A couple in Kentucky received heartbreaking news during their pregnancy. Their daughter, Willow Rose, was diagnosed with anencephaly, a life-threatening condition in which the skull doesn’t properly form, leaving the child’s brain exposed.
Heather and Nick Maberry learned Willow had anencephaly at five months. Doctors offered no chance that Willow would survive. The option available to the couple in the state of Kentucky was to carry Willow to term. At birth, they could hold her and say goodbye, and spend time with her before she died if she was born alive.
Instead, the couple wanted an abortion (a procedure done with the purpose of directly and intentionally killing Willow before birth), which the state would not allow.
The ‘choices’
Research has revealed that women who have an abortion following a traumatic prenatal diagnosis have a higher risk of post-traumatic stress disorder and emotional anguish than women who carry their baby to term after such a diagnosis. Yet women aren’t typically made aware of this, while doctors often pressure them to abort their babies.
Heather said that carrying Willow to term was not something she was willing to do for two reasons, both related to her health. She suffered from hyperemesis (extreme morning sickness) and there were concerns that her already high blood pressure would go dangerously high during pregnancy.
It was a risk she admits she had been willing to take and a sickness she was willing to endure for a healthy baby — but not for Willow. “I don’t feel like carrying her was an option. Period,” Heather said.
The second option — an induced abortion for the purpose of directly killing Willow — was not available to the couple in Kentucky, but is what the couple wanted. Kentucky protects preborn children from abortion except if the mother’s health or life is at risk. Since Heather’s health was not in immediate danger, if the couple were to have an abortion, they would have to travel to an abortion-friendly state — which is what they opted to do.
The abortion procedure they wanted, however, was not what they received. They sought an induction abortion, in which an abortionist would inject a lethal drug into Willow’s head or heart, causing her to go into cardiac arrest. A few days later, Heather would give birth to a stillborn Willow, whom they could hold and say goodbye to. However, because an induction abortion costs tens of thousands of dollars — and insurance would not cover this procedure — the couple opted for a less expensive D&E (dilation and evacuation) abortion. This procedure is also sometimes called a dismemberment abortion because that is how the baby is killed — by dismemberment.
Ultimately, the abortion business Family Planning Associates Medical Group of Chicago committed the D&E at no cost to the family, and pro-abortion organizations paid the couple’s travel expenses.
A D&E abortion
During the D&E, Heather’s cervix was dilated, and sometime later (either hours or a day or two), the abortionist used a Sopher clamp to dismember Willow in utero. He tore her arms and legs from her torso before he crushed her skull.
The D&E itself was “the worst pain ever,” said Heather.
The abortion facility would allegedly not allow the couple to take Willow’s remains. The reason for this should be obvious. Medical records from the abortion facility state refer to Willow as a “specimen” and not a human being, writing, “major fetal parts and placental tissue were identified and the specimen was prepared for disposal.”
The couple was instead given a stuffed animal with a recording of Willow’s heartbeat and her footprints — a devastating thought, given the fact that her limbs had been removed from her body during the abortion.
“We’ll never know what her face looked like. We’ll never know what it was like to hold her in our arms,” said Heather. “We’re grieving someone that we’ve never seen.”
She added, “I wanted to be induced [induction abortion] so that we could hold her, so we could see her, so we’d have one memory. I would have been able to spend just a little bit of time with her.”
The pro-life law
The couple is angry that they didn’t get to hold Willow. CNN explained, “They were ‘furious’ that the laws meant they never got to kiss or cuddle their daughter, Willow Rose, or tell her goodbye….” Headlines blame Kentucky’s pro-life law.
But the state’s pro-life laws did not mean they couldn’t kiss or cuddle Willow. The laws meant they couldn’t intentionally and deliberately kill her first.
If at any point, Heather’s life or health were at immediate risk, doctors in Kentucky could have intervened. The couple could have had the chance to hold their daughter by carrying her to term or performing an early delivery if Heather’s health status changed, but they chose abortion instead, saying they didn’t want her to suffer. But dismemberment is surely not something that is experienced without suffering.
Was the couple given the full truth about carrying to term?
Palliative care
Giving birth to a child with a life-threatening illness doesn’t mean the child is forced to suffer. The same pain medications and treatments available to older children are available to newborns. The Kentucky Children’s Hospital Pediatric Advanced Care Team (PACT) offers palliative care services for children with serious illnesses and their families. Palliative care focuses on quality of life, relieving the patient’s symptoms, and ensuring comfort.
It should be noted also that children with anencephaly may live longer than expected, such as baby Angela, who lived for three years after birth.
There are additional supports available to parents of a baby with a life-threatening diagnosis as well, including Be Not Afraid. The organization offers guidance and compassion and embraces the value of every child’s life. The organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep offers professional photographers for family photos. Kentucky also has a Cuddle Cot program that donates special cots to hospitals so that families can spend more time with their stillborn or deceased newborn baby.
“How should we treat the innocent human beings who won’t live as long as us?” asked Life Training Institute on Facebook. “Should we kill them if it will help ourselves feel better?”
Since Willow’s death, her father Nick has been so devastated that he hasn’t returned to work and he sleeps with Willow’s blanket. Heather says she doesn’t want something like this to happen to her living three daughters. “It just isn’t right,” she said.
What this couple went through was one of the worst things that could happen to a parent, but what Willow went through was one of the worst things that could be done to a child. She deserved to be treated with respect and love in life and death. This situation is heartbreaking — and it is something legalized killing through abortion can never fix.
