The disenchanted generation

A friend of mine told me she had an abortion. Although is nothing to be surprised of, I couldn’t help letting a reproaching “oh, how could you” out. Damn emotional roller coaster I have been riding for the past 34 years! Argh!

The look on my face must have been very expressive as my friend felt compelled to add: “At this stage, an embryo is like a rotten tooth. He doesn’t feel a thing. Come on, you know very well, it means nothing. An abortion is a regular medical procedure thing these days”.

In spite of my lax and liberal views concerning pro-choice actions, and having the widest views on euthanasia or assisted suicide, politics, silicone implants and miniskirts, I couldn’t help feeling my heart skipping a beat while hearing the comparison my friend had made: a rotten tooth. I instinctually reacted before my intellect got to dictate me “do not judge!”

In communist Romania, before 1989, thousands of women died because the contraceptive methods were not only banned, but whoever attempted to perform an abortion would have been imprisoned: doctor and mother alike, for homicide, regardless of the stage of the embryo. In 1990, after the revolution, the abortion was legalized. The same year 1,000,000 women (out of a population of some 22 million) chose to have an abortion. One million. One million. One million. It is a round and shocking sum. Population Services confirmed that there were 11 million abortions between 1989 and 2000. An entire disenchanted generation of women who reclaimed the freedom upon their bodies by terminating pregnancies and throwing in the hospitals crematories the “miracles of life”.

Today’s medicine, in order to put women’s minds to rest, decreed that a baby is considered an embryo from 0-10 weeks, from 10-22 weeks is a fetus, and from 22-40 is considered a baby. Between weeks 24-28, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place (Kristof Koch). For the few ones that do not know yet, the intrauterine life of a baby’s development lasts for 40 weeks. More over, “an abortion induced to preserve the health of the pregnant woman is termed a therapeutic abortion, while an abortion induced for any other reason is termed an elective abortion”.

At week 6, the spinal cord, which until now has been open, is beginning to close, a pipe-shaped heart is formed and begins to beat, the brain begins to divide into 5 parts, and the cells destined to be the arms and legs are in place. At week 12, the feet are almost half an inch (1cm) long, the pancreas is functioning and producing insulin, fingernails and toenails appear, the baby can suck his thumb, and get hiccups.

Most abortions are done before week 12.

Some abortionists claim that the embryo doesn’t feel a thing, although 3D images have showed that babies experience a great distress. Let alone the medieval ways of abortion (the vacuum curettage rips off the embryo’s limbs one by one, to only remove it as a pile of minced meat) the act itself is odious and atrocious.

I am not here to cast stones, and life has taught me that I should never be strict, judgmental or categorical on anything and especially, to never say “never”.

A few years have passed and I lost touch with my friend, as life has taken us to different parts of the world. I have however found out that she eventually got pregnant again, after years of desperate trials, as after that abortion she kept on miscarrying. By the time she got pregnant she was already 37 and had almost lost hope she would become a mother.

We are all aware of the anti-abortionists claim as giving the baby to adoption or similar solutions. Yet, there are cases when an abortion seems like a humane thing to do both for the mother and for the child. Tests that are performed nowadays like amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling can reveal in due time if a baby has severe disabilitating afflictions like Down's syndrome, Patau's syndrome, and Edward's syndrome or neural tube defects such as spina bifida. The risk of having a baby with Down syndrome rose above the 1 in 250 mark at the 35th birthday for women, so the test is even greater recommended.

So, what would you do if you learnt that you just became a parent but your embryo might have Down Syndrome or certain congenital, genetic, or chromosomal problems or other types of fetal abnormalities, including heart problems?

Have a child who is cognitively, physically and mentally impaired? What means to be alive? Just breath, eat and exist in a semi vegetative remote world without fully experiencing reality? Isn’t your duty, as a future parent, to make sure you also offer a high quality life not only “life”?

No matter how much we claim life is colorful, and doesn’t show the gray spectrum, there are moments when you have to decide to either go for black or for white. No matter what you painfully choose (either to keep the pregnancy or terminate it) the moment you decide that, becomes a point of no return.