Minnesota Woman Has Babies With The Help Of IVF, Aborts Child She Conceived Naturally

I don’t understand this. I honestly do not.

Minnesota woman Hannah Stein struggled with infertility for years, so it doesn’t make much sense to hear that she willfully aborted her child that she conceived naturally.

But let’s backtrack first. Stein first became pregnant when she was 22. At the time, she was engaged to her fiancé (now husband) Patrick. She didn’t feel like she was prepared to have a baby, so she decided to abort it.

"I felt too young, and there were too many other things I wanted to do first,' she said. 'I did not feel settled enough in my life to start having children."

A few years into their marriage, the couple decided they were ready to have children. They had their first child Isaac with no problems whatsoever.

"I know there's a lot of discussion from the pro-lifers about how you see this ultrasound, or maybe once you have a baby, you will be hit with lament, guilt, or things will be different, but that's not an experience that I had," she said, explaining that having a child didn't change her feelings about having her first abortion.

Two years later, they were ready to have more kids, but it was a struggle. Hannah miscarried her baby when she was just 7 weeks along, but she argues that losing a baby through miscarriage is different than aborting a child. She didn’t see it as “losing a child.” Rather, “she’d lost the opportunity to have one.” 

“Blob of cells” = opportunity. Got it.

She eventually had a son and a set of twins with the help of IVF. A couple of years later, Hannah and Patrick found out they were pregnant again– naturally. You’d think they’d be ecstatic– especially after struggling to have kids all those years.

But no. Hannah and Patrick decided that their family was big enough, and they aborted the child.

"It was one of those things where we have a similar sense of humor and it was so Murphy's Law, we just had to laugh about it," she said. "After all that trouble and all that time, to get pregnant by accident, undesired, it was funny. To us anyway."

For me, none of this adds up. Sure, they decided their family was big enough, but after years of struggling to conceive naturally, they abort their child when it happens? What’s worse, she compared having too many children to having too many Snickers bars.

Because that’s basically the same thing. Except not.

She does, however, recognize that some people will have trouble understanding her decision to abort after wanted and struggling to have kids for so long. She explained her feelings with an analogy: It's like wanting a Snickers bar in the morning, eating three, and then being presented with yet another Snickers bar that you no longer want. Someone might ask: If she wanted a Snickers bar so bad in the first place, how could she still not want one? Well, she explained, she was in a different place then – now she'd had three Snickers bars, and that was enough.

 

"When you're in the zone of infertility and you really want a baby, it is a physical thing, in large part," she went on, comparing the desire to have children to being "super hungry." But, she added: "That was gone at this point. I had all these children and I was no longer in that zone of needing or wanting more children."
 

Her argument– that their family was already big enough– doesn’t cut it for me. I know quite a few people who had kids, decided they were done, and then found out they were pregnant years later. They were ecstatic, had their babies, and their hearts are more full for it.