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.