When an Ireland couple, Melanie and Damion Sheenan, went in for their 20-week scan they found out some upsetting news about their baby. The doctors told them that their unborn son had severe fetal abnormalities, including a brain and spine that wasn’t formed. They were immediately advised to abort.
Melanie told the Christian News Network, “They felt that the child wouldn’t survive birth and if it did, it would be so profoundly disabled that, their words were, ‘it would have no quality of life. I was put under immense pressure to go ahead with the abortion.”
But the couple refused and gave birth to a perfectly healthy son named Joshua. The doctor’s diagnosis was completely inaccurate. Damion said, “The doctors said that Joshua would be incompatible with life, and now he is sixteen weeks old and he’s brilliant. He’s doing everything that he should be doing. He’s the best thing that’s happened to our family. We couldn’t imagine our family without him now. Just to see the joy and the love that he brings to the house.”
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The couple explained that even after they rejected abortion, they were repeatedly pressured to kill their baby. Melanie said, “I had phone calls to my mobile and my house phone to tell me how many days, weeks that I had left till my 24-week cut-off [to have an abortion]. Whenever we went to appointments, the nurse in charge of the consultant would introduce as the couple who was continuing with the pregnancy against medical advice. We were made to feel that we were doing something terribly wrong by wanting to keep our baby.”
This sounds more like harassment than friendly medical advice. While our pro-abortion society is supposedly big on “choice,” when a family decides to keep their baby they are persecuted for it. They had no right to talk to that family with such disrespect for their decision and for their child’s life.
Damion said, “They thought that it probably wouldn’t be right to bring him into the world, so that’s when they suggested the abortion to us.” They claimed that Joshua’s quality of life would be so poor because he would be severely disabled.
Melanie concluded, “Even if mothers get hours, days or weeks with their baby, they say that it is the most precious time. And in our circumstance, the doctors’ diagnosis was completely incorrect. … And if we would have went with the doctors’ diagnosis, he wouldn’t be here today. The best advice that I can give is to carry on, because it is still a life, and God still has a plan.”
Learn more about Melanie and Damien by watching the video below.
