Jenny Deam

In the following viewpoint, journalist Jenny Deam discusses how she and her husband arrived at the decision to terminate their pregnancy after discovering that the fetus had a rare and often fatal birth defect. The couple was initially determined to have this child in spite of the difficulties such a birth would entail. However, by the fourth month of pregnancy, the fetus had developed such serious medical complications that the chances for its survival plummeted. Deam grieved the loss of her baby, but she feels that she made the right choice. She concludes that the decision to end a pregnancy is much more complex than those on either side of the abortion issue make it out to be.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. According to Deam, what percentage of abortions are performed on women who are more than halfway through their pregnancies"
2. How did living in Florida affect the Deams’ decision to terminate their pregnancy"
3. Why is the author angry at those on both sides of the abortion debate"

Iwalked onto the labor and delivery floor just after six A.M. on December 19, 1996. I remember thinking how quiet it was, and how even the sound of my voice at the nurses’ desk seemed somehow too loud and conspicuous.

My husband, David, was still at home, taking care of our nineteen-month-old son, Joshua. He would soon be joining me.

A few minutes later, when a nurse breezed in and saw me sitting on the bed, she looked puzzled. “Who’s the patient"” she asked.

“Me,” I said, bracing for what I knew would come. I caught her eyes covertly sweeping my four-and-a-halfmonths pregnant belly.

Iprayed she would just go look at my chart. I knew if I opened my mouth I would start to cry.

She left the room. When she returned, she obviously had been briefed. Someone had put a sign on the door warning visitors away. Apparently the word had spread. I was there to lose my baby.

I Am a Statistic

It has been more than twenty-five years since the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Roe v. Wade that abortion was largely a private matter between doctor and patient. Much of the complexity of this deeply personal issue has been lost over the years in the thunder about morality and reproductive rights. These days most of the hue and cry is focused on second- and third-trimester abortions. . . .

Ifind it nearly impossible to listen to either side of the abortion argument now that I am a statistic.

Of the approximately 1.4 million abortions performed in this country each year, an estimated 1 percent are on women more than halfway through their pregnancies. I was one of these women.

Perhaps it is true, as some insist, that there are women who simply decide one day, after having gone through most of their pregnancy, that they no longer want the baby. Even a leading abortion-rights advocate admitted in early 1997 that his side had understated the numbers of such cases so as not to lose sympathy for the cause. Still, I find it hard to believe that such casualness is any more common than women who abandon newborns in trash bins or parents who beat their crying children to death.

A Rare Condition

For me, it all began in November 1996, in the sixteenth week of my second pregnancy. I was scheduled to undergo an amniocentesis because of my age. I was thirty-nine.

During a preliminary ultrasound, one of the technicians found a slight blur on the back of the baby’s neck. She summoned the doctor and I began to hyperventilate. I choked out the question: “Spina bifida"” The doctor said maybe.

Of course, my first thought was of divine retribution. I was being punished because I had entertained the thought, during bouts of morning sickness and exhaustion, that I didn’t really want another child. But any ambivalence vanished in that moment. I wanted this baby more than anything in the world.

From there we embarked on a six-week roller-coaster ride of hope and despair. We saw specialists at a rate of two a week. I stopped working. I didn’t sleep. There were five ultrasounds in four weeks. I hyperventilated at all of them.

Our baby boy was diagnosed with a very rare condition called cystic hygroma. A growth on the back of his neck had collected fluid because his lymphatic system had failed to form properly in the second month.

We read every medical journal we could find on this mysterious condition. The pictures were hideous. For the type of cystic hygroma our baby had, the fatality rate was 96 percent.

Holding On

Still, we held on. On a good day, I went to the store and bought wallpaper for the nursery. On a bad day, I threw out an unopened package of maternity panty hose. We named our baby Daniel because I needed to reassure myself he was an infant, not a medical condition. He reminded me by starting to kick.

Cystic hygromas are usually associated with chromosome abnormalities and severe organ defects. As we waited for the amniocentesis results, we decided that if the chromosomes were abnormal, we would end the pregnancy. The test came back normal.

At the third ultrasound, one of the specialists said she thought the hygroma might be shrinking. Sometimes they go away entirely, she told us, but warned that we shouldn’t get our hopes up. I wrapped myself in David’s arms and wept. I told him I could go on if he could. On Thanksgiving, we toasted our family of four.

