Today’s  guest post is written by Kiwi mum Adele. This feature is cross-posted from the Leading Edge Blog where Adele’s post from last year  shared about her experiences of being the mum of a baby with spina bifida.

Adele, Paul and little Eli

At the heart of what I am going to write about today is love, really at the heart of any human life should be love. We all have the capacity to live a life of generous loving.

A topic that has become increasingly relevant in the western world over the last decade is abortion. With greater medical technology and advancements we are able to detect probabilities of whether children will be born with Down syndrome or spina bifida. We as parents have the decision whether we want to keep our children or not, we have the responsibility of being a voice of life or death. When I think of the consequences of abortion, what often has sprung to mind  has been the struggle that the mother has to live with for the rest of her life, knowing that she never met her precious child at her own choice, I think of people’s fear being a huge part of their choices, I think of society being impacted by lack of family values and priorities; what never occurred to me was how the medical profession would be impacted through a lack of knowledge of these conditions because less and less babies are born with these conditions.

I was inspired to write on this topic after a surgical consultation with my son who was born with spina bifida. We were discussing his possible surgery on his hips. The surgeon told us that Eli (our son) was not a case where you could clearly make a yes or no decision for surgery due to the uncertainty of how much feeling and function he has in his quad muscles. He followed by saying that he would take my son’s case to a panel of doctors, then they would research historical data on how previous doctors would have treated a child similar to Eli because they don’t see many children with spina bifida anymore, they do not have the experience to make a decision without research.

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