Up until 18 weeks of pregnancy, Lindsey Paradiso, 28, had every reason to expect a her girl Omara Rose to born healthy and happy.
Devastatingly, she and her husband Matt, were given the news that Omara had a growth on her neck.
Hoping that she would be able to deliver Omara in time for surgery to save her life, Matt and Lindsey persevered with the pregnancy. Fingers crossed that the cancer would move slowly.
The aggressive tumour had no such plans. Diagnosed with aggressive lymphangioma, Omara now had cancer tissue in her neck and lungs.
She was given a one per cent chance of survival. Their doctor said their options were to push on with the pregnancy or to opt for a late-term abortion.
‘Matt and I both immediately broke down. We didn’t want our baby to die and we most certainly didn’t want to kill her,’ she wrote in a blog post about the experience.
But time was important. After the second trimester it was illegal in Lindsey’s state of Virginia for hospitals to provide abortions.
The risk involved in not having the procedure was too horrid to imagine.
Lindsey explains in her Facebook post: ‘If we had waited past the window of a legal abortion and she died in my womb, I would have had to carry her body (while my body began breaking it down)’ before having surgery to remove Omara’s remains.
The abortion – which the couple says they didn’t want but was the best option in the circumstances – meant they could look at their baby and hold her before saying goodbye.
Lindsey has shared her story to help educate people about the realities of abortion and why mothers would choose them.