The Choice: One woman’s experience
by Tricia Aho
I’m pregnant again! My ten-month-old daughter will have a sibling! If only I can carry this one to term…
Ms. X has lost several pregnancies, often feeling as though it was her fault, and she was failing at something. That something she was doing was causing her to lose her beloved pregnancies. But the last pregnancy resulted in the birth of a beautiful baby girl. Imagine her guarded excitement knowing that she was growing another beautiful child.
As she progressed through the pregnancy, she followed closely with her OB, never missing an appointment due to her high-risk status. After a prenatal ultrasound at 12 weeks, she was brought back into a small consultation room. A room she had been in before, when she was told she miscarried. She was alone, as it was a routine appointment with a healthy pregnancy, and her husband had to work. She called her husband in a panic, bracing herself for the devastation she knew was coming. Sobbing as she hung up the phone, the doctor walked in to deliver the news. But this time was a little different: her baby was still alive, but appeared to have a genetic condition that would result in death soon after delivery, if not during the remainder of the pregnancy. Ms. X was faced with a choice: to follow her OB’s advice to terminate her pregnancy that would likely still result in a loss, to undergo amniocentesis, which would give her more definitive answers but would increase the risk of miscarriage, or to continue the pregnancy with the hope of one day meeting her child, even if only for a short time.
Ms. X had suffered enough loss. She didn’t know how much more she could take. But she knew that she did not want to give up on her baby. She wanted her daughter to have a sibling. And she didn’t want to do anything that would increase her already-high risk of miscarriage. After much distressing consideration and conversations with a friend who was a geneticist, Ms. X, with the support of her husband, ultimately decided to continue the pregnancy. Approximately six months later, another baby girl was born, who continued to grow and develop normally, with no signs of the genetic condition that forced Ms. X to make the choice.
It is often implied that being pro-choice equates to being pro-abortion. However, the story above describes Ms. X’s experience… she personally describes her beliefs as being pro-choice but emphasizes that the choice to have an abortion was not the right choice for her.
As clinicians and future clinicians, it is our duty to our patients to provide them with as much information as we can to help them make an informed choice regarding their own healthcare. While we may have personal beliefs that oppose those of our patients, it is imperative that we set our beliefs aside in order to honor the wishes and needs of our patients. Especially when we cannot be certain the outcome will be what we expect.
Ms. X is not a patient I encountered. She is my mother. And I am the child she would have lost had she made a different choice – one which she could not have made without her doctor communicating all available options and risks, and respecting her wishes even when they differed from her OB’s recommendation.
[Story shared with my mother’s permission]
Tricia Aho is a fourth-year medical student at the UTCOMLS
