Three mothers have expressed their gladness that they followed their hearts to keep their babies, despite pressure to abort from doctors.
Kirsty, 37, a mother carrying triplets was shocked when doctors advised her to abort two of her babies to get the best chance of having one healthy baby.
Anne Marie, 32, who was told her child potentially had Down’s Syndrome, said she experienced the constant ‘drip-drip’ messages of abortion at each scan.
Destroy
And Fiona, a school teacher, was taken aback by doctors asking if she still wanted to continue with the pregnancy moments after discovering her baby could be disabled.
Kirsty, who now has three healthy 15-month olds, said: “It’s almost impossible to describe how it feels when a doctor tells you that your best chance of having one healthy baby is to destroy the other two you’re carrying as well. The only way to put it is that it’s like someone ripping those babies from your arms.”
She said the doctor informed her that the process would involve “a needle being passed through my abdomen, into my womb and injecting their hearts with a chemical that would stop them beating. The ‘debris’, as he called it, would be left inside me”.
Negativity
Anne Marie who is now mum to baby Ella, said without a doubt the doctors “felt I should have a termination. If I’d been a less strong woman, I might have been swayed.”
She said, “the doctors wouldn’t let the subject of an abortion drop, even after we made our wishes clear. It felt like water torture – there was a constant drip-drip-drip of negativity at every consultation or scan.”
Anne Marie concluded: “None of us could imagine life without Ella. I shudder when I think how easy it would have been to give in to the pressure to terminate her.”
Shocked
Fiona, who was advised to end her pregnancy just 11 weeks before her baby was due said she remembers being profoundly shocked when she was asked.
She said: “Given what we were being told, it would have been understandable if we’d chosen a different course of action. I feel so very grateful that we decided to follow our hearts and keep our baby.”
