5 years ago, the renown atheist scientist Richard Dawkins tweeted that it would be “immoral” to carry on with a pregnancy if the mother knew the foetus had Down’s syndrome.
Dawkins said: “Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”
Well, Ms Rozanah Roza, now 32, had that choice.
After her marriage at 21, her firstborn was healthy. As a manicurist, and her husband, a prime mover driver, they had a home and a car. In her “splashy baby shower” and a “maternity photo shoot”, she said that “everything was perfect for a small family like ours.”
Then, she confronted that choice with the next birth. It was a pair of twins. Multiple scans delivered the news that at 24 weeks, her twins’ brains had stopped developing.
Rian Adrin and Rian Afreen (now eight) have microcephaly and lissencephaly, “meaning their heads are smaller and their brains smoother than normal.”
And it can’t be said that Rozanah didn’t have that “moral” choice that Dawkins talked about. At one of the scans, a health worker told her quite bluntly, “Your child is as good as retarded.”
Rozanah knew the cost of carrying the twins to full term. It would open up a new world that would turn her old world upside down. But she made that choice regardless, a choice that people like Dawkins would think is not moral.
She decided to keep and love her twins the same, unconditional way a mother would love any of her children.
It was definitely not easy. I don’t know whether it was moral or not, but Rozanah agonized over it. She said: “I thought people were going to laugh at me or say that I deserved it. I thought maybe we (she and the twins) should just jump and die together. All the time, I was asking: “Why me?””
Mind you, Adrin and Afreen “cannot walk, talk or see, and will always need help with everyday activities, such as eating and using the toilet. One is on regular medication to prevent him from having epileptic fits.”
And Rozanah is not optimistic about their life expectancies. She said: “I am prepared for them to go. We don’t know how much they are suffering. It is a matter of time. They may decide to stop breathing, and that’s it.”
To compound matters for Rozanah, her marriage did not last. After about two years from their birth, they divorced.
The father of the twins is only paying $200 a month. She had to sell her flat to live with her parents. She also had to borrow from loved ones to tide over. And it is a long, uncertain journey that demands way more than another’s indulgent contemplation whether the choice made is moral or not.
When you are in the thick of things, when you have to confront the question, “Why me?”, the last thing on your mind is to take a philosophical arm’s length view of the circumstances.
For Dawkins, the solution - in “approaching the moral philosophic questions in a logical way” - is to abort it. Problem solved. And to be fair, he did say that to abort or not, the choice still remains with the mother.
But for Rozanah, she made good that choice and experienced a change she didn’t expect.
She said: “I used to grumble a lot when I was pregnant with them because I couldn’t eat or sleep comfortably. But after having them, my mindset and personality changed. Even if you have just a plate of rice with kicap (soy sauce), you have to be very thankful.”
She added: “I was a person so engrossed with the world that, at times, I forgot I was a mum. But as I got older and they got bigger, I told myself I should give them the best.”
“If there comes a day when they leave me, I know I have given my best, my 100 per cent. The task that was given to me, I did it properly, and that makes me happy.”
Lesson? One.
I really don’t know whether Dawkins’ view of morality (however he defines it) would be tempered (or corrected) should he personally witness for himself the experiences shared by Rozanah above - that her twins have changed her for the better, that she as their mom will give them her best, 100%, for as long as they live.
But my personal reflection is that fighters like Rozanah, and the many unsung heroes out there, are like society’s fresh-water points planted at the many crossroads of our lives to give us strength, hope and that much-needed nudge to find our way out of the uncharted forest of our own “blessed” struggles.
Their stories inspire deeply (and are timely) because it is a heart-felt narration of overcoming that we all need in times of our own overcoming. For stories offer more than just platitudes, they offer a beaten path, a step in the direction we need to take to overcome our own Goliath.
And often, our issues pale in comparison to theirs. But having said that, this is however not a case of comparing miseries, but one of encouraging overcoming.
So, I am grateful to be blessed by the undaunted spirit Rozanah has shown as a mother and fighter. And as she said, “Even if you have just a plate of rice with kicap (soy sauce), you have to be very thankful.”
In such uncertain times, we should indeed be very thankful.
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