By Nancy Flanders
My heart is broken for you, Addie Morfoot. I can feel the regret, the pain, the torture in the words you shared at Salon this week. The sheer thought of what you did to your undoubtedly beautiful, smart, and resilient daughter makes my stomach turn and sends chills through my body – a body which carries a defective cystic fibrosis gene. Just like yours. And just like your Annie, my “Peanut” has cystic fibrosis. I can only imagine what the thought of your actions must do to you.
You said that Annie must be “mad, disappointed, and hurt.” You can stop worrying about that. Annie has already forgiven you. She has the ability to forgive you because she is now in a place that far surpasses what our tiny little brains can understand. She is in a place where she doesn’t feel the deep sting that comes with knowing your own parents planned and caused your death. Annie has peace, a peace which you will likely spend the rest of your days trying to find.
You don’t need me to tell you where you went wrong on your quest to save your daughter from herself or from your own self-doubts. I can hear the pain in your words. I can feel how desperately you want your baby, but rather than stand up for her, you caved in to the pressures of people who know nothing about life with cystic fibrosis. Did you seek out an adult living with CF? Did you talk to a CF specialist? Did you take the time to learn how much has changed for people with CF over just the last decade? Did you even attempt to find any other way than abortion? You say that your choice was impossible. But it wasn’t. And I want to make sure that other parents, who are at this moment in the exact same shoes that you were in, know that abortion is not the answer.
You say that you want Annie to know that you did what you “thought was best” for your child. And with that you admit that aborting her wasn’t what was best; otherwise, you would be secure in that decision. What would have been best was to fight for Annie’s life – to let her live her life. The other choice you had, besides abortion, was to do everything in your power to take care of her, not discard her. But you already know that. What would Annie’s choice have been?”
Annie is the face of aborted babies with CF across this globe. But since we can’t see her face, I will show you my daughter’s.
Open Letter to Mother Who Aborted Her Child with Cystic Fibrosis
