Today is my daughter Jane's 14th birthday. She and I spent the day together, shopping, eating Krispy Kreme donuts and hitting the salon so she could have her nails done. We had a great time. On Monday, she starts high school, which for some reason feels like a much bigger milestone with her than it did with her older brother, who started high school three years ago. She's a lovely, confident, thoughtful, kind, funny, amazing girl, and I feel so privileged to have had the chance to mother her this far, and I can't wait toi see what the next 14 years bring.
Every year on Jane's birthday, I republish this essay, below, which I wrote when she was a toddler (and which was published in this anthology in 2007). Every year, when I read it again, I am reminded of what might have been, and of how much I struggled with my decision. I feel profoundly grateful that I made the choice I did, but also profoundly grateful that I am raising Jane, and now her baby sister, in a country where the choice was MINE to make.
I love you, Jane - Mama
THE DECISION
I began to suspect that something was very wrong the day I could no
longer walk across the library at the law school where I was a first
year student. Ten weeks pregnant, I had been fighting excessive
fatigue, loss of appetite and night sweats for almost a month.
"Relax," my midwife told me. "You're just having a rough first trimester."
I
was inclined to believe her. At age 27 and in perfect health, I had no
reason to consider that anything more than extreme morning sickness was
plaguing me, and that was no big deal. Heck, with my first pregnancy,
three years previously, I had felt so good that I had even wished for a
little first-trimester yukkiness so that I could feel "really
pregnant."
Still, the nagging feeling that something other
than just the pregnancy was going on grew stronger with each wretched
day. The afternoon when I found myself collapsed in a chair in the law
library brought the situation to a head. A classmate had to practically
carry me to her car so that she could drive me home. There, she
insisted on taking my temperature: 104'.
Within hours, I was
admitted to the maternity floor at a local hospital, where I spent the
next eight unhappy days. Each afternoon, just to make sure that all was
well, the obstetrician would perform an ultrasound, showing us the tiny
"beep, beep" of the fetal heart and the jerky movements of a glowing
human jumping bean. We began calling the baby "Peanut." My doctor was
puzzled as test after test failed to determine what the cause of my
illness could be. He brought in an infectious disease specialist, who
tested me for everything from HIV to Malaria.
On the sixth day
of my confinement, as I was lying miserably in my hospitalbed, watching
a rerun of the Andy Griffith show, both of my doctors suddenly entered
my room, closed the door and turned off the TV without asking. Now I
knew for certain that I had been right; something was terribly wrong.
They had come to inform me that I had an acute, primary cytomegolovirus infection,
popularly known as CMV. The disease is not generally something to worry
about....unless you are immunocompromised, which I wasn't....or
pregnant, which I was. CMV, we were told by the obstetrician, is very
dangerous to a fetus, particularly in the first trimester. It is a
leading cause of congenital neurologic impairment, severe physical
anomalies, devastating mental retardation and infant fatality. Really,
we were told, we should consider our "options".
Suddenly, I, a
person with all her grandparents still alive, a person who had never
even been to a funeral, was faced with death. Not only was I faced with
death in the abstract, I was faced with The Decision. In consultation
with my with my sweet, 26 year old husband, a man similarly unschooled
in the ways of mortality, I was charged with handing down a judgment as
to whether Peanut would continue to leap and hop about in my womb and
ultimately, be born alive. With a somber face, the doctor uttered the
words that were to become so familiar to us over the next weeks, "Now,
no one can make this decision for you. Only you can decide."
Only,
I couldn't. Not without more information. And maybe not even then. We
immediately became experts on CMV and its potential sequelae. I stayed
up all night for days after the diagnosis, reading medical literature
and searching the World Wide Web for answers. None was forthcoming. The
best information available told us that if we carried the pregnancy to
term, there was approximately a 1 in 4 chance that an infected baby
would be affected by the CMV in some way. I was paralyzed with grief
and indecision.
As an ostensibly pro-choice woman, I realized
that I was not actually "pro"- anyone ever having to make a choice like
this. Although no one wanted to offer an opinion as to what we should
do, everyone had an angle. My doctor answered my questions honestly and
told me that if his wife or daughter were faced with a CMV diagnosis in
the first trimester, he would definitely encourage an abortion.
The
minister whom a friend sent to see me was gentle and kind. Yet, she
assumed that I was crying because I had already made the obvious
decision to have an abortion and was grieving. She offered to set a
time for a memorial service after the abortion to "celebrate and
remember". She even showed me the feminist liturgy she had photocopied
for just such an occasion. I found her point of view strangely
repulsive and without intellectual honesty. If the life I would be
taking was worthy of religious remembrance and ceremony, how was it
possibly mine to take? There are no memorial services for
appendectomies or squashed bugs. Only for people.
I was
hesitant to share my dilemma with a certain close relative because I
feared her unbending anti-abortion stance. Of course, she immediately
realized the decision with which I was faced after someone told her of
my diagnosis. She telephoned me to instruct me that, although abortion
is wrong, sometimes God realizes that the time is not right for a
particular soul to come into this world. Considering the circumstances,
she opined, no one could blame me for whatever decision I felt was
right. Her stunning hypocrisy angered me. Despite her stated views, she
was conveniently able to allow for choice in this issue when the woman
in question was someone she loved.
