A mother who decided to abort her son because he may have inherited a life-threatening kidney condition is overjoyed that he survived the procedure.
Jodie Percival of Nottinghamshire, England, said she and her fiancee made the decision to abort baby Finley when she was eight weeks pregnant.
Percival’s first son Thane died of multicystic dysplastic kidneys ”” which causes cysts to grow on the kidneys of an unborn baby ”” and her second child Lewis was born with serious kidney damage and currently has just one kidney, the Daily Mail reported.
I doubt that anyone who posts on TitusOneNine will disagree that abortion is a terrible thing and that at all costs must be avoided by Christians. I don’t know all the particulars of this particular case. I have a cousin who, many years ago gave birth to a little girl who seemed perfectly normal in every way until she was around four years old. She began to lose her hair and her teeth fell-out, other problems followed and the doctors, in Canada, diagnosed her as having Progeria, sometimes called the aging syndrome. Eventually her features changed and became elvish, some of you may have seen such children before, so you know what I mean. In every other way she was a perfectly normal little girl. She had to undergo I don’t know how many major surgeries as her organs failed and she suffered terribly, but maintained relatively good spirits. One time my Aunt and cousin accompanied her on a visit to my parents home in Ontario and they did their best to prepare my parents for meeting her. By that time she had altered tremendously and it took some getting used to for folks unaccustomed to Progeria. Well, anyway, she came back to the kitchen to meet my Father and he wanted so badly to say something nice so he complemented her on her beautiful curly hair and said that he wished he had hair like that. My little cousin very gingerly removed her wig and handed it to him saying “oh, you can have it uncle Mart I have lots of them”. He was dumbfounded and everyone broke into laughter. It was a tremendous ice-breaker int an awkward situation. Dad and Brenda became great friends and she managed to live to be over sixteen which, I understand is a very long time for girls with Progeria. My cousin and her husband spent everything they had and more trying to find a cure or treatment for Brenda and were very involved with Progeria organizations. The doctors wisely advised them when she was first diagnosed that there was tremendous likelihood that any subsequent children would have the condition as well, so they decided to have no more children naturally, but did adopt a little boy who grew-up with Brenda, so she wouldn’t be alone and perhaps to lessen the blow when she would ultimately die. They were every close. In no way am I implying that my cousin ought to have had an abortion had she known what would befall her daughter; but they did exercise great prudence and I believe charity in choosing to have no more children of their own and adopt children.