As a young child -- I guess I was about 3 years old, given that my youngest sister is two years younger than me -- my mother had a late-term abortion. Now, to be fair, I don't know if she had a D&E or some other procedure -- it's a very painful memory for her, understandably, and I'm not going to ask her about it. But the circumstances were as follow:

The baby was sick. I don't know exactly what was wrong, but the doctors told my parents that there was only about a 50/50 chance the baby would survive to term. They also said the chances my mother would survive childbirth -- I'm one of four kids, and apparently the only one whose labor was relatively easy -- were only infinitesimally better than the probability of finding the missing WMD in Iraq. Even if my parents didn't have four children aged five or younger at the time, the decision to have an abortion would have been a no-brainer -- as painful a decision as it was, my mother's life and health were, are, and forever will be far more important than the potential for the life and health of another human being not even born yet.

And so my mother had a late-term abortion that saved her life.

I love my sisters, now aged 30, 27, and 26. They are my favorite people in the world and there is nothing I wouldn't do for them. Our other sibling, the one who might have been born, would now be 25 had s/he survived, and given the nature of my relationship with my sisters, I have no doubt I would have had a similar dynamic with my little brother or sister. But we would have grown up without our mother, and our father would have had to take care of us without his wife. Our lives would have been very different in so many ways I cannot count, none of them good.

Republicans like to talk about abortion as a right-to-life issue and as a family values issue. What of my mother's right not to die for the sake of a child that might not survive? What of the right of my father not to sacrifice his wife to the private religious agenda of male politicians in Washington? What of the right of my sisters and I to grow up with our mother? What of the right of God-only-knows how many other families not to be devastated by the unnecessary death of a loved one? What of the family value of not depriving children of their mother? What of the horrific long-term effects of such losses, not just on the family but on society as a whole?

I thank God every day that my parents had the good sense to do what was medically necessary to save Mom's life, and that Mom's doctors were capable of performing the necessary procedure. I mourn for all the families who will lose their mothers, sisters, daughters, and partners because of this insanity.

Cross posted at Street Prophets, NION, ProgressiveHistorians, MLW, and Talk To Action.