Twist of fate

This story is one that has really pulled at my heart strings. And one that I am sure anyone with a child or planning a child has been tracking.
And below is the latest development:

Niketa, whose request for abortion was rejected by court, suffers a miscarriage
--> Niketa, whose request for abortion was rejected by court, suffers a miscarriage-->
Thu, Aug 14 02:28 AM
Eight days after the Bombay High Court rejected her petition to abort her foetus detected with a congenital heart problem, then in its 26th week, Mumbai schoolteacher Niketa Mehta suffered a miscarriage.
"Yes, there was a miscarriage," her husband Haresh Mehta told The Indian Express late on Wednesday. "It happened yesterday," he said. Niketa is well, Haresh (33), a stockbroker, added.
In a case that led to a nation-wide debate on abortion law, the Mehtas had filed a petition on learning about the complete congenital heart blockage during an echocardiogram in her 24th week of pregnancy. Their lawyer pleaded that extensive surgeries to implant a pacemaker and then further surgeries to change the pacemaker every five years would be economically unviable for the Mehtas, as well as traumatic for the child.
The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, does not permit a termination of pregnancy after 20 weeks.
Dr Nikhil Datar, 31-year-old Niketa's gynaecologist and a co-petitioner in the case, said the family had not informed him about the development.
Meanwhile, Dr Datar said he was still keen to take the matter forward with an appeal to the apex court. "We have not received a copy of the High Court order. We can move this forward only after we get a copy," he said.
Dismissing an application by Mehta, the court had observed that medical experts did not express any "categorical opinion that if the child is born it would suffer from serious handicaps."
A day after her plea for medical termination of pregnancy was rejected, Niketa had said: " I didn't want a nationwide discussion on abortion laws. I wanted a decision on my abortion. But now I will try to be happy and bring my child to this world."

I dont know how I would react in the circumstance. First to realise you are pregnant and feel the joy of bearing life within you. Then to learn that the child within you has a serious problem and could suffer and require extensive surgeries simply to survive. To reconcile yourself to the option of terminating the pregnancy, stifling your joy because you know that bringing a child to suffer thus into the world would be unfair. And then have to move court for the right to terminate that pregnancy, have your plea turn into a national debate on abortion rights. And then see your plea rejected. And then reconcile yourself again to bearing the baby, and seeing it through till birth. And now this. Losing the baby through natural miscarriage.

I know for a fact that my husband's primary objection to my having a second child is the issues we faced with the brat. And the fact that the risks intensify with maternal age. And I agree. Despite my desire for a child, I know it would be terribly unfair to take the gamble and bring a child into this world knowing fully that the child might not be like other children. That every day would be a struggle, and I would live my life in fear of dying the next day and leaving the child at the mercy of the uncaring world. Any parent who is a caregiver to a chronically ill child, or a child with a developmental disorder knows, everyday is a battle. Every moment is a struggle, both for the child and the parent. And the world is cruel and uncaring. As long as the parents are around, the child is insulated against it.

I wonder what I would have done in Nikita's situation. I wonder how I would be feeling at this moment. I wonder about the poor child who was not destined to live.