googling 40 Days for Life.
2) While gestational diabetes can be severe as in your wife’s case, diabetes can be managed and greatly reduced by diet and exercise. I do not know what your wife’s diet was, but from the comment about Doritos it sounds like it may not have been the healthiest. It also sounds like the nutritional aspect was not discussed much by your wife’s dr, though I wasn’t there obviously so I don’t know how or if that was addressed at all, but diet during pregnancy is a huge component that many drs (even my own) fail to emphasize and/or help their patients with.
3) While your wifes previous pregnancies were very difficult, she did survive. I can certainly understand not wanting to go through a traumatic experience again, but your dr should have offered more advice and support regarding nutrition in order to make the pregnancy easier. My mother had preclampsia with two of her pregnancies, so I do know that in instances such as that, diet doesn’t have much effect. However healthy babies can still be delivered even with preeclampsia, and in these cases extra rest is definitely necessary.
4) Doctors are not God. They cannot predict the future. They cannot say for sure whether your wife would have died or not. They can only make guesses. Again nutrition and exercise should have been a priority in treatment because it’s a well established fact that these factors greatly influence diabetes status.
5) The prolife protestors to whom you refer to actually DO do a lot more than stand outside abortion clinics. They pray. They lobby. They raise money. They offer women other kinds of support by referring them to places that take pregnant women in who need homes. They help these women find adoptive families, or baby items or anything else they need. I know this because my mother was. and is extremely active in the pro life community and I saw everything she and her friends did. I personally would not have my two children today if it want for the kindness and support of the pro life community.
6) As tragic as your story is, your story does not justify the over 800,000 abortions that occur every year in the US. With modern medicine the way it is, with all the life saving surgeries that can be performed in utero, there is no valid reason why any woman should feel like she “has” to have an abortion. I understand you and your wife not wanting to go through such a hard pregnancy. But again, the symptoms could have been approached and managed differently, and a pregnancy is only 9 months, a relatively short time frame in the grand scheme of life. The effects or abortion are long lasting. They affect everyone. It is clear from your article that your wife is processing the whole experience and it is not an easy road to live with the reality that there should be another child, another sibling. My heart goes out to you both, I wish you could have had more support.
That being said, please check out Rachel’s Vineyard or Project Rachel for post abortive healing. God bless you and your family.
