'I'm sorry for your loss': The five little words I hope Kate Cox and her family will hear

Many people will read the story of the Kate Cox family over the next few days and use this family's unimaginable situation as another means to debate abortion. Some will call them heroes for standing up and demanding that they get the medical care that they need. Others will undoubtedly cast judgment for even considering ending the life of their unborn child.

We’ve established a narrative and laws around this issue that view the world as black and white and ultimately the decision and circumstances around abortion are always gray.

And with that in mind, to the Cox family, I’m sorry for your loss.

I’m sorry that you’ve joined a group of parents who have been faced with the reality that their child will not grow up to live the life they dreamed for them from the moment that pregnancy test turned positive. I’m sorry that in choosing what's best for your family, you will not be granted even a sliver of compassion and understanding other parents of children who are lost too soon, but outside of their mother’s womb, receive.

I personally know all too well the “choice” you’ve made. Although I suspect like me, you never felt like you had a choice. I learned my child had a lethal genetic condition just 41 days after SB 8 went into effect in Texas. As a result my child's bones would break in utero and at birth my baby would suffocate because their rib cage would be too small to support their lungs.

As I left my doctor and began calling family and friends to tell them the fate of my child, I quickly became numb to the response I received. Everyone I spoke with found it easy to tell me their opinions regarding abortion legislation, but as they told me their approval or disapproval of my decision they all avoided speaking about the elephant in the room: the loss of my child. Mind you an inevitable loss, it was going to happen before birth or after, but there would be no child coming home to the nursery we had set up for them.

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Why did I have to flee Texas to end my child's pain?

That night, I laid on my bathroom floor sobbing, with my desperately wanted baby still in my womb. I was devastated, heartbroken and, surprisingly, filled with bitterness. Not bitterness that this was happening, but that no one ever acknowledged the death of my child. For some reason all I could think about was why didn’t anyone ask where they could send flowers or drop off a casserole.

If my child had been born and then diagnosed with something terminal at the age of two, we would have worked with our doctors to determine what medical interventions could help our child. If, facing the inevitable, we had wanted to work with our care team to end our child's pain peacefully and privately, we wouldn't have been questioned about our choice. I would have been encouraged to have a funeral to grieve. I would have been supported in my decision and doctors would have helped me get the care and bereavement support needed.

Like the Cox family, my husband and I ultimately choose to leave Texas to ensure our child’s suffering could end before it began. The idea of my baby's bones breaking just because I bent over to care for my 4-year-old was too painful. My doctor couldn't even transfer my medical records, they had to be released to me and I had to spend days calling and trying to coordinate where we could go. Instead of spending time as a family trying to process this unimaginable loss, we were forced to navigate a complex medical system with no guidance, arrange last minute travel, find extended childcare and flee the state.

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The debate about abortion in our country, the forced dichotomy that you have to either be pro-life or pro-choice, has left us in a place where there is only wrong or right. We've created a society without empathy or compassion for parents who are doing the best they can in the face of their own unique circumstances. This is what all abortion bans do – they strip away dignity and autonomy from pregnant people and take away our right to decide what’s best for ourselves and our families. In my case, having an abortion was a compassionate parenting decision. But regardless of anyone’s reason for needing an abortion, bans set up pregnant people to feel like criminals, forcing people to beg for empathy from courts that have normalized suffering, and make us jump through extraordinary hoops for standard medical care.

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I hope that if you're reading this and you or your loved ones ever hear your unborn child is going to die, that by then we’ve restored some sort of humanity to reproductive care when you do. That you are given the empathy, sympathy and compassion you deserve as you grieve the loss of your child.

So that is what I hope I can give to the Cox family. I don’t know you personally, but I feel your pain. I know your suffering will not end in that operating room. I hope you take the time to grieve and to find a way to remember and cherish your child. I wish there was something I could do to help you in your pain. I can’t, but I want you to know, you’re amazing parents and while you didn’t want to join this club, there are countless mothers and fathers out there who want you to know, you're not alone and we are sorry for your loss.

Kaitlyn Kash is a plaintiff in the Zurawski v. Texas case that went before the Texas Supreme Court last week. A version of this column first published in the Austin American-Statesman.

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This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: With Texas abortion case don't forget: Kate Cox is a mom in mourning