When someone cries, how do compassionate people respond? The cries of another typically elicit a reaction from the hearer to comfort and console those whose tears express what words cannot.
I once met a labor and delivery nurse who told me about a particularly traumatic abortion-related story.* A patient presented at the hospital the nurse worked at. The patient was in labor at 25 weeks pregnancy (pregnancy typically goes to 40 weeks). Earlier that day, she had gone to a late-term abortion clinic where she had Step 1 of a multi-step procedure to induce the death of her pre-born child. Potassium chloride (KCL) had been inserted into the heart of the baby to bring about a heart attack in the child. Then, in the following days, the doctors were going to go in and pull that baby’s body parts out piece by piece.
Since labor had begun unexpectedly, the woman went to a hospital, but it was a hospital that does not do abortions. When the woman told the medical personnel what she had gone through earlier in the day, she said to them, “I came in for an abortion. I want an abortion. I don’t want this baby. I want the abortion now.”
The doctors and nurses gathered. They listened for a heartbeat and, unexpectedly, the KCL had not stopped the baby’s heart. They discussed the situation and determined that they had a responsibility to resuscitate the baby if the child came out alive.
The woman said, “I don’t want that. I want an abortion. Kill my baby!”
The medical team said no; if the baby came out with a heartbeat, they would attempt resuscitation. The woman continued with her labor. And when the baby was born, the infant cried. Upon hearing the cries of her child, the mother screamed, “Save my baby!”
Feeling the child kick had not softened her hard heart. Hearing the heartbeat had not softened her hard heart. But hearing the cries of her own flesh and blood had drawn out from within her the instinctive and maternal response to alleviate the suffering of the vulnerable in her midst.
Unfortunately the choice the woman had made earlier in the day had a permanent consequence: Resuscitation did not work, and the baby passed away.
There’s an important lesson here, and that is the power of a cry. For pre-born children, however, their screams are silent. We cannot hear, at an audible level, their plea for our aid. But we who know they exist, we who know their very lives are in jeopardy by legalized abortion, have a responsibility to raise our voices in their place, to make an appeal to the consciences of others to help—not harm—them.
*This story was told by Stephanie at the March for Life in Victoria, BC, in May 2019.
Image source from unsplash.com, Sergiu Vălenaș
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