Rick Santorum, Meet My Son

The central argument of Emily Rapp is that women should have rights over their body so that they won't regret anything in the future. Emily Rapp was born with physical deformity and later gave birth to a child suffering from a genetic disease called Tay-Sachs which does not have any cure yet. This article shouts out Rapp's emotion and all the pain that she goes through. She clearly doesn't want any other child to go through all the pain that her beautiful kid has or let any woman suffer the way she has.

Ronan, Emily's son, is only two years old and has already suffered from various apnea seizures. Not only does he have to go through painful seizures but is also blind, paralyzed and increasingly non-responsive. His condition will keep getting worse until he turn completely into a vegetable. Ronan can die any minute, and Emily is getting ready for she knows that, that day is not very far off.

I can't imagine what women like Emily go through when they know that their child is dying and they can't do anything about it. Emily regrets not aborting Ronan and I can tell why. Seeing her child suffer with every breath he takes must be very difficult. Emily, however, didn't know that Ronan was going to have Tay-Sachs. She had to undergo various prenatal tests and Tay-Sachs was one of them. The test results didn't show that there were any signs of abnormalities in her unborn child though. Had she known that her child would be a victim of this rare genetic disease, she would talk to other parents who had children suffering from Tay-Sachs and learn more about it. After doing so, she writes that she would abort her child. It might sound very unethical but it is better to abort an unborn child then to let him suffer after he is born.

At the time when Emily was born, there weren't ultrasounds or any type of advanced technology available. Therefore women back then weren't free to choose whether they want to abort a child or not. However, now they do. Yes, sometimes things might go wrong like it did with Emily, but women should still have the choice to make their own decisions. Emily's mother didn't have a choice to make and Emily didn't know about the situation to make a choice. Women should therefore be careful on what they choose to do and must make sure that they have prior information that is accurate.

Some people believe that we should respect a living thing no matter what for it takes or what quality it comes with. Thinking from a spiritual view this might make a lot of sense. However is it worth all the suffering? No, it isn't, at least not to me or to a lot of women like Emily.