There Are Never Any Mistakes When It Comes to Abortion

Kevin McCullough has a great column today at townhall.com regarding Obama's infanticide stance.

He uses an anecdote that, actually, could be a lot of us. A couple goes in for an ultrasound. The results aren't good. It appears the baby has Downs Syndrome. The doctor informs the woman of the "procedure" (read: abortion) available. Couple decides against it. Eventually a baby is born...and she is healthy and normal.

If you read enough pro-abortion arguments, you will rarely see discussions about women regretting their abortions. Oh sure, you'll find the obligatory, "I'm so sorry you are in pain," quotations, but no one ever acknowledges that abortion isn't just a 20-minute procedure that "saves someone from a lifetime of misery." It's a decision that most women who have made it think about for decades after the procedure.

And, of course, feminists never discuss the what-if-they-were-wrong angle to the argument. What if the doctors are wrong about the baby? What if the equipment malfunctions? Is it acceptable to kill a baby for a mistake? Barack Obama has said so. He doesn't want his daughters punished with a baby.

Lots of people get bad news when they are pregnant. Or they are scared by sometimes well-meaning doctors and nurses even when nothing is wrong.

I discovered I was pregnant with my son about a month after entering law school. I know that, for some people, that would have been a good reason to kill him. After all, taking care of a baby would be an impediment to my success in school and as an attorney. And it's all about me, right? That's what most of the arguments you'll find at Pandagon will tell you. It's way more important that a woman get what she wants than learn to love what she gets.

I was thrilled to be pregnant. My daughter was six years old, and my husband and I had wanted to start adding to that as soon as we could. Plus, I was 34 years old; my chances were decreasing by the year.

When I was around 20 weeks along, during a routine visit, the nurse told me about the alpha-fetoprotein test I could take. She explained that it was a test that would indicate whether or not everything was all right with the baby.

"So, what happens if the test isn't normal?" my husband asked. We were both a little naive, thinking that the nurse was talking about a curable problem that could be fixed with medication or a surgical procedure.

The nurse seemed uncomfortable for a minute, then said, "If the test isn't normal, you then have the choice of continuing the pregnancy or getting rid of it."

I gasped and stared at my husband. After the nurse left, I said, "I don't want to get rid of the baby just because she might not be normal." He agreed. And then and there, we decided that we didn't want to know if there was a problem like that. We knew we would deal with whatever baby God had decided to bless us with. It turns out, He blessed us with a boy who is now 10, likes trains and online games, and is the apple of his mommy's eye.

I often think about this whenever I read Pandagon and have some snide commenter tell me how I "don't know" anything about pregnancy or abortion. That I must be a man. That, even if I *am* a woman, my life must have been perfect. That it is selfish and stupid to point out that abortion doesn't prevent the pain of a pregnancy gone wrong; it just masks it in a pretty film that some people think they need to deal with the situation.

The ugly truth is, sometimes, the machines and doctors are wrong. And if you're going to be wrong, it's better to be wrong on the side of life than the side of death.