Lessons I Am Learning: Babies are Precious

How the Learning Began

I have always loved babies. I remember my mom saying, “Babies are precious” frequently as I grew up, especially when she saw a new little one at church or any number of other occasions. My older cousins started having kids a long time ago, and I loved seeing the new little ones at family get-togethers. The last couple years, my friends have started getting married and having offspring of their own. The fact that people had babies was normal to me, so I never really realized how many obstacles stood between an unborn child and life. That is, until earlier this year.

I suppose this train of thought began in earnest around April of this year. We can blame the start of it on watching the movie “October Baby,” which, if you haven’t seen it, is the story of a young woman searching for answers after she finds out from her adoptive parents that she is the byproduct of a “failed abortion.” In other words, in the eyes of some, she wasn’t supposed to exist in the first place. With this information, what did her life mean anyway? And where was she supposed to go from here? This movie made me think, heightened my awareness, and touched my heart. A little low-budget and a lot pro-life? Yes. Really good? Also yes.

 

The week after I watched “October Baby,” the story assignment to cover Arkansas’ new law on abortion, limiting it to the first 12 weeks of a mother’s pregnancy, came across my desk at the Threefold Advocate student newspaper (Full story here: http://advocate.jbu.edu/?q=node/766). For this story, I did a ton of research, including visiting with the local crisis pregnancy center, interviewing people who had worked there, reading up on the bill that had passed, studying media reactions on both sides of the issue, checking the website of the one full-fledged abortion clinic in Arkansas that I could track down, looking at Planned Parenthood’s website for press releases and other information.... you get the idea. Suffice it to say, I had a lot of new, conflicting, mind-boggling and heart-breaking information swirling around in my head. I did most of the research while snowed in at my boyfriend’s family’s house after spring break. The poor, wonderful guy had to put up with me as I mentally processed all the newly-added data. When I got back to school, I wrote the article, striving to be informative and balanced, and moved on with prepping for finals week.

Around the same time, a beloved professor of mine found out that she and her husband are unable to have children. As she has grieved the ability to ever give birth to a child that is her flesh and blood, she has also begun the process of adoption. They’re waiting to take the children that no one else wants from a far-away country that God has placed on their hearts. My heart goes out to them for their pain and rejoices in their hope. I look forward to meeting their eventual new little ones, the unwanted who become beloved in the arms of her family.

In my International Marketing class, we did a case on whether General Electric was responsible for the deaths of thousands of baby girls in predominately Asian countries. The reason? They manufacture ultrasound machines, which can be used to determine the sex of the child before it is carried to term, even though doing so is illegal. Because girls are considered undesirable, many are aborted before birth. Others are abandoned or killed after birth because their family cannot or will not keep them.

Shortly after that, I was looking for summer jobs. In my search, I ran across an ad on our student portal looking for an intern at a house for young pregnant girls who needed help.  I researched the place. Too bad I was 4 months too young to actually qualify for the position. But it had still tugged at my heart.

 A week later I was on the phone with a lady from the crisis pregnancy center near where my folks live. Did they need any help with marketing or public relations stuff? Maybe I could count it for my internship credit?  They were willing to explore the idea. In the end, I ended up getting a wonderful intern position at Nazarene Publishing House instead, but those questions added another step to my mental journey.

Sometime this spring, I clicked “like” on Facebook for a few pages such as National Right to Life, Heartbeat International, Save the Storks, and CareNet out of curiosity. After that, news stories, pictures and more information came floating across my screen.  I began reading more stories—what it looks like to have a child with Down’s Syndrome, fathers who wished they had prevented their children from being aborted, new laws being passed, mothers burdened with regret, abortion clinics shutting down, former abortion doctors being tried for murder, nurses testifying about what they had seen in abortion clinics, ways to help grieving women, stories of successful adoption, a man finding his birth mother through the Internet nearly 60 years after his birth, and many more.

At church this summer, a pastor was talking and something tugged at my heart again. I had pushed aside all thought of the interviews I did before I wrote the abortion law article this spring because I was busy, but now their words were suddenly back in full force.  I turned to my boyfriend and said something like, “I am going to volunteer at the crisis pregnancy center this next semester.” That’s all. But it was enough.

Before we left on vacation as a family this summer, I was meandering around the library website, looking for e-books to check out and read on the long car rides. One of the ones I found was “Expecting Adam” by Martha Beck. It was about a woman and her husband who found out she was carrying a child with Down’s Syndrome during their time at Harvard as doctoral students. Deciding to keep the baby turned their lives upside-down in ways they could only have imagined. It was not your stereotypical pro-life book, but rather a gripping story of her personal journey, lovingly reconstructed from her journals and the accounts of her friends and family. She didn’t decide to keep the baby because she was some pro-life fanatic or because she just was eager and overjoyed to bring a “retarded” kid into the world, but because Adam was her flesh and blood and miraculous things kept happening around her during her pregnancy. She had fought so hard to get through the five and a half months of pregnancy preceding her diagnosis; she was determined to stay pregnant.  She fought hard against the pressures from her Harvard peers and professors to just “get rid of the problem.” She never imagined what joy and perspective Adam would bring to their lives. I just finished reading the book the other day. I might not agree with all of her ideology/mysticism, but it was definitely a good, thought-provoking read. It gave me perspective and empathy that I was previously lacking.

