In Defiance for Life
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.” — Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who
Mordecai told them to reply to Esther with this answer, “Do not think in your soul that you will escape in the king’s household more than all the Jews. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place — but you and your father’s house will perish. Who knows whether you have attained royal status for such a time as this?” — Esther 4:13–14 (TLV)
“This,” cried the Mayor, “is your town’s darkest hour!
The time for all Whos who have blood that is red
To come to the aid of their country!” he said.
“We’ve GOT to make noises in greater amounts!
So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!” — Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who
I have seen a lot of joy in middle America over New York’s recent decision. They, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to play God and to let doctors and women play God. Abortion is no longer a risky procedure to be considered as a last resort early in the pregnancy. It is now a right, not a privilege or option, for every woman up until the delivery date of the person.
I must add my voice to the cacophony. However, I am not applauding. I am mourning in tears. I am the proud mother of three persons who probably would have been killed under this law.
Daughter A and Daughter B were delivered by urgent C-section at 29 1/2 weeks. We did not know until around 25 weeks that I was carrying twins, and my body was rocked with borderline dehydration and poor nutrition as a result. I went in and out of preterm labor. There was a problem with my body, and it started to kill them around 28 1/2 weeks.
It took my daughters almost five minutes to cry. Meanwhile, my doctor was concerned because my blood pressure plummeted so low they weren’t sure if I needed emergency intervention. I can remember asking the medical team, “Why won’t they cry? Why won’t they cry?” I was fearful they would not survive.
The twins stayed in a neonatal intensive care unit for 57 days while I wrestled with a body broken from the twin pregnancy and after effects, including anemia. We weren’t given much hope that they would ever be more than walking vegetables.
We went through years of therapies, years of IEP meetings, and stressful school communications. Much money was spent on them from the government at various levels.
At 20 years, Daughter A has a part-time job, pays taxes, and goes to night school to be able to have her dream job working with animals. We wrestle with the cold calls to arrange externships so she has the opportunity to sit for an exam to work anywhere in the US. We wrestle with her blossoming relationship with a young man on the autism spectrum and how that relationship looks like two ships passing in the night.
Daughter B is still struggling to catch up. She adjusted her expectations from doing day care because of her remaining issues from her prematurity. She has applied for a job to be assigned as an aide or paraprofessional with older youngsters who have greater impairments than she does. She is about half way through the application process. Her struggle is ordering and planning projects and tasks, including a six- or eight-hour day. She also gets distracted easily and cannot always remember things she spent hours trying to read and learn.
Meanwhile, Daughter C snuck in before A and B were ever two years old. We were supposed to wait because the doctors believed the twin pregnancy had significantly damaged my body, but somehow God had other plans.
I could see her being killed at birth simply because we had the other two and they were showing significant cognitive and intellectual brokenness. The stress to my mental health would have been very concerning.
I struggled. My body threatened to miscarry her during a critical business opportunity. When we survived that, I made a difficult decision to change teams; that caused some hard feelings.
As a result, I struggled with the secret temptation to go find some herbs that would make me not pregnant so I would not have to put my career on hold and so I would not have to spread my attention to a third little body. I rode it out, holding on to the belief that although God was crazy He knew what He was doing and wanted her here.
Later, in the eighth month, she stopped moving for about 24 hours and we weren’t sure she was alive. She started to move again. When she was delivered by planned c-section, the umbilical cord was tied in a knot around her neck.
However, she is now in her senior year. Despite being on the autism spectrum (Aspergers), she is actively involved in two churches as well as her extracurricular activities at school. She has been accepted to her dream college; it’s funny because I tried everything to get her to look at more than one school, but she insisted that was where she was supposed to go.
We are the kind of family that prochoice people cringe when they see. We’ve sucked money out of the system with little hope for return. I am not as gainfully employed as I could be, and thus not engaged in economic activity or paying greater taxes.
While it is illegal for employers to let women like me go, and it would libel were I to argue a direct connection between my job loss and my daughter’s issues, I have common sense. The cost of health care is exponential, and the government extended the required age to 26. My needs to be at meetings for my daughters made planning difficult. I was an easy target for at-will termination.
Yet, somehow, in our home, life defiantly and victoriously marches on. We’ve joyously and exuberantly defied the odds. Two of my three children are seemingly on a solid path toward constructive life. The third, with more issues, is taking a bit longer, but she is headed there.
Admittedly, there were dark moments of tears and frustration. Yet, it seems the joy and laughter erased them all.
I myself have grown tremendously as a mother. I have learned to assess situations differently, from more than one perspective. I have learned problem solving with limited means. I have learned when to fight and when to wait. I have changed the way I communicate. Most of all, I have learned to see the beauty in a frail and broken humanity.
I have found courage to do things I would never dream of. I tried to learn a foreign language despite my auditory processing disorder because I watched my daughters struggle to just learn English. I have learned to reach out and connect with others because of my daughter’s autism; I’m not good at it, but I am working on improving because I want to model it for her sake. In the middle of my life, after a job loss and devastating house fire, I let go of all the old pain and fear and decided to pursue becoming a teacher.
I have found joy in cleaning nail polish from an unauthorized corner of a bedroom without destroying the surface of the hardwood. I have started to cuss and then stopped, feeling gratitude that my children have survived to need the makeup smeared all over the sink. I have improved my coordination after tripping over high-heeled boots when it’s dark and they weren’t put away.
I share my story now in one place at this time because I fear in New York there will be no more renaissance women like me. They will sit in jobs they hate, with no children. They will not grow as human beings because little broken humans don’t arrive to lead them out of bondage into a new freedom. They will grow more and more emotionally and spiritually impoverished as child after child dies.
I fear too that other states will follow suit. I fear that we will wipe out a whole generation because we fear brokenness, lower income, and tough choices. It is tougher to choose life and choose life to the full, to walk it out every day with a less than perfect child. Death is the easy way out.
We need the simple childhood truths, like Horton’s statement: A person’s a person no matter how small. We truly as a culture need to evaluate our values when a fully developed person can be aborted because the mother did not consider the full impact of the decision to become pregnant, whether by design or fortune. Medical teams are not omniscient and cannot truly know at the moment of birth the value of a single life.
After all, a single mother had a Baby in stable. He died a criminal’s death. Yet He has touched more lives than our current POTUS or New York’s governor or any other political figure.
