I attended the funeral for the daughter of a friend today. What makes this pertinent to the more serious side of this blog is that she was born with anencephaly, a congenital absence of both hemispheres of her brain. This condition is not compatible with life, and Amanda only lived 72 hours. My friend and his wife knew of their daughter's condition quite early in the pregnancy, but chose to carry her to term due to a deep conviction of the inherent sin of aborting a pregnancy, no matter the cause.
I was deeply impressed by this reasoning. Medical school has liberalized some of my feelings on bioethics, and in the abstract, I don't know that my first thought would have been to keep such a pregnancy to term. Such a situation would be painful beyond my imagining, but I would have thought carrying a pregnancy for months beyond the time at which you learned the child would not survive would be more painful still. My friends though, drew from this situation several hard lessons. In a letter they read to their daughter at the graveside they said medical school had drained from them the ability to love, an ability Amanda restored in her brief stay.
"Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.
She has also given me cause to reconsider my liberalization, to ponder more deeply when life begins, and what it is. Like my time on the psychiatry ward, exposure to someone who lacks the higher brain function I possess casts me into uncertainty about the nature of life and the nature of G-d's love for it.
Amanda was also able to give a hope she lacked to others, in that despite her condition, she was able to donate heart valves after she died, to two other critically ill children. The issue of organ donation is probably deserving another entire post, and it's one I'm not able to write at present, since I'm still conflicted about it. But it is to amazing to me that this possibility was only considered by them after they decided (not that there was ever any doubt) to keep their pregnancy.
I am left in awe of the faith of others, who found support in G-d, and trusted him enough to follow their convictions, to learn hard lessons, and to see G-d's love even in pain.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
I very much respect these people for sticking with their choice. I am pro-choice and as (hopefully) a future ob/gyn I think it is all of our responsibility to respect the choices of our friends or our patients and try to understand where they're coming from. I'm sure this was very hard for them but it sounds like they've found what happiness they can in knowing that they followed their hearts and gave some other children the chance to live.
I'm sorry that you disagree mrstandfast with my beliefs that every individual has the right to free will and can choose for themselves what they do with their bodies. You are entitled to your beliefs and your opinions and I am not going to tell you or your loved one to go get an abortion if you don't want one. I believe in personal liberties and I'm sorry that you don't.
mrstandfast, I think you're being a bit hostile, but you do point out something I think wasn't clear in my post. I was primarily impressed by the fact that my friends did not weigh organ donation in their calculus, and indeed, were told that it is not always a possibility. Instead, they held fast to their considerable religious convictions, despite the pain it caused.
medstudentitis, like I said above, I think you glossed over, or perhaps missed, the point I was trying to make, and I think it's because I wasn't entirely clear in making it. I do probably disagree with you on the extent to which you take your pro-choice convictions, but like I also said in my post, I'm far from being completely settled in one camp or the other on this.
Overall, your comments exemplify the reasons Amanda's short life has been such an influence on me. I think there are many important lessons to be drawn from it, and my hope in writing about it is to record the consideration I am making. A bonus would be to inspire similar consideration by others.
Mrstandfast:
I know that it is to your advantage to see me as an uneducated ignoramus and to belittle me by being as patronizing as possible but I assure you that I am neither. My definition of personal liberty, specifically the right to be able to do what one wishes with their body, does not extend to the right to oppress the liberty of others. I believe that a person has the right to do to their body what they choose and by the same token, one person cannot interfere with another's personal liberties. Rape and pillage would fall into the category of interference with another's liberty, would it not? In a just society, one cannot confer the right to personal liberties on one individual without granting that to everyone – thus allowing people to harm one another would be a fundamental violation of personal liberties.
I could talk about all the normal examples that highlight circumstances of when abortion is controversial, but I think that is a cop-out for people who believe that everyone has the right to choose. No matter who it is, I am committed to supporting and providing care to whoever needs it. No matter their choice.
Oh and Nathan, I didn’t mean that I thought that donating organs played a huge role in their decision and I’m sorry if it came off that way. I meant that I can appreciate that they were in a horrible time of their lives and I think it’s a fantastic show of strength that they could think of someone else at that time and provide someone else with the chance to live.
I think the slippery slope argument that once we allow women the free right to abortion (which is NOT currently available in any free way in certain parts of the USA or Canada) we will start allowing people to kill people (i.e. the elderly) is not valid. It's like saying that once we allow people to donate their kidneys while they are living we can't stop them from donating their hearts while they're living (thus committing suicide). Anything in life can be a slippery slope but that's where debate and discourse are important - to be the checks and balances in society. Like the discussion we're having here - which has been fantastic and passionate.
I agree that this argument in the big picture has become an issue of liberty and I hope that it remains as such because that's what I see as the fundamental issue here. I don't think everyone will ever come to a consensus on when they think life begins, but I think we have to respect others' beleifs and be civil. I think we can all agree that a baby is a baby when it is outside the mother's body but beyond that I think there will be debate indefinitely.
I agree to disagree! But keep discussing it!
I think the assumption goes the way it does because people are more inclined to give the choice to the living and breathing human being rather than the aggregation of cells that cannot survive on its own. I think that's why there's so much controversy about third trimester abortion - because the fetus could survive on its own outside the womb with medical support.
I think euthanasia is a whole other issue because it deals with many complex issues that are in many ways very different from the abortion debate. Such as, when does an individual lose competency to make decisions for their self, when do advance directives hold and when do they not, can a person ever fully appreciate the consequences of an advanced directive. If faced with an individual who has requested to die when they are put on a ventilator and they are unconscious, how do we know that they wouldn't have changed their mind once faced with the moment of pulling the plug? I think many agree that an individual who doesn't want to have their life ended by artificial means shouldn't be euthanized, but what about the individuals who do want to be spared the pain of death or who feel that they'd like to go before they lose what they see as their dignity? Who should be charged with carrying through that person's wishes? Is that the doctor's place? These are questions that I struggle with.
I'm not a medical expert, and my field is not medicine by language, and one thing I found interesting was your comment about "liberalized" feelings about bioethics.
The word "liberal" seems to be changing its meaning. I've regarded myself as a liberal for most of my lifwe, and was a card-carrying liberal until the Liberal Party was forced to disband, but I always thought (and still do) that one of the essential features of liberalism is that it seeks to protect the weakest members of society from the depredations of the strong.
I find it sad that some people are now using "liberalism" to mean a philosophy that guarantees the rights of predators and removes the rights of their prey.
To all, thanks for commenting, I think I'm going to need more space to adequately reply. Briefly though:
Steve, I think you're right.
Medstudentitis, though I disagree strongly with your phrasing, I do not mean to offend, or to attack you. MrStandfast, thank you for returning to civility.
Fuller response at:
http://jollycompany.blogspot.com/2006/08/more-thoughts-on-amanda.html
Post a Comment