Abstract
Happily married, my husband and I welcomed the news we were pregnant. We had a rocky start, as I suffered terrible nausea and fatigue and on and off again bleeding. I also had a nagging feeling that something was wrong from the start. I feared miscarriage. I thought that would be the most terrible thing. Later, I thought about how I would have welcomed such an outcome. Instead, a poor prenatal diagnosis put the choice in our hands. The knowledge turned our world upside down and forced us to reconsider our values, abilities, responsibilities, and tolerance for risk. What was the quality of life? Why did this happen? What was the most fair decision for all parties? Raised in Catholic homes, we knew we would not have family support if we chose to pursue terminating the pregnancy, so we leaned on a select few friends. We had the abortion. The road was lonely and hard. While the decision was wrenching, the guilt that followed in its wake also overwhelmed me—though not my husband, who was convinced we had made the best choice we could with the resources available to us at the time. I benefitted greatly from frequent meetings with a therapist specializing in terminating for medical reasons. And that, along with the help of medication, led me back to the path of happiness and peace. The birth of my son, a happy and healthy child, only affirmed that we had made the right choice for our family.
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Burns, K. (2015). Postscript: A Patient’s Perspective. In: Paley Galst, J., Verp, M. (eds) Prenatal and Preimplantation Diagnosis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18911-6_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18911-6_16
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-18910-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-18911-6
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