Wichita – The moment is burned forever in her mind: The small exam room, her husband’s ashen face, her sobs as the doctor guided a needle into her womb to kill her son.
It has been 4 1/2 years, and still Marie Becker can feel Daniel kicking inside her, kicking and kicking as she choked back hysteria – kicking until the drug stopped his heart and she felt only stillness.
She prayed Daniel would forgive her.
She prayed for forgiveness from God as well. Becker had been taught that abortion was a sin; she wanted so to believe it might also be a blessing.
In her seventh month of pregnancy, she had learned that Daniel had a fatal genetic disorder and his life would be brief and brutal.
She wanted to spare him that.
“For the love of God, the last thing I wanted to do was to murder my own child,” she said recently. “This was something we did out of love and respect for him.”
Becker, who asked to be identified by her middle and maiden names, tells Daniel’s story to other pregnant women who find out when they are many months along that their babies are terminally ill or severely disabled.
These days she also prays for one of the few doctors in the United States who will take them as patients: Dr. George R. Tiller, who performed her abortion. Specializing in late second- and third-trimester abortions, his clinic here draws women from around the world.
Tiller’s clinic aborted 295 viable fetuses last year and 318 the year before; his website says he has performed more late-term abortions than anyone else practicing in the Western Hemisphere.
But the clinic is now under criminal investigation for some of those procedures.
Like most states, Kansas does not permit abortions of viable fetuses unless carrying the pregnancy to term would substantially and irreversibly damage the mother’s health.
Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline is investigating whether Tiller’s patients were truly in that much danger.
Tiller’s lawyers respond that he has “always consistently, carefully and appropriately followed the law in all respects.”
Kline, who opposes all abortions, maintains that the mental- health concerns some women cite as their main reason for terminating – including depression or anxiety about raising a disabled child – do not justify late-term abortions under Kansas law.
He has demanded access to the medical records of dozens of patients. The clinic has appealed to the state Supreme Court; a decision is expected within weeks.
Tiller’s patients await the ruling with mounting anger.
They say no outsider could ever understand the complex tangle of emotions that brought them to Women’s Health Care Services – the psychological and physical strains that made continuing their pregnancies unbearable.
“I don’t know what I would have done had (Dr. Tiller) not been available to me,” said Katie Plazio, a financial analyst from New Jersey. “That’s selfish, I know. I feel selfish. But … doesn’t everyone want the best for themselves and their family?”
Like Becker and most women who spoke for this story, Plazio asked to use her middle and maiden names to protect her privacy. Many of Tiller’s patients have not told their co-workers, friends or even close relatives that they had terminated pregnancies. Their abortions were verified by a review of clinic records they supplied.
For Plazio, the heartache began with the unexpected. After a decade of infertility, she was stunned to feel a kick to her ribs as she sat through a meeting in February 2001. She had been dieting for weeks, running 5 miles a day – and wondering why she still couldn’t squeeze into her pants.
She was six months pregnant.
Overjoyed, Plazio and her husband scheduled an amniocentesis. The preliminary results were clean; bursting with excitement, Plazio, then 43, bought a baby blanket dotted with pale blue bunnies. Ten days later, her doctor called with devastating news: More complete genetic tests had determined that their son had Down syndrome.
Plazio had studied special education in college; working with adults with Down syndrome, she had seen their lives as lonely, frustrating, full of hurt. She was not sure she could find joy in raising her son to such a future. She didn’t think she could cope with what she anticipated would be a lifetime of sadness and struggle.
Giving her son up for adoption seemed even worse – to wake each morning not knowing where he was, imagining him scared and alone. “I could not live with that fear all my life,” Plazio said.
“I don’t want anyone to think that I did this all for Matthew,” she said. “I was not just sparing him problems. I was sparing my daughter, my husband, me and all those who depend on me. … I knew the limits of my family and my marriage. Maybe there are families who can handle it all. Maybe they are better people. But I knew I could not do it.”
In March 2001, a week into her third trimester, she and her husband flew to Tiller’s clinic. They took the bunny blanket and a teddy bear with a big red heart on its chest – a gift to the baby from their daughter, then 11.
Since her abortion, Plazio has suffered such severe panic attacks that she can’t drive even as far as the high school to watch her daughter cheerlead. She has gained 60 pounds as she battles depression.
The abortion she sought to preserve her mental health has left her deeply shaken; doctors say she suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Her mental health, she is convinced, would be even worse had she tried to raise a profoundly disabled son – or had she given him up for adoption.
The abortion “released my poor sick baby back to the angels,” she said. “The only thing I wish I had done differently was realize I was pregnant months earlier.”
