Chelsey never thought that she would be faced with the decision to have an abortion. After all, she considered herself to be pro-life and already was a mom. She and her husband wanted to welcome more children into their family.
When Chelsey entered the Oklahoma Children’s Hospital Pre-Natal Diagnosis Center, she was so sure that her second pregnancy was healthy. She glided into the ultrasound room full of jokes and smiles. At 12 weeks along, she couldn’t wait to hear her unborn son’s heartbeat.
Chelsey is blind, so she relied on her husband Austin to describe the imaging to her, often teasing him by asking which one of them their son looked like.
It wasn’t until the sonographer left and re-entered the room that she knew something was very wrong.
There was a mass so large in her son’s abdomen that when Chelsey’s husband saw it on the screen, he thought it was his brain. Not only could no specialist diagnose it, but none of them had ever seen anything like it. Down syndrome, bowel entanglement, fetal cancer and stillbirth were all serious possibilities for Chelsey’s son. When Chelsey’s husband asked if there was any way the mass could go away on its own, the word “no” made Chelsey feel like she couldn’t breathe.
Then Chelsey heard the word she thought she would never hear: termination.
“I don’t do that” fell out of Chelsey’s mouth so quickly it felt like a muscle reflex, but it didn’t even register with the doctor. He continued ignoring Chelsey’s words as if they didn’t matter, as if her baby didn’t matter.
The doctor then tried to pressure Chelsey into a painful amniocentesis by reminding her that an abortion would be more expensive the longer she waited. He threatened to deny Chelsey’s son life-saving emergency medical care if he was too sick. He even called Chelsey at home to try and convince her of his plan of “care.”
Again and again, Chelsey made it very clear that abortion was not what she wanted, but the doctor insisted that his plan was best. He seemed to doubt that a woman with a disability could raise a child with a disability.
Fear and grief were suffocating Chelsey. She didn’t know what to do, so she called the one place that she knew would be on her side.
A pregnancy resource center.
Amid all the bullying and fearmongering, she needed someone else to tell her that she and her baby deserved so much more from her doctor.
On May 4, 2022, at nearly midnight, Chelsey’s son, Dallas Austin, was born with non-serious liver calcifications that have gone away completely on their own, contrary to everything Chelsey and her husband had been told in that first appointment.
Now Dallas is a feisty red-headed two-year old who loves Hot Wheels, hiding from his blind mom, and telling knock-knock jokes. He requires no ongoing medical treatment.
Sixty percent of women who receive the same prenatal diagnosis as Chelsey’s son choose abortion, even though 90% of these babies require no medical intervention. Before her experience, Chelsey would have never understood that statistic. But after the pressure she experienced from her doctor, she understands why so many women choose that path—even if they don’t want to.
Today, Chelsey shares her story so that women in situations like hers know that there is hope and you can seek out second opinions and support. As Chelsey says, “Is it hard to be a disabled mom? Yes. Is it hard to be told your child is going to be disabled? Yes. But death is not the answer to suffering, life is.”
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