by John Grimaldi

WASHINGTON, DC — In a new episode of AMAC’s Better for America podcast, host Rebecca Weber, CEO of the Association of Mature American Citizens, is joined by two colleagues in a wide-ranging discussion of abortion. They are Alexa Abela, associate editor of the AMAC magazine, and Bob Chartuk, a Financial Planner at the Association..

In part one of the podcast Rebecca asked Alexa what her perspective is, as a woman 23 years of age, when it comes to the issue of abortion.

Her response: it’s “about not having faith in God and having this self-centered idea of yourself … [to those who have a pro-choice viewpoint]. It’s like they are not realizing that it is a child inside of them. It is a disconnect. It’s just selfish. The left says ‘It’s my choice! It’s my body!’ It is not your body. You are now sharing your body. You’re sharing your uterus with another human being. You are still a mother. Regardless of if you birth that child, you are still a mother. Your hormones change your endorphins change. Your body is prepping you as a mother. And you will not see the left acknowledge that. And you don’t see enough people talk about that. They don’t want to talk about the trauma that comes with having an abortion. There are so many articles I’ve seen of people – women coming out and saying that Planned Parenthood,” which is government funded, coerced them into having an abortion. I mean, how many stories do you hear of doctors convincing people to get an abortion for selfish reasons because your life is going to be more difficult.”

When Bob joined the discussion he revealed a personal “what if” story.

We have all heard stories about the mom who gave birth only to discover her newborn son or daughter suffered from Down syndrome. There are those who are quick to say she should have had an abortion for her sake and for the child’s sake. Or they’ll say get tested. But, as the Centers for Disease Control [CDC] “Screening tests do not provide an absolute diagnosis.”

One day Bob noticed a bump in his wife’s stomach. “We went to the doctor, and it turned out to be an ovarian cyst about the size of a tennis ball. The doctor wanted to remove it with a complete hysterectomy,” he said. That was not an option as far as he and his wife were concerned; They wanted a baby and so they wanted to find an alternative. The doctor offered a “risky” procedure. But, while thumbing through medical magazines in the MD’s waiting room, he came across a potentially safer option. He and his wife discussed it with their doctor, who agreed that it was, indeed, a way to remove the cyst without having to take out her reproductive organs and so they made arrangements to undergo the procedure.

“Lo and behold, the cyst started to shrink to the point where it could be safely removed.” It worked. The cyst was removed. And “a couple of months later, my wife was pregnant, and we were on our way to having a child.” But two months into her pregnancy, there was another hurdle to overcome. Tests showed that “the child would be a Down syndrome baby.

Their physician suggested that “probably the best option would be to abort. She told us, ‘You don’t really want to bring a child, you know, with birth defects into this world.’ And I have to say, there was a lot of pressure at that point to terminate the pregnancy, but there was no way we were going to do that.”

They had a baby girl and “we kept a close eye on her. We never went back to the Down Syndrome Support Group,” Bob said. “Our daughter started to develop and we kind of kept a close eye on her, and then we realized it doesn’t seem like she was a Down’s child. So, we took her to get tested, and lo and behold, she was not. And today she is going into her sophomore year as a college student studying math and physics.

Abortion advocates might say that Mr. and Mrs. Chartuk simply got lucky but that is not the point. Life is sacred whether a baby is a boy or a girl, has blue eyes or brown or has Down syndrome or is a healthy son or daughter. They have a right to life.

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