Yahoo Celebrates Parenthood with ‘Best of 2015’ Essay Affirming a Woman’s Decision to Abort a Baby In Its 36th Week

By Dustin Siggins Published on December 29, 2015

One of America’s top media companies celebrated parenting in 2015 with a republished essay from a mother who called her husband’s support for aborting their second child when it was in its 36th week “a gift.”

In the essay, originally published on April 30, an administrator for the support group “Ending a Wanted Pregnancy” told Yahoo Parenting’s Rachel Bertsche that she aborted her daughter, Rose, because doctors diagnosed the child with Dandy-Walker malformation and agenesis of the corpus callosum.

According to “Kate,” these diagnoses “meant there were holes in [Rose’s] brain” and “the bridge between the two hemispheres of her brain didn’t grow,” respectively.

“The doctor said, ‘We expect your baby to have moderate to severe mental retardation; she’s going to have moderate to severe physical disability; she is probably never going to walk or talk; she will possibly never be able to lift her head; she is going to have seizures all of the time.’”

They were also told the baby was unlikely to live very long if brought to term. But rather than letting nature take an unsure course, they decided to take matters into their own hands. In order to get a very late-term abortion, Kate and her husband traveled from Boston to Colorado, for an abortion that cost her $25,000 — an amount her parents took out of their retirement account.

According to Kate, her deceased daughter “was beautiful and she was whole” once she was born. “I got her footprints and had her cremated and they sent us her ashes in the mail a few days later. We wanted to name her after a flower, so we called her Rose.”

The time from the ultrasound that originally discovered the disorders until the abortion was completed was 10 days. Kate has since had a daughter, who is approximately two years old. She said she considered a medical malpractice against the doctors who belatedly found Rose’s deformities, “but in the end I decided against it. I decided that I can live in a world where people make honest mistakes.”

Below the essay, Yahoo Parenting noted it “has chosen this story … as an example of one of our best of 2015.”

The piece was republished on December 27, one day after another Yahoo News op-ed concluded, “Abortion on TV is becoming more and more normalized, but we still have progress to make” since, according to the essay, American television shows do not show enough abortions by minorities, women of lower income and women who are already parents. This other essay also accused U.S. television of making women who choose abortion appear selfish, as opposed to highlighting “‘other-focused’ reasons, like not being able to afford a baby, needing to care for their other children, or it not being the right time to have a baby.”

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Like the article? Share it with your friends! And use our social media pages to join or start the conversation! Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MeWe and Gab.

Inspiration
The Scarcity Mindset
Robert Morris
More from The Stream
Connect with Us