After Two Canceled Appointments, a Baby's Life is Saved
After Two Canceled Appointments, a Baby's Life is Saved
Another victory for pro-lifers
In his 2016 book, pro-life author Mike G Williams told the story of a 17-year-old girl from Texas who changed her mind about having an abortion after two unsuccessful efforts to get one.
When he learned she was pregnant, the teenager’s boyfriend told her to have an abortion and broke up with her. The girl contacted an abortion facility, which told her she had to come in for an initial appointment, and then wait 24 hours before having the actual abortion. This was because of pro-life legislation.
A Hidden Ultrasound Screen
When the girl arrived for her first appointment, she was taken into a room for an ultrasound. She describes what happened:
The screen was turned away from my eyes, so I didn’t have a chance to see my baby. I saw [the abortionist] listen to my baby with the fetal Doppler, but he wore headphones, so I didn’t get a chance to hear the heartbeat, either.
But even without hearing or seeing the baby, my heart still ached.
Despite her emotional turmoil, the girl was firm in her decision to abort. When she went to the front desk to schedule the actual procedure, she was told that the next available appointment was a week later.
She made the appointment and went home to wait.
Over the next week, she says, she “could feel this thing inside me was actually growing” but “stood firm in my abortion plans.”
The Effects of Pro-Life Legislation
The day before the scheduled abortion, the abortion facility called her. Texas had passed a law saying abortion facilities had to meet the same standards as other medical surgical centers. The abortion facility couldn’t comply, so it was shutting down.
Her abortion appointment was canceled.
Since the abortion facility was operating in a substandard way (as evidenced by the fact that it didn’t meet the criteria of the law) the girl was saved from poor medical care as well.
Abortion, of course, is never good medical care. However, since the abortion facility was operating in a manner that may have put the girl at risk of complications, not only was her baby protected, but the young woman was, too.
Still determined to abort, the young woman made an appointment at one of the four remaining abortion facilities still open in Texas. This facility was two hours away.
A Rapidly Growing Baby
The morning of the appointment, she felt her baby kick for the first time.
The young woman says:
I woke up the morning of my appointment with butterflies in my stomach. But these butterflies weren’t from nervousness. No. They were the flutter of little feet kicking against my tummy. I knew in my heart that this was not a mass of cells.
A pregnant person usually first feels her baby kick between 16 and 25 weeks of pregnancy. This means the young woman was in her 16th week of pregnancy or beyond.
Here is an ultrasound of a 16-week-old preborn baby. This would be the 18th week of pregnancy, within the time frame.
(The discrepancy is caused by the fact that pregnancy is counted from the date of the first day of the last menstrual period, but conception occurs two weeks after the period when ovulation occurs.)
Feeling her baby kick didn’t change the young woman’s mind. She got up, got dressed, and went to the abortion facility.
At the Second Abortion Facility
Workers at the new facility did another ultrasound. Again, the screen was turned away from her and she never saw her baby or heard the heartbeat.
Before she could have the abortion, fate intervened. Abortion workers diagnosed the girl with a urinary tract infection. They gave her antibiotics with instructions to take them for a week, then come back for the abortion.
Once again, the abortion was rescheduled.
A Visit to a Pregnancy Resource Center
That night, the girl’s mother asked her if she would be willing to go to a pro-life-run pregnancy resource center for another ultrasound.
The girl says, “I was strongly against this, as I knew going someplace like that would make the decision much harder.” Her ex-boyfriend, who wanted the baby aborted, told her not to go.
But the girl decided to humor her mother. When she went to the pregnancy center, she says she was “100% set on having the abortion.” She expected the pregnancy center volunteers to be judgmental, saying “I wasn’t all too excited to sit and be judged by a room full of people telling me how wrong it was to get this abortion.”
But she was surprised by how welcoming the pregnancy center volunteers were:
When I walked in, all I saw was smiling faces. I signed in, and they took me into a back room and began to talk with me. My counselor was smiling and understanding, and she was listening to the words I was saying.
A Life-Changing Ultrasound
They offered to do an ultrasound. The girl believed she would see nothing on the screen, so she accepted. But she was in for a surprise.
The young woman recalls:
I saw a head with a brain. I saw little arms followed by 10 little fingers. I saw tiny legs with two tiny feet moving and kicking around.
But most of all, I saw and heard a beating heart. I lay there watching my daughter’s steady beating heart, and I knew that baby was my baby.
Tears flooded my eyes. I loved that fluttering heartbeat inside me. I loved this baby, and I knew she deserved life.
At that moment, the girl chose life for her daughter.
Her story shows how different parts of the pro-life movement, working together, intervened in one young woman’s life and saved her child – along with a little luck.
Pro-life legislation initially delayed the abortion. If there had been no waiting period, the girl could’ve had her abortion the first day she came to the abortion facility. Shutting down the abortion facility delayed the abortion further. Then the girl was turned away a second time.
Finally, the girl’s mother was able to talk her into going to a pregnancy resource center, where other pro-lifers sprang into action by providing a lifesaving ultrasound.
The safeguards put in place by some pro-lifers delayed the abortion long enough for other pro-lifers to intervene. As a result, a baby’s life was saved.
Source
Mike G Williams Thank You for Saving My Life (Independently Published, 2016) 120 – 125
Sarah Terzo covered the abortion issue for over 13 years as a professional journalist. In this capacity, she has written nearly a thousand articles about abortion and read over 900 books on the topic. She has been researching and writing about abortion since attending The College of New Jersey (class of 1997) where she minored in Women’s Studies.
Permission is given to pro-life organizations to repost or reprint this article, but please include the following:
This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.