As days passed and I
wrestled with my conscience, I realized that I was petrified of the
physical procedure itself. My doctor assured me that he could perform
the abortion at the hospital. I wouldn't have to go sit in a waiting
room at a clinic. I told him that, although I realized that most first
and early second trimester abortions are performed under local
anesthesia, the only way I could face this would be knocked out cold.
He agreed. I knew that I could be admitted to the hospital, drift
gently off to sleep and wake up, relieved of this problem forever. I
would never have to think about it again if I chose not to. Variously,
this sounded tremendously appealing and completely horrifying.
When
I envisioned the actual opening of my womb and suctioning of its
contents, the same primal instinct kicked in that would allow me to
single-handedly rip the lungs out of any man who laid a hand on my
little boy. What kind of terrible mother would allow her defenseless
offspring to be taken from the very bosom of maternal safety and
warmth? I felt sick, and wept yet again.
My father tried to
reason with me, pointing out the lifelong ramifications of my decision.
He was terribly worried that I would be forever shackled to the
responsibilities of caring for a severely ill or disabled child. He
fretted that his big plans for his own child would be sucked away
forever by a draining responsibility from which I could never escape. I
too was seized with these fears. I secretly believed that I simply
wasn't up to the task of mothering a child with serious health and
developmental problems. What would that do to our other child, whom I
already knew and loved? What would it do to my career goals? Our
marriage? And what about the baby? The thought of seeing our tiny baby,
suffering, perhaps hooked up to tubes and wires in a neonatal intensive
care unit, caused me almost unbearable psychic pain. I imagined a
future in which our mentally retarded and physically handicapped 13
year old child would endure the cruel taunts of other teenagers.
I
began to wonder if I was being selfish in even considering giving birth
to this baby. Would anyone choose for herself the life that this child
might face? Were my own fears about a relatively minor surgery and
future guilt good enough reasons to bring forth a human being who would
have to live with the consequences of my own cowardice? I tentatively
decided that motherhood is full of tough calls and hard decisions, both
in the name of love and in a child's best interests. This must be one
of them, I thought. I would do what was best for all concerned.
I
telephoned the hospital, as instructed by my physician, and weakly
scheduled the procedure for the next day. The admitting clerk who took
the call easily misunderstood my vague instructions and thought that I
was coming in for labor induction of a full-term, healthy pregnancy.
"Congratulations," she said brightly. I corrected her mistake and her
tone grew dark, almost menacing. She told me to meet my doctor at the
labor and delivery wing at 6:30 a.m. sharp the following morning. She
abruptly hung up.
There, I thought to myself. I have done the
right thing. No turning back. I felt like someone had drained all the
life from me. I sat in a darkened room for the next several hours,
absently rubbing my still flat belly and murmuring maternal expressions
of comfort to no one in particular. Later that evening, my husband and
I discussed the choice that had been made. I attempted stoicism. He
reminded me that we had a friend coming over to bring us supper, as
many kind people had done throughout my illness and convalescence at
home. I roused myself enough to get dressed and out of bed.
Our
friend arrived and we all ate supper together. I told her of my
decision and the reasons behind it. She listened quietly and then asked
if she could tell us a little about her brother, who had died recently
at the age of nine. She recounted a tale of extraordinary courage on
the part of her parents, her sister, herself, and especially, on the
part of a little boy with Down Syndrome named David. This child and
this family had lived through all of the things I feared when I
considered birthing my own baby, including David's eventual early
death. Still, the joy and love of his brief existence canceled out all
of the pain, fear and hurt. No one who knew David had any regrets. Our
friend showed us his photograph: a beautiful and smiling tow-headed
little boy, obviously mentally retarded.
Neither do I have any
regrets about the decisions I made after that discussion. I never
arrived at the hospital the next morning. I canceled the abortion and
after a pregnancy alternating between exhilaration and despair, gave
birth to my daughter, Elizabeth Jane Chevillard Granju on August 15th,
1995. She was born ten days early weighing 6 pounds and eleven ounces.
She was born infected with congenital cytomegolovirus and had two
seizure episodes in her first year. Since that time, however, she has
been physically and developmentally normal in every way. She is also a
strikingly beautiful child, with shiny dark hair, olive skin and a lithe, elfin figure.
Jane's
epilepsy could conceivably worsen and she is at risk for other
neurologic problems and progressive hearing loss until she leaves
childhood behind. Still, she is remarkably healthy. Many people want to
extract a moral from this story. Pro-life friends tell me that Jane is
my gift from God for making the right choice. They want to hold my baby
up as their own personal anti-abortion poster child.
Those who
are pro-choice attempt to use the tale as a cautionary parable for why
choice should be the focus of the debate, rather than abortion itself.
After all, I was able to carefully consider each of my options and
ultimately, have the final say. This wouldn't have been possible in
another political context. My own views have become less reactionary
and more cognizant of the complexity of the abortion issue. I continue
to fear the slippery slope that we head down when we deny women the
right to choose when and how we bear children. On the other hand, I no
longer attempt to repudiate the fact that the graphic posters displayed
by anti-abortion activists are real photographs of what really comes
out of the uterus during an abortion. Many abortions do indeed "stop a
beating heart," as the bumper sticker says.
However, I will
not allow Jane to be used as a crucible for the views of any person or
group. I know that I would love Jane just as much if she had been born
severely disabled. I do not, however, deny the relief I feel that she
is so radiantly well. I am deeply aware that I was graced with this
experience, which has allowed me to see that the blessing is sometimes
as much in the struggle, from which I have learned so much, as in the
outcome.
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