The purpose of a “Heartbreaking Choice” is to offer complete, unconditional support for women who have terminated a much wanted pregnancy due to a poor prenatal diagnosis, a severe or terminal fetal anomaly, a selective reduction, or for the health of the mother.
The Administrators of this website and associated discussion groups are all women who have experienced a termination for medical reasons themselves. They are part of a greater network of women who volunteer their time, effort, and knowledge to tirelessly maintain the AHC Web site. We maintain many articles, stories, a Memorial Rose Garden, and a personal poetry page on our website.
The Administrators support new members through the heart-wrenching grief of making the decision to end a
doomed pregnancy in our discussion forums. We offer complete emotional support for our members that have made this heartbreaking choice. We maintain a safe and private place for our members in the discussion forums by conducting a comprehensive vetting process that also requires a lot of time and effort.
A Heartbreaking Choice is a professional Non Profit Organization that has always been and will always be dedicated to offering unconditional support for those who have made the choice to terminate a much wanted pregnancy.
The a “Heartbreaking Choice” website was founded by Maribeth Wilder-Doerr who ran a “snail-mail” bereavement group and a “Bulletin board” group on “Prodigy.” Our main benefactor (who wishes to remain anonymous, so we will call her “Lucy”) began corresponding with Maribeth via email, and the “A Heartbreaking Choice” email list-server was born. From that, Maribeth and Lucy created the first “A Heartbreaking Choice” website, which was registered and launched in 1994.
Lucy was totally immersed in the List-server and website for many years. She made many friends while working on the AHC website and list-server, one of whom was “Persephone.” Persephone took over management of the website in 2005, and turned it completely over to “Ayliea” in 2008, when she returned to work full time. All rights: user name, passwords and authorization were granted at that time. Ayliea has worked tirelessly for the past seven years to maintain, update and completely revamp the website. She volunteers her time daily to keep this important resource available for those who have terminated a much wanted pregnancy.
Contrary to what you may have heard or read, the aheartbreakingchoice.com website was not stolen. As stated above, all rights and permissions were granted at the time of transfer of responsibilities in 2008. If it were even possible to steal a website, you would see this occurring on a daily basis. The facts are that
ICANN follows extremely strict rules which prevents this from happening.
Also, all donations to a “Heartbreaking Choice” are managed by a group of Administrators and will be applied to our current and future goals listed below:
- The funding necessary to complete the Non Profit Organization registration, with a Board of Directors from
multiple countries. We would truly like to register it as an International NPO, since several of our members are
from other countries; terminating for fetal or genetic anomalies is a global concern, and women world-wide deserve
a safe place to receive support.
- Maintaining the Domain name and Hosting of the website and offer support in multiple languages; and embed
the new translation tools into the entire website and expand that to include the discussion forums.
- Paying for the design, mailing and distribution of pamphlets and brochures to doctors, hospitals and
genetic counselors regarding making “A Heartbreaking Choice.”
Note: If anyone is interested, there is a downloadable copy of a brochure currently available on the website:
Brochure
- Establish a fund to assist those with financial hardships, or for those that need to travel outside their
home state, district or country to terminate. Funds for these purposes will be strictly managed and offered on a
case by case basis, as funds are available.
- Purchase and install the collaboration tools for a NPO such as web based video meetings and conference call
software for all members of the Board of Directors, to facilitate an International collaboration.
If you find this website helpful, please consider making a donation to help support the cost of running this worth while Non Profit Organization.