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Her Story: Glimmers of Justification

June 12, 2012/2 Comments/in Uncategorized, Your Stories /by Guest Blogger
[As pro-lifers, we often find it difficult to comprehend how anyone could choose to kill their offspring. In this remarkably honest post, guest-blogger CP relates the new understanding she experienced through her second pregnancy.]


I am currently pregnant with my second child and was recently offered the Downs Screening blood test.

With my first child I refused it, it didn’t matter. There was no way I would risk miscarriage (1 in 100 for the follow up test) under any circumstance, least of all based on the results of a test that deals in statistical probability. Besides abortion was out of the question irrespective of the results.

This time round however I accepted the test. Why did I do that? Having that simple blood test is after all tacit admission that should the results be other than you would hope that you would, as the leaflet tactfully puts it, ‘consider your options’. 

Perhaps having one child changes your perspective, makes you more concerned about the implications for others of your decisions. I don’t know. What I do know is that waiting for the results I was terrified and that I hoped desperately that my pro-life convictions wouldn’t be tested. Mercifully for me they weren’t, but that’s really not the point.

During that week I could hardly think of anything but what I would do should the results be positive. Glimmers of justification formed for what had always been, to me, unjustifiable and it shook me deeply.


I have more sympathy now not for the pro-choice cause perhaps but definitely for women facing that decision. I can begin to understand how the mind moves, how it realigns itself to allow you to consider the unthinkable. For me perhaps it would have been the pressure on my family of caring for a disabled child, for others the life they could offer a child, or the impossibility of paying for one.

I have no conclusions to draw from this experience, no new insights now on fighting abortion. Just a disturbing understanding that if I could feel my conviction waver, even so minutely, how much harder it must be for women in a less comfortable situation and without already formed pro-life views to choose life when the alternative might seem so much simpler. 

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Tags: down syndrome, her story
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https://i0.wp.com/secularprolife.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/glimmers.png?fit=320%2C240&ssl=1 240 320 Guest Blogger https://secularprolife.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/SecularProlife2.png Guest Blogger2012-06-12 13:07:002022-02-25 17:16:43Her Story: Glimmers of Justification
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2 replies
  1. Anonymous
    Anonymous says:
    June 12, 2012 at 7:23 pm

    Thank you for posting this.

    Log in to Reply
  2. Anonymous
    Anonymous says:
    June 17, 2012 at 11:15 am

    "Simpler"? So glib, to attribute such a difficult, altruistic decision to convenience. It's not simpler; it's more moral. Dealing in absolutes (eg, thou shalt never abort) only ever leads to moral failures in the subtle, difficult, everyday cases.

    Log in to Reply

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