On the Consolation of Philosophy

This is something of a confession on how I wasted a good deal of my life. It was brought to mind by a reader with the ursine name of Bear. He writes:

When my wife was pregnant with our third and presumably last child, the ob/gyn, with whom we had no problems previously, became cagey. Due to my wife’s age (she is in her forties) he recommended amnioscentesis. When she refused, he wished to do a blood screening. She refused again, because she believed he would push her for an abortion should the child turn out to have some perceived defect. He then ran the tests on some of her regular blood samples anyway. Our son was healthy, so nothing more came of it. Even so, I still had others recommending to me that I push my wife to terminate the pregnancy, for reasons of overpopulation, risks, the fact that I am a poor man, and so on. I would be irresponsible, I was told, to have the child. Kill it, was their message. They never sai: You are poor, let another take your child and raise it as their own. Only: Kill it.

As I read the quotations you cited, I felt ill, thinking of what they would have had me do to my child. I thought of your son, and I could only imagine the emotions this would stir within you.

Let me say something about those emotions, and perhaps my tale will serve as a warning to other.
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