I went to bed wondering if I should get up and watch the documentary on Kermit Gosnell, the “doctor” in Pennsylvania who was convicted of killing three babies who were born alive during abortion procedures.
Yes, I said it. He KILLED them. Finally, unable to sleep, I got up and decided to watch it. Now? I’m going to cry myself to sleep.
The tragedy of my own daughter dying because of a very severe and rare birth defect, and our choice to subsequently donate her body to the Neonatology Museum at Loma Linda Medical University Center, will never be an “old” story to me. She is my daughter.
And on my “bucket list” of things I want to do, is a trip back out to California where she is, because you see, it’s been 8 years since I saw her. I’m saving so that I can make a quick trip out there, where she sits in a small museum, on a shelf, in a jar, among other sons and daughters of broken-hearted mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and grandmas and grandpas.
Because I have a family of people in the medical field – my brother a physician, my sister a pharmacist, and myself a nurse, I have found comfort each time that I visited her, knowing that in the sadness of her death, so much was learned about neural tube defects, and the benefits of folic acid.Each time I have visited the museum, when I arrive, the classroom of medical students who are busy learning in that museum, are asked to take a break while one of the mothers visits her child. They allow me to stay there by myself. I get to be there all alone, to look at her 10 teeny tiny little beautiful toes, and her sweet little fingers, and look forward to the day I get to feel her sweet embrace in heaven. I’m not going to try to describe what that feels like. I can’t. I’m fine when I walk in. But while I am alone – I feel life getting sucked right out of my chest. And it still makes my heart ache and my arms feel empty.
And then on the documentary they show the inside of Kermit Gosnell’s refrigerator. There are jars. Of feet! And photos of babies who look like they are full term, with their spinal cords snipped.
And all I can think of is – Not just my daughter in a jar. No. No. I’m thinking of all those young women who perhaps naively, perhaps deceived into believing they had no other choice – wondering now as they watch the television. “Are those my baby’s 10 little toes??” I’m thinking of those girls tonight. And my heart is about to explode……
But there are hearts breaking all over tonight, I’m sure of it, and I’m sick to my stomach.
I am pro-life. But I think we pro-life folks need to start telling girls who have had abortions that they can be forgiven! They need to know God doesn’t love them any less because they made a mistake, and they need to know that God will forgive them. Our young girls need to know there are other alternatives. They need to know!
They need us to point them to the One who forgives!!! I often wonder – How many women who identify themselves as “pro-choice” are really “pro-life with a regret?” I wonder, if we pointed to Jesus, how many would realize they were actually pro-life? I just wonder….
I honestly do not know how I’m going to sleep….
“Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever, but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.” Micah 7:18-19
Leave a Reply