ABORTION KILLS…. the innocent!
PLANNED PARENTHOOD:
“I Cut the Vocal Cord So The Baby Can't Scream.”
Dr. Leah Torres, an OB/GYN in Salt Lake City, Utah, said that
when she performs certain abortions she cuts the vocal cord of the baby so
"there's really no opportunity" for the child to scream. She also
described herself as a "uterus ripper outer" because she performs
hysterectomies.
Toby’s
Adoption Day
‘doption is a beautiful thing. But it is also a terrifying thing.
It is a maddening thing. It is a mystifying thing.” Emily Stimpson Chapman
was writing in the final days of the pregnancy of the woman who would make her
dream of being a mother come true.
“It’s like praying for an organ transplant,” Chapman, a
freelance writer, continued,
writing with great sensitivity to the sacrifice of one mother for another. “One
person has to die, so another person can live, except, in this case, one woman
has to give up her child, so I can have a child. One woman has to renounce her
motherhood, so I can become a mother. It’s not a physical death she has to go
through, but it’s a death just the same.” About the birth mother, she added:
“She is in so much pain — so much gut-wrenching, heart-searing,
soul-piercing pain — not just about the adoption, but about all the
uncertainty that lies ahead for her.”
This is one of the graces of our cyber connections, which can
often seem like an overwhelming onslaught of hyperstimulation, a
perpetually pending doom against which we are powerless.
For Chapman, a first-time expecting parent, Facebook and a blog site
were opportunities to share the adoption journey, with all its pain and fear,
hope and joy. This is a gift not just to the adoptive and birth parents
— who in this case all benefit from a community of prayer —
but to every potential reader whose encounter may be a source of
education or inspiration or even an instrument of healing of wounds from
decisions past that stay with us.
Adoption and foster care are subjects that, like
abortion, tend to be obscured from public view. If it happens to you, you know
— and may feel quite alone in it. If not, it may be something
foreign, the stuff of bad headlines or miserable politics. And adoption and
fostering, being much rarer than abortion, also suffer from our lack of
attention: Whether you’re a birth, adoptive, or foster parent, you may
have to go it alone in your community. Even our language is woefully
inadequate: “Giving a child up for adoption” sounds to a lot of people, most
especially and unjustly birth mothers, like abandonment — when in truth it’s
the most selfless act there is. When we throw around the word love in
the most casual of ways, we should stop to reflect that this is exactly what it
is: radical self-sacrifice. In this case, wanting the best for
another, and knowing you may not be the best for them.
The birth mom has struggled with addiction and the law,
finances, homelessness, and relationships, to name a few. But Chapman
reflects: “I also know there is no other way for her. She has to place the
baby for adoption. Not because I need it, but because the baby needs it. She is
not physically, mentally, or emotionally capable of raising a child, nor is
there is anyone else in her life or the father’s life who can care for him.
Adoption is the only and best option for this little boy.”
Toby was born on July 25, and the adoption became official
a few days later, after a little last-minute drama. The Chapmans were able to
stay overnight in the hospital and do all the things parents so naturally do
with their new arrivals. Seeing the pictures of the new parents, Emily and
Christopher, feeding Toby — this gift of another’s heart — is the kind of image
we should have in front of us more often. Some days we seem addicted to
our screens and the most recent outrage, rather than seeking out ways to
give ourselves over to the love that gives and transforms life. Having heard
about only some of the scares along the way, I know it’s a miracle that his
birth mom had the strength of commitment to see the way through to delivery.
He’s been loved into the world and received into a home so eager to nourish him
with the same. So many today suffer from a lack of love, and it has
repercussions we see in our harsh and frequently despairing culture, often
desperate for distractions from the pain. Even with some early medical challenges,
with such an outpouring of love so early on, Toby is an icon of hope and his
parents — all of them — are a call to deeper love.
What more can we do to love someone into flourishing? There is a
pregnant woman who does not know there is room in your heart and home for the
unexpected child within her she knows she cannot raise herself. There are
orphans who have given up expecting anyone to come to welcome them into their
home for a time or forever. Perhaps it is a miracle in itself that a little
sharing on social media can raise such challenges, but can we rise to them?
This column is based on one
available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.
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