By Amy Liu Longacre
Have you ever forgotten something that was really not forgotten? Something that lingers in your heart, and although it is not a verbalized, conscious part of your everyday life — is still a part of you and you know deep inside? With the many moral and ethical decisions we must grapple with today, including and especially highlighted by pro-choice/pro-life discussions, I thought a gentle reminder of what — and who — is at stake might help us find our compasses.
Years ago, when I was young, I had no opinion regarding abortion until I saw photos of aborted babies, and those images pierced my soul. As a Christ-follower, I was drawn firmly into the pro-life camp, and my respect for God’s artistic genius in the creation of life only grew. Several years later when I became pregnant, my husband and I were both overjoyed and awed at the fact that this mysterious miracle was taking place right here on Earth, in my own body. I thought a lot about Psalm 139: “You knit me together in my mother’s womb… I am fearfully and wonderfully made… All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Such hope and excitement for our child!
When I was four months pregnant, I went in for what was supposed to be a routine ultrasound, but instead received devastating news. Our child was diagnosed with anencephaly, in which the top of the spinal tube does not close in its junction with the brain. When a child is born with anencephaly, he or she appears completely normal from the top of the forehead down, but has no skull above the forehead, leaving the brain completely exposed. About 50% of these children are stillborn, and the other 50% die within the first couple of days. The medical recommendation was to abort our “fetus,” which was the technically accurate term, yet newly applied to our baby to distance us from him emotionally — to imply that he was not quite a person.
However, we were fortunate to understand what was being offered, and we rejected that choice.
