You don't get to decide

HuffPo seems to be doing a series of stories on the reasons women do (or don't) have abortions. This one is heartbreaking (as are, let's be honest, most of them). You should read it.

I Wish I’d Had A ‘Late-Term Abortion’ Instead Of Having My Daughter

Sounds heartless, doesn't it? But reality is complicated and hard.

The doctor came to us and spread the ultrasound pictures across the table. She pointed to darkness where gray brain matter ought to be. She called it hydranencephaly, a congenital defect in which the brain fails to develop either cerebral hemisphere, instead filling with cerebrospinal fluid. The fetus continued to experience development because the brain stem was still intact, but she would be born blind, deaf, completely cognitively stunted, prone to seizures, diabetes insipidus, insomnia, hypothermia and more. The list of every agonizing disorder she would suffer was tremendous.

I'm not going to judge whether or not this woman would have made the "right" choice had she been given a choice. All I know is that SHE should have been the one making that choice. Not me, not you, not anyone else, not Republican politicians. And especially not zealots who don't listen to or empathize with the people whose lives are shattered when they end up in these tragic situations.