“It’s like an amniocentesis,” Sally said, “only earlier. I won’t even be showing.” We were at the kitchen table, having a conversation we’d had before. Sally was ready to get pregnant again and wanted to quit taking birth control pills. Once pregnant, she planned to undergo chorionic villus sampling—a diagnostic procedure that could be done at eight to ten weeks gestational age—to make sure this one didn’t have Down syndrome.
“I don’t know about the chorionic villus sampling,” I said. Would we terminate a pregnancy because a prenatal test showed Down syndrome?
It was 1990. Sarah was three years old, asleep in her crib upstairs. Sally leaned back in her chair. The table between us was empty, cleared of supper dishes. The incandescent light from the fixture in the ceiling formed stark shadows on Sally’s face. She looked directly into my eyes, waiting for me to say more.
In decisions about our family, I’d always tended to trust Sally’s judgment more than my own. When I met Sally, seven years previously, I’d already failed once at marriage: I’d gotten married in my mid-twenties, and after a couple of years my wife walked up the steps of a Greyhound bus and rode home to her parents. She said I was too intense and unyielding, wound too tightly. She was probably right. She had some issues of her own. I had always been glad that we hadn’t had kids.
When Sally was pregnant with Sarah, she didn’t undergo amniocentesis: based on her age—thirty-four—and the fact that the alpha-fetoprotein level was within the normal range, the possibility of accidentally inducing an abortion of a healthy fetus was greater than the likelihood of identifying a fetus with a problem. Alpha-fetoprotein—abbreviated AFP—is a molecule made in the liver of the fetus. The AFP passes through the placenta and into the maternal blood, where it can be measured. The level of AFP in Sally’s blood was slightly elevated, but not above the threshold to suggest Down syndrome, or any other problem. Sally was confident that our baby was fine. She’d never smoked, she didn’t drink while pregnant, and she exercised regularly. When the doctors talked with us about the AFP and her age, the odds were all in our favor.
Sally ran her hand across the red and white checked tablecloth of the kitchen table, smoothing out wrinkles, and waiting for me to respond to her idea that we try again and this time, do definitive prenatal testing. I sat across from her. Sally’s cat, River, jumped up into her lap. She rubbed River’s head and stroked her hand down River’s back. Waited.
Sally had an inviolate right to make her own decisions about her body. That was a given. But I wasn’t sure that I wanted to help start a human life if we were going to end it.
“What would it mean about Sarah?” I asked.
She stared at me, with her jaw clenched. Lips thin. She was motionless. “She wouldn’t need to know.”
“Of course she wouldn’t,” I said. “But every time she smiles, or laughs, or needs to be changed, I’d wonder, would we have aborted her?”
“I don’t know,” I said to Sally. “What if it turns out that a fetus is a tiny person?” It was dark outside, 10 pm, and I had to be back at the hospital at 6 am. Sally and I were in the bedroom, undressing. Sarah was asleep in the room across the hall.
“If I decided to get an abortion, it would be my decision,” she said, stepping out of her panties. “You’d be off the hook.” She pulled the covers down on her side of the bed and got in.
“But I’m already on the hook.” I tossed my shirt and jeans on a chair next to the bed, took off my socks and underwear, and got into bed. Leaving Sally with Sarah would be so cowardly that I wouldn’t even consider it
The fact was, I was firmly on the hook, and it’s where I wanted to be. I wasn’t some lout. I wanted to be there at the birth, and the grade school play, the skinned knees and stubbed toes and talking too much on the phone, college, grandkids. I was in it for keeps and I wanted to do the right thing.
“The chorionic villus sampling would probably be normal,” Sally said. “We’d probably just sigh a big sigh of relief.”
“But what if it shows Down syndrome?”
“We’ll deal with it.” She pulled the blankets up to her chin. “Either way, I’m ready to stop taking the pill.”
“How was work?” Sally asked. We were sitting at the kitchen table, two days later, with the supper dishes pushed back. Sarah was asleep in her high chair, her head lolling against her left shoulder.
“Not bad,” I said.
“I know you’re tired,” she said, “but we need to decide.”
I waited.
“I don’t see why you can’t just let it happen,” Sally said. “Get chorionic villus sampling.”
“And if it shows trisomy?”
“If it shows trisomy,” Sally said, enunciating each word with precision, “I will have an abortion.”
“And if abortion is morally wrong?”
“Which is the greater ‘moral wrong’? Aborting a first-trimester fetus, or forcing your wife to carry a defective child?” Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t think I could raise a second child with problems.” Her voice sounded tired. Flat. “I don’t think I’d survive.” Sally had a long history of depression. She didn’t talk about it much: partly due to stoicism, partly due to being very private, and partly due to using denial as a coping mechanism.
The cat meowed at the door.
Sally didn’t move.
Sarah’s head bobbed. She woke and began to cry.
Sally sighed, blotted her eyes with a napkin, and slowly stood.
“I can change her,” I said, sliding my chair back.
“I’ve got it,” Sally said, unclipping the high chair’s belt around Sarah’s waist. Sally’s movements were slow and deliberate. She put Sarah on her shoulder and gently patted her back as she walked toward the stairs to Sarah’s room.