Sullivan this week has been posting some amazing and heart-wrenching stories from women who had to decide whether or not to have a late-term abortion. There’s a lot of stuff like this:

My third pregnancy resulted in the birth of twin girls - one with horribly deformed internal organs and the other normal.  I had chosen not to have testing done, because although I believed in the right to choose, I did not think I would ever choose abortion for myself.  The doctors wanted to do surgery on our daughter that held a 10% chance of survival and promised another decade of surgeries for a child whose disability would leave her blind, mute and severely mentally retarded.  We had to make the excruciating decision of whether to allow that course of events.  We chose to baptise and let her return to God.  We held her as she died three hours later.  Her sister, blessedly, survived after a 2 month stay in neo-natal intensive care.

The struggle and torment of burying and grieving for a child, and explaining to the three older siblings why we only brought home one baby, was an ongoing horror that lasted years.  It took a huge toll on our marriage for a long time.

In this case the mother used her freedom of choice to choose what pro-lifers believe she should and must. But I think that’s what angers me most about the pro-life movement, is the ultimate insistence that in each and every case such as this one - the mother must have the baby. Always.

Sullivan reiterates his support for a ban on late-term abortions, saying:

I understand the awful tragedies and complexities involved. I know too that most of these children would die soon anyway - or be subject to grueling operations with many risks. I just find the ending of human life to be something we avoid as much as we possibly can.

It’s very convenient for someone who doesn’t have children to say this. Who - who - would craft laws to force women to have a child that will die within hours? Who would dare intrude into an individual’s privacy this way?

It is intellectually dishonest to say that all late-term abortions are under these circumstances; but many are. And however uncertain I may be on the topic of abortion in the broad sense, in this very narrow sense, I consider it grossly offensive that those who do not have a direct, personal stake in the situation should dictate how individuals, individual families, must act.

Update: Hell, this is an even more poignant one:

I married late, at age 40, and my husband and I had no plans for children. As we were waiting for his vasectomy to “kick in”, using condoms, I somehow became pregnant. Ultrasound revealed that the pregnancy was ectopic. I was not well, feeling sick and in pain every day. There are extreme risks to the health of the mother in allowing an ectopic pregnancy to come to term.

I would have kept the whole issue to myself and not shared it with my family if it hadn’t have just so happened to coincide with a long-planned family reunion. I had to give a reason to not attend the reunion so I decided to share my predicament with my family. I chose to terminate at six weeks. My family heartily disagreed, saying that it was my duty to risk my life for a pregnancy I never wanted and had taken rational steps to avoid. This happened in 2007 and my tenuous relations with my family have not recovered. It still is a profoundly deep hurt that aches within me that my family felt that it would be proper for me to die rather than take the medical procedure that would save my life. My family seems to value the six week of cell growth over the person they have known for 40 years.