“This is ending a wanted pregnancy. This is late-term abortion. It was not wanted. It was not a “way out”. It was not birth control.
It was heartbreaking.”
So begins Lindsey Paradiso’s poignant Facebook post about her experience with “late-term abortion”.
She decided to share her story after watching Donald Trump during the third presidential debate, who described late-term abortions as “ripping babies out at nine months”.
When Lindsey heard those words, she "went into a full panic attack and started sobbing because I couldn’t believe people actually thought that happens", she told Buzzfeed Health.
"I had to share my story and set things straight."
While Lindsey first posted about her experience in October 2016, her heartbreaking story is trending again after the US state of Virginia proposed a ban on abortions after 20 weeks.
Lindsey was 18 weeks pregnant with her first child, a girl - which her and husband Matt had already named Omara "Omi" Rose - when doctors noticed a "bubble" growing on her neck.
A further ultrasound confirmed the worst: Baby Omara had a rare tumour that "consisted of small and large cysts, solid parts and blood flow".
"[The doctor] continued to say that this condition was not genetic, that they don't know what causes it and that it can be fatal to the baby," she wrote on her blog.
"He said it would probably be in our best interest to terminate the pregnancy since the chances of her dying were pretty inevitable.
"Matt and I both immediately broke down. We didn't want our baby to die and we most certainly didn't want to kill her. We didn't want to be even thinking about these as possibilities."
Two weeks later, an MRI revealed that Omara had an aggressive lymphangioma that was growing out of "her neck (at her carotid artery) and back into the back of her neck, her chest, her mouth and the orbit of her right eye".
The tumour was endangering her lungs, eye and brain.
"She would not have lived to birth. If we had waited past the window of a legal abortion and she died in my womb, I would have had to carry her body - while my body began breaking it down - before being scheduled for a for a D&C or EXIT procedure due to the size her tumor would have been," Lindsey wrote.
Doctors told Lindsey and Matt that even if she managed to survive beyond 27 weeks, the age of viability, her life would be one that Lindsey wouldn't "wish on my worst enemy".
Just four days later, an injection was administered to stop Omara's heart from beating. Lindsey was admitted to hospital to be induced to deliver her baby girl.
"I had never felt so weak. Labor was a hard thing for me to wrap my mind around. I knew I was going to birth a baby, but because it wasn't a baby we were able to keep or even really able to meet I didn't know what to call what I was going through," Lindsey wrote.
"It didn't feel like labor though. It felt more like surgery, that a part of me was being forcibly removed. A part that wasn't ever meant to leave me."
Almost 40 hours later, Omara was born.
"I was so delirious from all of the pain medication that it took me some time to grasp the fact I was holding my daughter and I began to cry. I admired her eyelashes and how blonde her eyebrows were. She had my nose and lips yet still resembled Matt," Linsdey wrote.
"Then I saw the tumor that had taken her from us. It was wrapped around her from the back of her neck down to her chest and I hated it so much, I hated it for keeping our daughter from us, for killing her."
"Matt and I along with our parents and my siblings each said our goodbyes and told her how much we loved her. I wanted her to be alive so badly, but I knew it was best that she went without pain. She will never know pain, she will only know love."
Since her experience in February last year, Lindsey has joined a support group for women who have experienced late-term abortions and a pro-choice advocacy group.
"If there was an abortion ban, I worry that I would’ve been forced to carry her and never been able to hold her in my arms," Paradiso told Buzzfeed Health.
"The best way to affect legislation is to tell personal stories of how that legislation would’ve affected you had it been in place," she said.
Top Comments
I find the abortion debate very hard to absorb. I'm quite torn as I know that there are many reasons pro and against.
Personally, I was born with a very rare congenital defect. I'm exactly the kind of baby that most of you would abort.
Yet here I sit, a 45yr old happily married wife, mother, university grad (under and post), a highly qualified professional etc etc
According to docs babies like me don't survive. To that I say pfft.
Do your own research first. You don't want to realise that with some medical interventions you could one day be looking at your middle aged child. Make a decision that you can live with comfortably.
Thoughts are with this family. This must have been an awful time for them.
This is why I hate the abortion debate. This poor woman should not have to share her story because of morons like Trump and other pro-birthers who think that they have some sort of god given right to interfere in the lives of strangers who do not want or require their opinion. Whether someone requires a medical procedure such as an abortion, that is THE BUSINESS OF NO ONE ELSE but the person who requires the procedure.
Laws are made all the time that don't take into account the small percentage of situations where they don't apply fairly.
I fail to see your point here, I'm sorry.
People often bring up stories like this when talking about why abortion shouldn't be illegal. I doubt many people would have large issues with abortion under these circumstances.
This is not a common story and shouldn't have any bearing on the laws.
No, my point is that it is none of your business why someone might require an abortion or what someone else uses their body for. My point is, this woman shouldn't have to share this horror with the world, because abortion should just be another private medical procedure that women can access for what ever personal reason they have.