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Opponents of legal abortion tell women to "choose life." A 32-year-old British woman followed that decree, and, in so doing, she also chose death.

Her own.

Donna Blanks of Newport, South Wales, died Sept. 22, 13 months after having the baby that doctors said she would have to abort to save her own life.

They told her that her chronic kidney problems made motherhood a virtual suicide mission. The London Daily Mail reports she didn't care. It was her lifelong dream to be a mother, even if it meant not having a long life.

According to the Mail, Blanks and her partner, Gary Thomas, tried for 13 years to conceive a child. Their joy over Blanks becoming pregnant was crushed when doctors told her that her kidneys were failing.

Her only hope of survival, they said, was aborting the pregnancy. Blanks' mother, Sallie Blanks, tells the Mail that was never an option.

"Being a mother was the only thing my daughter wanted to do in life," she tells the newspaper. "She believed she had been blessed with a miracle when she discovered she was pregnant and would sacrifice anything to protect her unborn baby -- even herself. There was nothing on this earth that would stop her. She was going to have that baby whether it took her life or not."

The Mail reports Blanks worked as an auxiliary nurse and suffered from diabetes and other medical problems since she was a teenager. As a result, she thought she might never be able to have children.

Her pregnancy was reportedly fraught with difficulties. She had to stop her usual kidney medication, leaving her in searing pain. But after 27 grueling weeks, she gave birth to a premature baby boy named Cade.

According to the Mail, doctors doubted he would survive. He was only 1 pound, 10 ounces when he was born. His heart valves leaked. He required surgery on his heart and bowels.

But he beat the odds. His mother did not.

Blanks did, however, live to see her son grow strong enough to come home, even as her own life ebbed.

"Donna was so happy, but I could tell that her health was gradually growing worse," her mother tells the Mail. "Rather than having that new-mum glow, Donna didn't look well at all. But my daughter was a fighter, and she battled on and looked after her son with our help."

Her only hope was a kidney transplant, but even that hope faded when a heart problem made an immediate transplant impossible.

That was it. There was nothing more to do.

 

"My time with Donna wasn't long enough," Thomas tells the Mail. "She was an amazing person who was always doing everything for others. She was really one in a million." 

Her mother says her spirit lives on in Cade.

"I can see Donna in him and I just hope he grows up to have her temper and beautiful curly hair," she says. "We know he will be proud of her, too."

 

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