On life and death...

and abortions. 

I don't have a definite opinion on abortions. I know they're often kept secret like miscarriages and both are grieved in silence. This article made me feel uncomfortable and sad. I don't agree with the author's choice, but I can easily empathize with her. 

I thought one commenter summed it up best, 

"I'm 33 and have CF.  I'm an attorney, married, and living an incredibly full life.  The world is better for witnessing those who live with and overcome challenges, or respond and accept those who need help.  There is no way any prenatal care team could predict life outcomes by mutation alone.  Period.  Life can be hard and challenging.  It is not made fuller by avoiding potential hardship."

While I can't claim to know as much about CF as the author, I do have a new perspective from the genetics class I'm currently taking-- and from my A&P professor, who told us about the exciting new work being done that involves inserting a virus into the lungs of a person affected with CF. The virus is able to re-code an affected individual's DNA so that the cells don't produce the mucus they are supposed to. With technology like this, how can the author be certain of a child's early death?

Life can be hard and challenging.  It is not made fuller by avoiding potential hardship.

None of us know the days or hours or minutes we have left. Maybe Annie would have died early. Maybe she would have lived to ninety-nine. Maybe she would have been killed in a car crash on the weekend of her fourteenth birthday. 

Her parents mourned her loss either way.