A Tale of Two Baby Boys Slated for Abortion, by Stephanie Gray

“If she can’t calm down, I can’t do the abortion,” an abortion doctor frustratingly declared in the presence of Holly O’Donnell, an ex-procurement technician who used to obtain tissue from aborted fetuses.  In Episode 3 of “Human Capital,” the expose on Planned Parenthood by the Center for Medical Progress, O’Donnell describes her observation of, and participation in, what happened after. 

The patient eventually did calm down; the abortion eventually did happen; and O’Donnell eventually did do her job.  O’Donnell was soon to see the intact, later-term baby who was killed as a result of the abortion the child’s mom calmed down for (although when, precisely, the fetus died is in question, since O’Donnell said a colleague tapped the baby’s heart with an instrument and it started beating).  In order to procure a brain, O’Donnell cut through the middle of the child’s face. 

It was a boy.

To think that this precious child could have been saved if—if his mom hadn’t “calmed down.”  Incidentally, that’s what saved the life of another little boy, the son of Dana.

When Dana was pregnant with her fifth child, overwhelmed by the pressures of raising a family, she and her husband opted for abortion.  She went to the clinic for a medical abortion: RU486.  She ingested the first pill in the presence of a doctor, and took the second pill home to consume the following day.  The first pill would kill her baby; the second pill would expel her baby.

Dana already had reservations about the abortion when she went to the clinic.  Those concerns only deepened as time went on.  She wrote, “I was already regretting my actions. I was thinking, ‘What if that would have been the son I wanted.’ I cried with my husband, and I cried myself to sleep.”

By the next day, Dana, like the first woman mentioned, couldn’t calm down.  In fact, she was crying hysterically.  But she had an advantage over the other woman: She was not in a clinic with time pressures, waiting rooms, and organs to harvest; moreover, she herself was in control of administering the abortion. 

So Dana went online and searched “Abortion pill regret” and discovered a miracle: It is possible to reverse the effects of RU486. The first pill in RU486, mifepristone, kills a pre-born child by blocking the effects of progesterone, a hormone a woman’s body produces that is necessary to grow a healthy baby.  So the Culture of Life Services in San Diego, California, was able to connect Dana to a physician who immediately began administering progesterone to her body, to counteract what the first pill was doing. 

It was a success: Dana maintained her pregnancy and in April of this year, to the great joy of his parents, a baby boy was born.

In struggling to “calm down,” both women showed that they intuitively knew how it goes against a woman’s nature to kill her child.  And in a bittersweet way, both women’s stories teach us how vital it is to never, ever give up.

"Let's Play Planned Parenthood!" by Stephanie Gray

Image Source: http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/endthekilling/postcards

When I was little, I routinely said to my sister and friends, “Let’s play house!” or “Let’s play doctor!”  Indeed, it is common for young children to enjoy replicating in their imaginary world of play land what they see adults do. 

With that in mind, let’s imagine that two siblings are playing in their living room.  “Let’s play Planned Parenthood!” one little girl cries to her sister.  “Okay!” she responds.  So they gather their Barbies and their baby dolls and ask Mom to lend them some scissors.  Mom, figuring they’re doing arts and crafts, says, “Sure!”

The little girls then proceed to cut off Barbie’s limbs and cut open their dolls’ heads.  Now imagine the Mom walks in on this display and understandably shrieks, “WHAT ARE YOU GIRLS DOING?!?!?!”  They innocently reply, “We’re playing Planned Parenthood! We’re harvesting tissue!”  Something tells me that their mom would not celebrate their budding sense of “reproductive justice,” but would instead make an emergency call to a child psychiatrist about how to handle children who dismember dolls.

If we wouldn’t want children to play such a game in their imaginary world, why would we want adults to act in such a way in our reality world?  And that’s the very point the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform powerfully makes with this postcard of theirs (front and back).

Our very different intuitive reactions to a child’s declaration, “Let’s play house!” versus “Let’s play Planned Parenthood!” reveals there is something gravely disordered with the latter.

Making All Things New, by Stephanie Gray

Photo Attribution: Texas Radio & The Big Beast

There are some emotional pains that are so excruciating, so deep, and so overwhelming that words are inadequate to describe the agony.  In such experiences, the deepest and most guttural of sobs seem to provide no relief.

That kind of suffering came to mind when I met a beautiful college student at my recent talk at an American university this past week.  She approached me afterwards to thank me for giving her something she didn’t have previously: a way to articulate the reasons behind the pro-life position in order to make “The Case for Life” (the title for my talk in which I equipped the audience to persuasively defend the right to life of pre-born children).  After she thanked me, she made a significant disclosure:

“I had a baby last December.”

She then told me her story: her parents wanted her to have an abortion.  She didn’t know back then how to make the case for life to convince them it was wrong to meet their wishes, but she nonetheless knew it in her heart.  And so, even if she couldn’t articulate it with her tongue, she would not allow abortion to be the answer.

An unplanned pregnancy. 

An unmarried student. 

A betrayal by one’s own parents who wanted their grandchild dismembered. 

Agony. 

Utter agony.

As she walked through that trial, a parallel suffering was being lived by two others: there was a married couple who lost not one, not two, but three children to sudden deaths.  Children should expect to one day bury their parents, but parents should never have to bury their children.  This couple had to bury three.  Torture.

But these parallel journeys would intersect.  Two crises would meet and mysteriously produce beauty: “I gave my baby up for adoption,” the student told me, “to a couple I knew for four years who had had three children and all of them died.”

