He Died in a Loving Place, Inside Me

In a recent New York Times piece, Judy Nicastro referred to the abortion of one of her twins conceived through I.V.F., who she was told would have malformed organs: “We made sure our son was not born only to suffer. He died in a warm and loving place, inside me.” “This . . . ” says Matthew Hennessey in today’s column ,

. . . is surely one of the most morally confused and willfully self-deceptive sentences ever published in a major American newspaper. It might be the most painful thing I have ever read.

Anyway, in the story of abortion at 23 weeks, Nicastro offers the helpful detail that her husband is a conservative and a Catholic. I suppose this is meant to underscore how difficult the ordeal was for both of them, and how much pity they are rightfully entitled to. But I can’t help but conclude that Nicastro’s husband must not be the world’s most devout Catholic if he agreed, first, to in vitro fertilization and, later, to an abortion. There are a few matters of prudential discretion afforded to followers of the Church of Rome, but these are not among them . . . . Only so deliberate and cynical a bending of the moral reality could lead Nicastro to the conclusion that abortion wasn’t just something she did for herself, it was something she did for her baby, too.

Read the full column here .