In a happy coincidence, before I got around to posting this tale of two women who gave birth in defiance of medical advice (read: pressure) to abort, ninme found this and this --two articles about lives worth living in spite of disability. The first about a judge in Great Britain who refused a hospital's petition to remove life support from a boy with a terrible disease. The latter, about artistic geniuses who had disabilities, includes this interesting notion from Byron about the "purpose" of disability:
Its essence to o’ertake mankind/ By heart and soul and make itself the equal.It's bad enough that for all our talk about "accepting differences," we don't strive to accept the sick and disabled. But how many mothers kill perfectly healthy and wanted children because they rely on medical testing that's far less reliable than we think?
M ARY concludes: "I have a result sheet issued by the doctor from my 10-week ultrasound on which are written the words, `fetus 2 not viable'.
"I like to compare this document with the child it refers to – now an 11-year-old, funny, sensitive, gifted, football-playing, blues-guitar-addicted, satin-skinned and perfect little boy, our son."
She has sent me a photo of him in Port Douglas kissing a cane toad held by his grinning brother.
"It turned out that the only explanation there was for the boys' different sizes early in pregnancy was that they must have been conceived a week or two apart . . . I was not told that this could be a possible explanation until well after I was meant to have made a decision to inject my son Paul in the head with saline."
Amy Welborn reports a book on this subject, Defiant Birth, is out in Australia and will be published here in May.
P.S. Welcome BlogsforTerri readers!
