8
University Daily Kansan / Tuesday. April 28. 1992
Three Choices
Continued from Page 1
"Every once in a while, I put my hands around my abdomen and start to think I could keep the baby," she said one week before the abortion. "I'd love to be able to have this baby and care for it with my boyfriend, but I know it's not right for me. I'm not ready."
Kayleigh said she never considered placing her baby up for adoption.
"I would definitely keep the baby if I continued my pregnancy," she said. "I couldn't give up my baby after carrying it and caring for it. It's hard enough for me to make a decision without thinking about giving my child to someone else."
Her boyfriend of more than two years attends a college several hours away from Lawrence. He has been supportive of Kayleigh's decision and wishes that he could do more to help her deal with her emotions. Kayleigh said.
"Most of the feelings I have can't be expressed in words," she said. "It is hard for me to let him in on those feelings, because if you're not pregnant and going through the most difficult part of life, you should. I think it frustrates him to be outside those feelings."
Kayleigh said she was not worried about the possibility of anti-abortion demonstrations when she went for the abor-
"Unless one of those people can come up to me and tell me that they've experienced what I'm going through, they can all go to hell," she said. "Anyone who hasn't experienced the hurt and pain I've gone through making this decision has no right to judge my actions."
But still, for Kayleigh, not everything was that simple.
"Too many people assume that abortion is a clear-cut decision," she said. "Either you abhor it or you fight to keep it. I am a feminist, and I wasn't like." Oh, no big deal, I'll just kill my baby. I cry every time I look at my changing body and know that a fetus caused those changes.
"I don't want to do this. But I also don't want to take out my regrets and my discontent on a child. I love my baby even though it's only really a fetus — it's part of me. Maybe it's because I am concerned for this fetus that I don't intend to put it through a life of hell with a mother and father who feel they could have done and been other things."
The day before the abortion, Kayleigh said she was nervous and scared about possible complications with the medical procedure. But with a warm smile and bright eyes, she said she was mentally prepared.
"I'm not going to make myself sick worrying about what could go wrong," she said. "There are risks involved with having an abortion, but I'm trivying to nowl on that."
Minutes before she left to have the abortion, Kayleigh said she was not entirely sure about her decision.
"I have no reason to hide from my situation," she said. "I can keep my head up. But sometimes I'm crying inside. I remember the times I was happy to carry the baby. But I know deep in my heart that I can't and couldn't raise this baby to the best of my ability. That's the bottom line. I'm not a bad person for wanting the best for a child. Right now, I'm not the best for a child."
Yet a few days after the abortion, Kayleigh said she was comfortable with the choice that she made.
Susan Weger, Roeland Park senior, broke up with her boyfriend in the summer of 1990. Several weeks later, she went to her doctor because of abdominal pain and found out that she was pregnant.
"At first, I was just terrified, and I felt really alone," she said. "I knew that a big decision was now on me and me alone. That was the first time I had ever had to make that big of a decision."
When Weger told her ex-boyfriend she was pregnant, she said, he asked her to give the relationship another chance. His family was convinced he should marry Weger and raise the baby with her. she said.
But Weger did not feel ready to be a mother, and none of the options offered a simple solution for her.
"The whole pregnancy was like a decision process because I didn't know whether I was going to keep the baby or place it for adoption," Wegen said. "My boyfriend was as a boyfriend, but he didn't stay with me as a supporter."
Abortion was not an option for Weger, 22. She chose to place her child up for adoption.
"It's hard to live with the fact that my son is gone, but I think it would be harder to live with knowing that I took his chance at life away," she said. "I don't feel like it's my choice whether or not to destroy my son's life."
In October 1990, Weger consulted an adoption agency in Kansas City, Mo. She read several profiles of couples who were unable to have children and who desperately wanted a child.
Almost immediately, she fell in love with a profile of a couple known to her only as Mr. and Mrs. S. They would be the kind of parents she wished she could be to her baby, Weger said.
Weger felt isolated on campus because of her decision to carry the pregnancy to term with a bare ring finger.