She took out her phone and showed me a most precious picture of her baby girl. What joy for her to know that she played a role in bringing the gift of life, and its fruits of joy, to a couple who had known such deep sadness.  What a joy for the adoptive parents to know that they played a role in receiving the gift of life and affirming the courageous and loving choice of this young woman.  What a joy for both parties to know that when faced with the neediness of a little child, their response was a spirit of responsibility, generosity, and love.

Amidst the crisis pregnancy, the stirring in this student’s heart to consider adoption was as though God was whispering what He said in Revelation 21:5 “Behold I make all things new.”

Amidst the great loss of their children’s deaths, the adoptive couple’s reception of new life was as though God was breathing into them, “Behold, I make all things new.”

And 24 hours after that baby girl’s birth, her grandfather who had previously wished her aborted, called his daughter to apologize, and to thank her for giving life to his grandchild that he had held the day before—in that moment of mercy, it was as though the written word of God came to life yet again:

“Behold, I make all things new.”

Address at Westmont College Chapel by Stephanie Gray, March 16, 2015 in Santa Barbara

40 Days by Stephanie Gray

We are now at the half-way point of Lent.  It is also the half-way point of an international movement: the 40 Days for Life Campaign which consists of three elements: 1) prayer and fasting, 2) constant vigil, and 3) community outreach in response to the killing of the youngest of our kind through abortion.  On Sunday in Vancouver we marked the middle of this campaign with a rally outside Vancouver’s largest abortion clinic.

 At that gathering I gave a speech about 4 principles we need to take to heart as we follow the call to be salt and light, and those lessons are extracted from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words in his Letter from Birmingham Jail:

“There was a time when the church was very powerful -- in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being ‘disturbers of the peace’ and ‘outside agitators.’ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were ‘a colony of heaven,’ called to obey Gad rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be ‘astronomically intimidated.’ By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.”

Just as the early Church, through God’s grace, brought an end to historical evils, we too can help bring an end to present-day evils by seeking Dr. King’s advice to

1)      Be thermostats,

2)      Enter a town,

3)      Press on, and

4)      Obey God

If you consider a thermostat in contrast to a thermometer, the latter merely records the temperature—it tells us something, whereas the former actually adjusts the temperature.  A thermostat is the controller which turns heat or cool air on or off to ensure an environment is at the proper temperature.  Likewise, we must step back and say what is the ideal “temperature” for our culture—how ought things be?  And when we identify what should be the way (i.e., respect all human life) then we must work to bring our culture up to that level. 

One 40 Days for Life volunteer in Wisconsin did just that.  Standing alone on a cold day, praying outside an abortion clinic, he saw a couple whose hearts were cold as they walked into that clinic to kill their child.  But the volunteer adjusted the temperature—he conveyed warmth by lovingly looking at them and saying, “God bless you two.  No, wait—God bless all three of you!”  That’s all it took—a witness, a kind gesture, a correction of words for greater accuracy and the couple was changed.  They left the clinic and months later a baby boy was born.

Not only must we be thermostats, we must “enter a town”—in other words, in order to change the culture we must engage the culture.  The early Christians reached many because they took their message directly to the people.  We all ought to do an inventory of who we know, or who has been placed in our path, and how we can reach out to them. 

Not only should we create opportunities to engage those we know, but we should seize opportunities that arise.  Unfortunately I didn’t do that a couple days ago, and hope others can learn from my mistake: I was at my cousin’s house alone when the doorbell rang.  A Liberal party candidate was canvassing the neighborhood and I simply said, “The homeowners aren’t here” so she gave me a flyer for them and that was it.  As I took the flyer to the kitchen I realized I had just missed an important opportunity—knowing that that candidate’s leader Justin Trudeau’s abortion-supporting views are so extreme he said he will force MPs in his caucus to vote against any legislation restricting abortion, I should have engaged the candidate in a discussion about that.

Thankfully pro-life students at UBC did seize a similar opportunity just last week when they decided to throw together a protest in response to Justin Trudeau speaking on their campus.  When I joined them at this demonstration, I spoke with a student who initially thought abortion was okay, but when he looked at an image of an abortion victim and when I took him through basic pro-life reasoning about human rights, he admitted that that made sense and thanked me.  That exchange wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t engaged the culture—so let’s re-capture the spirit of the early church and do just that.

Of course, we also need to press on—and that can be difficult when an injustice seems never-ending and when we don’t always see the results.  Several years ago a friend of mine told me that even though she was raised in a pro-life home and was taught and believed that abortion was wrong, when she got pregnant in her twenties everything changed—she told her doctor she wanted an abortion and was given a number to a clinic where she was going to get it done.  But one day when she was driving to work she noticed a mini-van in front of her with a bumper sticker which displayed a quote by Mother Teresa: “It is a poverty to decide a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”  Her heart softened, she rejected abortion, and several months later gave birth to a baby boy. 

The people in the blue mini-van have no idea that their pro-life proclamation saved a baby—but it did.  That is proof that we may never see the fruits but our job is to press on, and trust that God will use our efforts to bring about great good.

Finally, in all things we need to obey God, remembering that all His commands are summed into one: Love.  We are called to love God and love neighbor, and love is wanting the other’s good.  That’s what drives pro-lifers to stand and pray and reach out and circulate the pro-life message—it is willing the good of the pre-born as well as the born.  Of course, it is love which drove Jesus to the cross.  And so, at this mid-way point of this 40-day journey, let us remember to take up our cross and follow Christ, just as the early church martyrs did.

Stephanie Gray's Presentation at Students for Life of America 2015

Love Unleashes Life: A Talk at the Geaux Forth Conference

On January 21 I presented to 1,400 teenagers at the Louisiana Right to Life Geaux Forth Conference in conjunction with the March for Life in DC.  Here is the recording: 

Appearance on EWTN on Nov. 7, 2014