The following is an excerpt from The Kristan Hawkins Show. Subscribe to The Kristan Hawkins Show HERE and opt-in to Kristan’s daily text update by texting “KRISTAN” to 53445 so you never miss breaking pro-life news!

What happens in pregnancies where the baby is diagnosed with a life-limiting or fatal anomaly while they’re still in the womb?

 Well, let’s start by asking what happens when a child who is already born receives a diagnosis. If a child receives a diagnosis that will limit or ultimately end his or her life, doctors are going to provide the parents with a lot of information:

-Here are the treatment options

-Here is the prognosis for what life is going to look like after diagnosis

-Here are support options for walking through this challenge 

-Here are palliative and hospice care options, should you get to that point

I’ve personally experienced this in my life. Three of my four children received diagnoses after they were born. Their doctors have always focused on providing the best possible treatment options and making sure they will live as long as possible with as much quality of life as possible. Technology is incredibly advanced, and new treatments are being created every day. Parents in the U.S. whose children receive a diagnosis for their child today have more reason for hope and optimism than parents in any other place and at any other time in human history.

But this array of options and attitude of hope and optimism are NOT what parents always receive when their child is diagnosed before he or she is born. Instead, doctors delivering prenatal diagnoses often present the diagnosis as something that renders the child’s life not worth living. They’re told: “You can terminate this child and try again for a healthy baby.” 

That’s the mindset in the medical community when a child in the womb is not perfect. 

For parents in this situation, abortion is a common and even expected course of action suggested and pushed by physicians. Exactly how common abortion is in cases of prenatal diagnosis is hard to nail down, and it depends on the specific diagnosis. But what we do know is that abortion is extremely common in pregnancies with a diagnosis. 

Researchers in 1999 reviewed 20 studies on this data and found that 84% of babies diagnosed with anencephaly before birth are killed in abortion, while 92% of children diagnosed with Down syndrome are estimated to be aborted. And this is by no means just an American problem. Several years ago, Iceland bragged to CBS News that it had “eradicated” Down syndrome by killing virtually 100% of the children diagnosed with the condition before they ever had a birthday. 

From that CBS report:

Geneticist Kari Stefansson is the founder of deCODE Genetics, a company that has studied nearly the entire Icelandic population’s genomes. He has a unique perspective on the advancement of medical technology. “My understanding is that we have basically eradicated, almost, Down syndrome from our society – that there is hardly ever a child with Down syndrome in Iceland anymore,” he said.

Now, you and I know that this is horrifying and dehumanizing for the children targeted by this form of eugenics – and make no mistake, eugenics is exactly what this is. 

We need to address the abortion industry’s justification for killing children diagnosed with an abnormality in the womb. Abortion activists claim it’s because women will be psychologically tormented by carrying an imperfect child to term and giving birth to him or her. 

Let me say this loud and clear: That. Is. Not. True. In fact, the opposite is true. 

We have data on how the mothers of babies with anencephaly fared after both abortion and carrying to term. The peer-reviewed study comes from a 2015 issue of the journal Prenatal Diagnosis, and it’s called “Pregnancy continuation and organizational religious activity following prenatal diagnosis of a lethal fetal defect are associated with improved psychological outcome.” Researchers set out to study the psychological impact that abortion had on parents versus continuing the pregnancy after an anencephaly diagnosis. 

Anencephaly, for those who don’t know, causes large portions of the brain not to develop, so babies with this condition usually cannot survive more than a few minutes or hours after birth.  

One tactic the abortion industry often uses to protect abortion on-demand is it goes out and finds grieving moms who chose abortion after a lethal diagnosis and puts them on camera to share their belief that they had to abort because they would not have been able to cope with giving birth to a child who was not expected to survive. Like this mom whose baby was diagnosed with anencephaly in Texas. Moms like this are not being told the whole story. They’re not being told that abortion isn’t going to help their baby and it’s not going to help them. In the study we were discussing, the researchers studied the parents’ perinatal grief scales.

What they found is that, “Women who terminated reported significantly more despair, avoidance and depression than women who continued the pregnancy.” 

They also found that, “Organizational religious activity was associated with a reduction in grief…” The researchers concluded that “There appears to be psychological benefit to women to continue the pregnancy following a lethal fetal diagnosis.” Moms are being lied to and their tragic situations are being weaponized – NOT to protect their health or psychological wellbeing. Their grief and lack of education about real options are being weaponized to protect abortion on demand. 

Thankfully, moms who continue their pregnancies do not have to go it alone. They’re not doomed to being abandoned in a delivery room holding a newborn who suffers and dies in pain. That’s because Perinatal Hospice exists. Katie Yoder wrote a great piece at Our Sunday Visitor last year where she interviewed my former doctor, Dr. John Bruchalski, and other physicians about perinatal hospice.

These programs offer “specialized medical, spiritual, and emotional support for families that receive a prenatal diagnosis indicating their baby may die before or soon after birth.” Perinatal hospice and palliative care supports both mother and child from the time of diagnosis through the baby’s death while prioritizing quality of life and comfort.” 

How this looks in practice can mean providing pain medication to the child to ensure he doesn’t feel pain as he is cradled in his mother’s arms after birth. 

• It can look like delivery spaces that accommodate extended family being present to meet the baby. 
• It can include a photography session at birth to ensure memories are captured as a family.
• It can include a CuddleCot, which slows the natural changes that happen to the baby after he or she passes away, giving the family more time to say goodbye. 

All of these things provide a closure that abortion robs families of. It honors the dignity of the child. It allows their lives to play out from beginning to natural end without inflicting violence or cutting an already short life even shorter. Dr. Bruchalski said it best: “You treat the mom as a mother, as someone who loves her sick child, and then you also treat the sick child as a member of the human family … you don’t end disease by getting rid of people with diseases. You walk with them.”

If you ever feel stumped by the emotional prenatal diagnosis stories that the abortion industry uses to guilt the public into supporting abortion on demand, just remember these two words: 

Perinatal Hospice. 

RESOURCES: 

https://www.perinatalhospice.org/list-of-programs

https://prenatalpartnersforlife.org/

Kristan Hawkins is the President of Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action. Subscribe to The Kristan Hawkins Show HERE.