From the [UK] Daily Mail magazine. Here’s the latest in the British debate over termination of fetuses with documented disabilities: a first-person account by a woman who aborted her first child six years ago after receiving a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. More than 400 terminations are carried out in the UK annually because of Down syndrome.

Katharine Mobey, 38, says she and her husband were initially “elated” after the termination, but that she subsequently felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and failure, as well as a sense that “my body had been contaminated by having a sickly child in my womb.”

She went on to have a daughter, Honor, and says the stress of the abortion experience pushed her marriage to the breaking point. An excerpt:

Having Honor was the proof my psyche needed that my body isn’t contaminated.

But the guilt, I realise now, I will have for ever. I pass Down’s children on the street and think, ‘I killed mine.’

I know they can be wonderfully loving. There is no escaping the reality of what I did, or the way I mentally rejected my baby. The hospital took photos, but I have never seen them, and it feels too late to go back there now.

Abortion can never be described as an easy option. I still cry as though mine were yesterday.

And yet I remain certain that, for us, it was the right decision.

Related post here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Down syndrome, NOT2BEMISSED, abortion, first-person, international, law, personal stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post