The Guardian has published the story of how Victoria Lambert terminated a much wanted pregnancy after a test showed chromosomal abnormalities. The article highlights how parents are railroaded into prenatal tests without understanding the implications of being faced with a negative result, or the danger of the tests to their child.
It also demonstrates how much pressure there is to abort a baby for disability, and the lack of impartial information and support available to help parents cope with the diagnosis and continuing with the pregnancy.
Important note – the article signposts ARC (Antenatal Results and Choices) – but this organisation is actually a member of the pro-abortion campaign, Voice for Choice.
Despite this misleading reference to ARC, the article should be required reading for all parents before they agree to tests. Nine years on, Victoria Lambert still regrets the abortion. She says that if only she had been offered professional counselling she would have acted differently:
“This decision, and its consequences, has tortured me for the past nine years. I have been unable to talk about it easily, unless with a drink in hand, let alone write about the experience.
I watched numbly as the clinic secretary arranged through my GP’s practice for a termination three days later at our local maternity hospital. I tried to speak to my GP, whom I had known for more than five years, but she made it plain she had no time to discuss it – for what reason, I still don’t know.
I met ..one person who allowed me to question what was happening – an anaesthetist who threw everyone out of the room and sat down on the bed to ask me whether this was what I really wanted. I wish she had been there 24 hours earlier – by this time, it was too little, too late. I had lost all willpower, all ability to do anything but cry. I said yes, I would do this. And with that I gave permission – and I cannot put this any other way, try as I might – to murder my unborn baby.
Premeds were given, and I was placed on a trolley and wheeled down grimly to theatre. I didn’t stop crying once. I dimly remember repeating “No, no, no,” and crying over and over. And then I remember waking up crying, and it was over.”
Despite the article signposting ARC, this is what one of the people who contacted the ProLife Alliance had to say about ARC:
“I was not happy with my experience with ARC. I contacted them assuming them to be the best point of contact for me- in quite an emotional state and needing good impartial advice. They were saying that every woman has a choice and they can do what they like- have the baby- or not have the baby- an easy choice- a simple decision. They did not talk about the implications of termination and did not accept that women can suffer long term problems with guilt and regret, having been allowed to do such a thing.
I was directed to one lady who I spoke to on the phone who had the termination. She said it was the worst thing that she ever went through in her life, she went as far as giving the baby a name, and thinks about him every day – but then astounded me by saying that she did not regret her decision. I felt then that I was not gaining anything from talking to these people who I could not relate to at all.”
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