In my advertising class this spring, we often recited the mantra, “If you want the ladies [to buy your product], show them the babies.” Research shows that the average woman is positively disposed toward baby faces, and that positivity transfers over to the product itself. Or so they say.

Well, this month, the Royal Baby, Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge, was born. Johnson and Johnson obviously used the strategy of “showing the babies” in its new ad in People Magazine issue celebrating the royal birth this month. “We believe every child should be treated like Royalty,” said one page. In the middle was a baby in a bathtub with a crown of bubbles suspended on his little, flaxen head. Good job. You got my attention.

 

 For some reason, all the news coverage on the Royal Baby got me thinking. What I realized was that usually the media argues that a child inside the womb should most accurately be called a fetus, and that fetus is merely a “lump of tissue” in all other cases. But suddenly, when the prince and princess were expecting their first offspring, that son was a baby. Not a Royal Fetus, but a Royal Baby. That has to count for something, right? That deep down, despite all the wars over “choice” and “life” and “pro” and “anti,” at the purest level of our communal understanding, we still recognize that which comes out of a womb is a baby. What this is telling me is that when an unborn child is unwanted it is a fetus. When it is wanted, it is a baby. This duplicity made me angry, which made me think some more, which is why I even began writing this post in the first place.

What I Have Learned

When I sat down and started writing, I began with all the events and thoughts I remembered that led up to my recent flaming indignation. As I wrote, I came to understand that there are a number of lessons I have learned the last few months.

First, I am coming to the renewed realization of is that children are precious. Yes. I love babies! I look forward to the day when I am married and begin my own family. I love on my cousins and enjoy a babysitting gig on occasion. Of course, my boyfriend and other friends know the look I get in my eyes when I spot a precious newborn or a precocious toddler at church. Every muscle in my body strains to hold that little one, to breathe in the scent of innocence, mischief, slightly-sour milk, and baby powder. A look from the too-big eyes of a baby is enough to make my heart melt.

So, I love babies. And the average person loves babies. And the United Kingdom loves babies (at least when it’s the future heir to the throne of their country). So, why do so many of our national policies and tax dollars go toward preventing children from being born in the United States every year?

Secondly, I understand abortion is not an “easy option.”  While I know the arguments about underprivileged people, babies and mommies with health issues, teen pregnancies, rape victims and other challenges, I don’t think those cases fully account for the prevalence of abortion in my world today. I am not being “anti-choice” here. I just want to know why it is that abortion is widely considered the first option, and the “easy” option! It is financially expensive, emotionally devastating, and potentially physically dangerous for the mother. Not to mention that it takes the life of a child. What about the people who work in these facilities and the emotional toll it takes on them?

 I believe that women should be given other options. Because there ARE other options!  I don’t know what all of them are, but I believe there is a better way than abortion in nearly every circumstance. Abortion is a medical procedure that rips a living being out of the safety of a mother’s womb and leaves nothing in return. There are options out there that can link mothers with  loving and supportive people who can guide them toward emotional healing, spiritual strength, financial help, medical care, a family to raise the child if she cannot, and possibly the chance to see that child again if she so chooses.

While “getting rid of the problem” seems like a good choice in the short run, the long run consequences often are devastating. The memory of a life-not-lived can endure long after the procedure is over, and may never fully disappear. Carrying the child to term has its own crazy challenges. Yet, imagine the healing in the long run. She had the amazing and terribly difficult chance to bring a life into the world after carrying him or her under her heart for 9 months. She has the chance to see the child she cannot care for on her own raised by people who (hopefully) love her child as much as she does. She is empowered to take care of her child in the best way she knows how, instead of being forced to get rid of it because she has no other option.

            Thirdly, I have learned that I want to do something about what I believe. I want to be someone that is understanding and empathic, not legalistic and hateful, nor passive and uninvolved. I want to reach out in love to the women who are making huge, hard and impactful choices about their future and the life of the babies in their wombs. I want to be a friend to those who need it. I want to be a listening ear with godly, caring, wise advice to those who have nowhere else to turn. As I mentioned earlier, I think I am going to try and volunteer at a pregnancy center this next semester. I am hoping that experience will give me more insight and empathy. I want to know how I can help. It is no longer enough for me to say that I think unborn babies are worth saving, or to think that abortion shouldn’t be the only option. That puts me with the masses of other people who are doing nothing. I need to do something about it.

None of this is easy, but it is worth doing. I feel like I am listening to the desire God placed in my heart. If you read this far, I want to thank you. I also want to encourage you to look at your own heart. What lessons are you learning? What desires is God placing on your heart? Where do you need to put action to your beliefs?