"Having to make this choice"

I've given a lot of thought to the Supreme Court's recent ban on "partial-birth" abortion.

As pro-choice as I may be, I just couldn't find the words to defend the method, even though banning it threatens abortion rights as a whole. So I said nothing.

And then Diane Chapel called.

She didn't have the same procedure the court banned, but she did make the wrenching choice to have a late-term abortion a few months ago.

Telling her story seems the only way for people to understand that when you take away one procedure, one right — as the justices did — you undermine them all.

In the process, you affect the health and futures of countless women and families grappling with their own personal circumstances.

Like me, Chapel listened to the war of words that followed the Supreme Court ruling.

"None of it included my experience of a poor, prenatal diagnosis," she said. "If people understood, maybe they would reconsider their words."

Chapel, 37, works as a facilities manager in Seattle. Her husband is a student. They have a 5-year-old daughter.

Her pregnancy was planned and welcomed. But at 22 weeks, an ultrasound showed a malformation in the fetus' brain development.

Chapel and her husband agonized over what to do. They looked at their lives, their daughter's and that of the fetus Chapel carried. They decided to wait two more weeks — that would be 24 weeks, the state limit on late-term abortions.

"We wanted to give our child every chance, in case the problem improved," she said.

It didn't. It got worse. So Chapel had an abortion, with her husband beside her.

The time since then has held a unique kind of sadness.

"I am grieving my child, but then it's complicated by this added component of having to make this choice," she said. "It isn't the choice I wanted to make. Are you kidding? It was absolutely horrible."

She showed me a passage from a book called "Empty Cradle, Broken Heart," in which author Deborah L. Davis notes how parents who care for severely disabled children are considered "courageous," and how invasive medical procedures for critically ill newborns are seen as "heroic measures."

But how to describe the parents who ultimately decide to let go?

"It takes a lot of courage," Davis writes, "to meet death head on."

I looked up from the passage. Chapel was crying.

She never believed she would face something like this.

"That's why we don't have wills, right?" she asked. "We can't imagine the prospect of death. So people don't want to worry about restrictions on abortions because they're never going to need one, right?"

Wrong. One never knows.

"It's easy for someone to think that their beliefs apply to everybody," said Chapel's husband, Mark. "But if you're not there, and even if you are, your decision may not be right for somebody else."

And if that decision is made with deliberation, who are we to question it?

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

She is happy to take the hits.