Doctors Told Congresswoman to Have Abortion Because Her Baby Would Die. Abigail is Now 8 Years-Old by Micaiah Bilger for Life News
It was the worst moment of her life.
Just a few days earlier, U.S. Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican from Washington state, had announced that she and her husband were expecting their first child, a baby girl. Then that joy was crushed at her 22-week ultrasound appointment, according to CBN News.
“’There is no chance your baby will live,’” Beutler remembered doctors saying after they discovered that her unborn daughter’s kidneys were missing. “’No baby has ever survived this.’”
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Beutler and her husband were devastated. But they refused to give up hope, and they began praying for a miracle.
Today, their 8-year-old daughter Abigail is the answer to their prayers — a medical miracle and a bright, happy little girl, her mother told CBN.
“She is a happy, healthy 8-year-old sister. She is really bright,” Beutler said. “She reads at, like, a 9th-grade level.”
Nine years ago, however, Beutler and her husband were given no hope that Abigail would survive. At about 22 weeks of pregnancy, she was diagnosed with Potter’s syndrome, a rare, typically fatal disorder in which the baby often lacks one or both kidneys and there is too little amniotic fluid.
“[The doctors] said … ‘Your baby has no kidneys, which means there’s no amniotic fluid in there, which means your baby is going to die. There is no chance your baby will live. No baby has ever survived this,’” she told CBN.
It was the “worst moment” of her life, she said.
Beutler’s doctors urged her to consider an abortion or an early labor induction, but she and her husband refused. Instead, they began praying for a miracle and asked family, friends and constituents to do the same.
When she went back to the U.S. House, still pregnant, she said she felt very supported by both the Republican and Democrat lawmakers who serve with her.
