Should a Mother be forced to bear a Disabled Child against her will?
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — On their way to the ultrasound exam, Abbey and Kyle Sanders stopped at Babies”R”Us. They picked out a navy sundress with white flowers for a girl, navy shorts with white stripes for a boy. Close friends were invited over for a “gender reveal” party the next day. Abbey was nearly 20 weeks pregnant.
“It’s a little girl,” the ultrasound technician said. Abbey started crying. “You’re having a daughter!” she said to Kyle. Abbey texted her mother: healthy baby girl. Kyle noticed that the poker-faced technician didn’t offer any reassurance about the baby’s health.
The doctor walked in. “I’m very concerned,” he said, and Abbey’s tears turned to sobs. He referred the couple to a high-risk fetal-medicine specialist, who did a more sophisticated ultrasound and found that the fetus’s brain was failing to divide and was growing outside the skull, a chamber was missing from the heart, and there was a problem with the kidneys.
“Is there any chance of the baby surviving?” asked Kyle, an Air Force pilot. “No. This baby will not survive to term” was the response.
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