what is all this uninformed crap about "liking" late term abortions, and why do people like this sometimes have to fly to get one in this country? why would you deny them the chance to end this pregnancy, even if her life wasn't in emminent danger?
"What we saw on the monitor looked more like a cinematic alien than a 20-week-old fetus. Instead of arms, there were truncated flippers, and it looked like those drawings I've seen demonstrating how close man and dolphin are on the evolutionary scale. The legs were gnocchi-shaped buds that barely protruded from the pelvis. The chest cavity was deformed as well, although we wouldn't know that until later.
You've seen this before: a young couple staring in wonder at an ultrasound monitor, getting a first, magical glimpse of their unborn child. It wasn't like that for us. ''What I'm seeing is a fairly significant abnormality,'' Dr. Eddleman said, shaking his head sympathetically. Tears ran from my wife Liz's closed eyes as she wiped the blue goop off her swelled belly.
We walked on rubber legs down the hall to Dr. Eddleman's office, where he emerged from behind his veil of jargon just long enough to impart that we hadn't done anything wrong. Osteogenesis imperfecta type II was his diagnosis, a freak mutation over which we had no control. I could see in Liz's expression that it would take some time for her to believe him.
The fetus might make it to term or die in the womb. Either way, it wouldn't survive for long after birth. This disease, the doctor said, is ''fatal in infants.'' You know you've arrived in a different universe when the word ''fatal'' comes as a relief. Because until that moment, I had been trying to extrapolate what the flesh-and-blood version of this baby would look like in the maple crib we'd ordered, asking myself if we had it in us to raise such a severely compromised baby. Liz would later tell me that she was also sadly relieved. ''Fatal'' was our absolution -- we would not have to learn darker truths about ourselves."
By JONATHAN TROPPER
Published: March 6, 2005 NYT
more.......
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/magazine/06LIVES.html?oref=login