The nightmarish experience of an expectant mother in Texas underscores why lawmakers, in their zeal to protect the unborn at all costs, should have no business telling doctors how to do their jobs. The Houston woman, Elizabeth Weller, badly wanted a child and was heartbroken when her water broke at 18 weeks of pregnancy. The baby’s chances of survival were minuscule, and a painful, suffocating death was assured without amniotic fluid to surround the baby in the womb for the remaining weeks of pregnancy.
But Texas lawmakers had so confused the rules about when an abortion could legally occur under such circumstances that doctors feared criminal prosecution if they acted in the best interests of both the child and mother. So they had to force Weller to carry her dying baby as it began decaying inside her. The story was recounted last week in a tear-inducing, 11-minute segment on National Public Radio.
Weller told NPR that, although she believes in a woman’s right to choose, she personally would never choose to have an abortion. She and her husband wanted this baby. But their experience turned into an object lesson of why all-encompassing laws devised by people with little or no medical experience can inflict the worst kinds of harm in the name of saving lives.
