Five months pregnant with her first baby, Desiree Rossette was heading out the door to a wedding when she happened to notice she had a message on the answering machine. The message was from the hospital, and it would change her life, though she didn’t think much of it at the time. The test results the doctor wanted to discuss would lead him to call for an abortion against her wishes. Rossette’s blood test had come back revealing that her baby had a one in 30 chance of having Down syndrome.
Then, during an ultrasound, the doctor noticed white spots on the baby’s heart along with other characteristics that can sometimes point to Down syndrome.
Then, during an ultrasound, the doctor noticed white spots on the baby’s heart along with other characteristics that can sometimes point to Down syndrome.
“After that ultrasound, he sat my husband and I down to discuss what our future held,” Rossette wrote in an essay for Love What Matters. “He said, ‘If you go past 20 weeks during pregnancy, there is a chance your son could pass away, along with you.’ I was sitting there in complete shock, sobbing like I never had before. He also said, ‘You could have an abortion, to at least save yourself.’ That is something I told myself I would never do.”
The family began to pray while at the same time planning a funeral for the baby boy, whom they named Dante. They were devastated but had no plans of having an abortion.
“A week later, I got a phone call from the abortion clinic to schedule an appointment,” wrote Rossette. “I was so upset I said some not very nice words and hung up. It turns out my doctor and his wife aborted their child with Down syndrome because he/she would be a burden. He thought I should do the same.”
Rossette never went to that doctor again and found a new group of “absolutely amazing” doctors. They welcomed her and her baby, gave her resources on Down syndrome, and said there was nothing “out of the ordinary” to be found on his ultrasound. Though she now regrets it because of the risk of miscarriage, she and her husband agreed on an amniocentesis to confirm the diagnosis of Down syndrome — an experience she called “horrific.” After the diagnosis was confirmed she said, “I wiped my tears, put on my mom cape, and went to work finding as many resources as possible.” She lined up the early intervention programs and therapies Dante would need.
Read full article here: https://www.liveaction.org/news/refused-abortion-down-syndrome-doctor-schedule-anyway/
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