A Good Friday funeral in Texas. Baby Halo's parents had few choices in post-Roe Texas
Her name was Halo, and she was born last week, on March 29, two months early and weighing 3 pounds. She lived for four hours, dying in the arms of her father, Luis Villasana.
Her mother, Samantha Casiano, knew their baby wouldn't survive long because she had anencephaly – part of Halo's brain and skull never developed.
Casiano knew that Texas banned abortions, but she didn't think those laws would apply in a situation where the fetus was certain to die. But the laws do apply. A narrow exception allows for abortions when the mother's life or "a major bodily function" is in imminent danger, but there are no exceptions in Texas law for the diagnosis of a fetal anomaly, no matter how severe. In fact, very few states with abortion bans have such exceptions.
Casiano wishes she could have ended the pregnancy in Texas as soon as she got the anencephaly diagnosis.
"I should have had that choice – that right over my own body and over my daughter's body to be able to tell my daughter, 'It is time for you to rest,' because she was going to end up having to rest anyways," Casiano says.
Samantha Casiano is 29 years old. She and Villasana are raising four kids, and a goddaughter who lives with them. Their youngest is 9 months old. They live in East Texas in a mobile home.
After she got the anencephaly diagnosis in December, she called clinics that provide abortions in New Mexico and Arizona, but she couldn't figure out how to make the trip. It would have been at least 700 miles and taken about 12 hours to drive to a clinic in New Mexico – that would have required days off of work and childcare for her kids. "It wasn't possible for us," she says. So she braced herself for five more months carrying a pregnancy that would end in a funeral.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shot...ost-roe-te
Her name was Halo, and she was born last week, on March 29, two months early and weighing 3 pounds. She lived for four hours, dying in the arms of her father, Luis Villasana.
Her mother, Samantha Casiano, knew their baby wouldn't survive long because she had anencephaly – part of Halo's brain and skull never developed.
Casiano knew that Texas banned abortions, but she didn't think those laws would apply in a situation where the fetus was certain to die. But the laws do apply. A narrow exception allows for abortions when the mother's life or "a major bodily function" is in imminent danger, but there are no exceptions in Texas law for the diagnosis of a fetal anomaly, no matter how severe. In fact, very few states with abortion bans have such exceptions.
Casiano wishes she could have ended the pregnancy in Texas as soon as she got the anencephaly diagnosis.
"I should have had that choice – that right over my own body and over my daughter's body to be able to tell my daughter, 'It is time for you to rest,' because she was going to end up having to rest anyways," Casiano says.
Samantha Casiano is 29 years old. She and Villasana are raising four kids, and a goddaughter who lives with them. Their youngest is 9 months old. They live in East Texas in a mobile home.
After she got the anencephaly diagnosis in December, she called clinics that provide abortions in New Mexico and Arizona, but she couldn't figure out how to make the trip. It would have been at least 700 miles and taken about 12 hours to drive to a clinic in New Mexico – that would have required days off of work and childcare for her kids. "It wasn't possible for us," she says. So she braced herself for five more months carrying a pregnancy that would end in a funeral.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shot...ost-roe-te
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