But in my twentieth week of pregnancy, the same specialist said no, the hygroma was not shrinking after all. Her face clouded in a way I had come to know all too well. She summoned another doctor and finally told us she was having trouble finding all four chambers of the baby’s heart. She sent us to a pediatric cardiologist.

For an hour and a half he scanned my belly. Swallowing the panic was making my chest hurt. I held my husband’s hand. I tried to think about the errands I needed to run.

But I knew what he was going to say. The cardiologist told us that one of the chambers was missing and our baby had a large hole in his heart.

Further Complications

Some people might have been able to go on. Our baby was alive and still growing. We will never know what might have been. All we could do was weigh the information we had. The best-case scenario the doctors gave us was that our baby would need at least three immediate surgeries for any hope of survival: two on his heart and one to repair the damage done by the cystic hygroma. That was, if he lived through the birth, or if he even made it to term.

There was another complication. We lived in Florida at the time, and by state law, you can voluntarily terminate a pregnancy only up until the twenty-fourth week.

Cystic hygromas often worsen over time, with serious or fatal complications showing up at the end of the second or even into the third trimester. The only way I could legally wait and still terminate the pregnancy was if my life was in danger. There was nothing wrong with me. We were running out of time.

So we decided it was over. It is something you know not in your mind, but in your heart. Looking back, I realize our doctors had begun gently pointing us in that direction. The cardiologist called us that night to tell us he would have made the same decision. My obstetrician reminded me that I also had Joshua to think of.

Ichecked into the hospital the following week.

No Absolutes

Iused to think I was absolutely sure of where I stood in the abortion debate. Now the only thing I’m sure of is that there are no absolutes.

What I feel most these days is a lingering anger at the intractability on both sides. Why are they each so afraid to admit that the other might have a point? Why is the rhetoric always either inflammatory or coldly medical, as if to use other words would somehow represent lost ground"

Defending Access to Abortion

Those who argue that the current abortion law is riddled with eugenic assumptions undeniably have a point. The law was constructed on the assumption that abortion should be available in circumstances where doctors believe that a woman’s capacity for good motherhood is undermined by her health or her circumstances, or that it would be better for society if her child were not born. The current abortion law is not the kind of law that women need. We need access to abortion on request—for whatever reason we think is important to defend the access to abortion that current legislation gives us— including access to late abortion for fetal handicap—and to celebrate rather than condemn the use of medical technology that allows women the chance to make a choice.

Ann Bradley, Living Marxism, September 1995.

Yes, I am forever thankful for the legal choice to end the life of a baby that I believed had no chance. I believe completely that that right should always be there. More than ever, I am horrified by the idea that some politician with an agenda could take away such an intensely private decision.

Yet, I can no longer accept that it is all as simple as a choice I get to make because it is my body. With choice comes responsibility. This was not some nonviable collection of cells and tissue inside of me. It was a little boy who deserved to be considered.

Because I was twenty-one weeks pregnant, the medical protocol called for labor to be induced so I could deliver the baby stillborn. It was not the partial-birth abortion that so many are focused on these days. It was to be a routine vaginal delivery—four months too soon.

It took over fourteen hours for me to give birth.

The social workers and nurses had tried to prepare us for what was to come. They encouraged us to hold the baby after he was born. They said it was important for the grieving process. Daniel weighed just under a pound. At first I did not think I would be able to look at him. But then I knew I had to. To this day I can close my eyes and still see him. . . .

Supportive Voices

Perhaps there will be those who judge us. Certainly David and I have judged ourselves. Still, I’m not sure anyone can fully understand the path to our decision unless they have walked it. They weren’t there, searching each doctor’s face for good news and finding none, or in the hospital as I told my tiny baby how sorry I was he would never meet his older brother.

Shortly after we lost our son, I wrote our story for the St. Petersburg Times, the newspaper in Florida where my husband and I both worked. The response was astounding—it was overwhelmingly in support of our decision. Several women wrote to tell me that they had made the same choice, but had never been able to talk about it. One woman said that immediately after reading our story she was swept back to the day twenty-five years ago when she knelt in a hospital chapel and prayed to God to end the suffering of her newborn. Another said she had kept the blankets and tiny knitted hat of the child she lost. She had not had the courage to look at those things until now.

But it was the anonymous phone call I received that meant the most to me. It was from a woman who said that she had always believed that terminating a pregnancy was