I recently read an article written for New
Yorker Magazine by a mother who has a son with Cystic Fibrosis. In case
you don’t know, Cystic Fibrosis is a devastating disease and most people who
have it die young – typically by age 30. It’s also very debilitating in
its final stages and wracks the body horribly. You can read the article HERE.
I recognize this mother’s plight – she has
a child that will almost certainly not outlive her. That’s a terrible
burden for any parent to bear. I’m a parent of two boys (one a fully
grown man, one still a young man) and the grandparent of a 15 month old
boy. It would be devastating for me to know with almost guaranteed 100%
certainty that any one of them would die before me.
But here’s the rub: no matter what, I would
not trade out having any one of those three guys around. You see, my
grandson was born at 24 weeks – almost too young to make it. He endured
three months of living in a neonatal care unit with all the bells and whistles
that go along with such an existence. He’s now growing and
thriving. My son and daughter in law were told by one medical doctor to
have an abortion – they refused. It could have gone very badly for
them. Fortunately, it didn’t. That’s one of the risks of having
children, though. You are never completely sure what you’re getting.
So this author writes the following:
The more I
discuss the abortion I didn’t have, the easier that part gets to say aloud: I
would have ended the pregnancy. I would have terminated. I would have had an
abortion. That’s firmly in the past, and it is how I would have rearranged
my actions, given all the information. It’s moving a piece of furniture from
one place to another before anything can go wrong, the way we got rid of our
wobbly side tables once Dudley learned to walk.
She equates having an abortion with “moving
a piece of furniture from one place to another before anything can go
wrong.” How tragic to see a human life with this perspective.
Of course, she says she loves her son and I
don’t doubt that she’s doing all she can to make his life bearable and
livable. The angst with which she writes is clear and heart-rending.
But one has to wonder, given the tenor of the article, is her angst more about
her or about her son? As I read the article my conclusion was that she
lamented having the child because of how she feels not because her son
is suffering. In fact, the more I read, the more the word sanctimonious
came to mind. Poor, poor pitiful me. My child has an incurable
disease and but for some medical personnel failing to properly inform me about
the possibility, he wouldn’t even be here and wouldn’t be weighing me down with
all these darn feelings of guilt and of what could have been.
As if many parents, many mothers, haven’t
had to deal with the heart wrenching reality of their child suffering?
What about the mom who did all she could and her son dies of cancer at age
5? Would you have aborted your child if you could predict that? And
why? Mostly to protect your own
feelings, your own concerns, your own sense of what you deserve.
This isn’t about this little boy, Dudley, a
child made in the image of God. The
author clearly doesn’t believe in God, as she asserts at one point that she
“made” Dudley. This is
unfortunate. She can’t acknowledge this reality, which leaves her to make
the ironic and inconsistent claims that she loves her son but would have
“spared” him this life had she been better informed. Why assume his life
is so awful? Is she, or any of us, really capable of determining whether
he would have been better off never being born? How is anyone able to
even make such a calculation? Who is
prepared to engage in the spectacularly arrogant presumption of claiming they
know the answer?
Why believe that his life means so
little? What if her Mom had foreseen she was going to have this child and
decided, based on that, to abort her? Looking back is she willing to say
that would have been acceptable? Or, is
it the case that because she doesn’t have a debilitating disease she is somehow
more valuable, more meaningful, more purpose-laden than her son? Is she
so ready to write off his life when she can’t possibly predict the future with
any real accuracy?
Yes, it’s incredibly likely her son will
die around 30 years old or sooner. But 30 years is time enough to live an
amazing life. None of us get a guarantee when our children are
born. But that’s what this woman wanted – either give me a child who
doesn’t burden me, or let me dispose of him like a piece of old furniture. I wonder, is she in favor of killing off her
son now? Why not? If he was worthy of being aborted before he
managed to be born, why is being born the sine
qua non of humanness such that to kill him off now is morally
problematic? The very same problem
presents itself – he’s got a debilitating disease that will require her to
spend a great deal of energy and time taking care of him. What is the moral difference?
We know the answer – as does this mother –
none. Yet, she clearly wants to do the
best she can for her son and that is commendable. However, given the worldview that undergirds
her article, it’s irrational. Living
with that cognitive dissonance every day has to be tiring and painful. This is what makes the Christian view of the
world so uplifting – it brings hope to the hopeless, faith to the faithless,
love to the unloved, joy to the joyless, meaning to those who believe their
life is meaningless, purpose to those who think they’re purposeless. Apparently, the best this Mom can do is grit
her teeth and bear it. What a horrible
way to “love” your child.