When the Kansas basketball team made it to the Final Four in 1991, it seemed the whole campus was engaged in a wild celebration. But Weger remembers sitting in her dorm room atrium with excitement and knowing she could not be with her friends.
The loneliness did not sway her from her decision.
"Walking around on campus I felt a sense of pride in myself because I knew that I had made a decision that almost all the girls on campus would not have made," she said. "I felt like a testimony of the pro-life movement in a way because I showed it could be done."
Women who suspect they are pregnant may feel alone,but they are not.
By Katherine Manweiler
Kansan staff writer
Help is available from several agencies in Lawrence for women facing pregnancy.
Services available for women facing pregnancy
Free pregnancy tests and counseling are available at Birthright, a Lawrence agency to help women who are dealing with pregnancies.
Angie Hightree, director or Birthright in Lawrence, said the majority of women who sought birthright at Birthright kept their babies.
"We try to stay out of the abortion issue as much as we can," Hightree said. "We're not for it, but we're there to help women, not to judge.
We try very hard to be nonjudgmental and be a source of support and just give women their options."
Henry Buck, gynecologist at Watkins Memorial Health Center, said 1,258 pregnancy tests were performed at Watkins between April 1991 and March 1992. The vast majority of the tests were negative, but 163, or 12.9 percent, came out false.
Buck said women did not need to give Waltkins a reason why they wanted to have a pregnancy test. No examination is necessary to get the test. The urine test costs $4.50.
Buck said the pregnancy tests at Watkins could detect pregnancy 10 to 12 days after conception — before a woman even misses her period.
Watkins does not offer obstetrical
care, but women who choose to carry their pregnancies to term are referred to a Lawrence obstetrician, he said.
Abortions are not performed at Watkins, but women can receive follow-up care there after an abortion. Buck said.
Marcia Epstein, director of Headquarters, a counseling service in Lawrence, said that in 1991, Headquartersreceived104telephone contacts that dealt with pregnancy issues.
"Our approach is to start them talking about how they're feeling," she said. "With an unplanned pregnancy, our stance as an agency is that we are pro-choice. It is not our place to advocate any of the options."
But as the pregnancy advanced, the struggle with her decision intensified.
"Here I was at night, and my little companion was in my tummy kicking me," she said. "It was hard to think of giving him away, but at the same time, I knew he needed things that I couldn't give him."
On April 19, 1991, Wenger went into labor. Determined to keep up with her courses, she finished typing an English paper that was due the next day before she went to the hospital.
Four hours after finishing her paper, Weger held her son in her arms and felt at peace about her decision
"I knew I couldn't do what felt right in my heart," she said. "I had to do what was right for him."
But delays in the adoption process put off her separation from the baby.
Concerned that her son should receive the love and attention crucial for newborns, Weger took the baby home until the adoption papers were completed.
For four days, Weger was up almost around the clock with her son — feeding him, rocking him, bathing him, holding him, all the while knowing that she could not let herself bond with him.
When the adoption papers were completed, Weker took baby Alex to the adoption agency with a letter for him. The
letter, which he will get when he is old enough to understand it, explained that she gave him up because she loved him. She then went home and cried.
The pain of being separated from her son has not disappeared yet.
"A mother has an intense attachment to her baby, and when that is broken, it's really painful," she said. "It's just like a death. My pain is having that attachment broken and getting over the fact that he's not a part of me anymore."
The baby's adoptive parents sent Weger pictures of him at 11 months. With large brown eyes and dimples, he looks like his mother. Weger said that although she was sad she could not be with her baby, she was glad she made the decision because she knew that her son was happy.
His first birthday was difficult for Weger, but she made sure that baby Alex got a present from his mother.
She sent him an Easter bunny that she hugged and kissed before putting it in the box.
Weger hopes that her son will visit her when he is 21, but she knows that until then, he cannot be a part of her life.
"It's really a consolation to me to know that my baby is being watched over by Jesus every day," she said. "I pray for that every day. God gave me that beautiful, precious gift, and I gave him back to God and trusted Him to take care of him. Those people who adopted my baby were praying on their knees every night for a baby, and I think this is an answer to their prayers, too."
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