Saturday, June 20, 2009

I was 22 weeks pregnant

I have asked myself what could have altered the events that led up to the murder of my child. (…)After all, I wanted this baby—a baby who already had a name; a baby whom I could feel moving in my womb; a baby with eyelids, eyebrows and fingernails grown to the end of her fingertips; a baby who could hear and distinguish my voice; a baby who could feel pain. (…)
Dilation and extraction
I was five-and-a-half months pregnant—my baby was at 22 weeks of gestation—when I was told that, most likely, she would not live to term. The ultrasound revealed severe edema about the head. I was still lying on the table, the audible heartbeat of my baby resounding in the examining room, when the doctor recommended terminating the pregnancy. I was given a choice of several methods of aborting my baby. I chose the procedure described below, which was recommended by my physician.
For a second-trimester abortion, my cervix needed to be sufficiently dilated, as the baby was too large to pull from the uterus using the suction device employed in first-trimester abortions. Approximately five narrow rods were inserted into my cervix, and I was sent home for the night to dilate. When sufficient dilation had occurred, the abortionist used a surgical instrument to rupture the amniotic sac.
Next, the abortionist used forceps to grab any part of my baby he could. He pulled until an arm or a leg was torn off and took my baby out, one piece at a time. In a second-trimester abortion, the baby’s intact skull is too big to pull out of the cervix and must be crushed prior to removal. When the abortionist saw the brains spilling from my cervix, he knew my baby’s skull had been successfully crushed. They call this the calvaria sign. At this point, the skull was removed.
Once the abortionist had pulled out all of the pieces he could, he used a curette to scrape the inside of my uterus to retrieve any remaining body parts. The pieces of my dismembered baby were then reassembled on a tray to be sure that all of her body had been successfully removed. (…)
I went on to have another baby, what everyone called a “perfect” baby boy. But I remember, with a mother’s grief, my little girl—Melanie, I named her. I never talked about Melanie to anyone.
How the lie is fed
Abortion begins with a lie and is masked with an empty promise. The lie tells us that the new person growing in the womb is insignificant and dispensable. The empty promise tells us that the action of abortion is justifiable and without consequences—not for the mother, nor the child, nor the world. This lie permeates not only our courts, but our households as well. In the culture of death, it is being passed from generation to generation, thus living, moving and breathing among the people, deriving its energy from the multitudes who believe it. That is how the lie is fed, and this is how fallen we are.
Of course, I never received any remains of my daughter. So there was no little body to bury, no doll-sized casket, no gravestone to adorn with flowers. I carried nothing in my arms as I left the facility. The days that followed brought no sympathy cards, no meals to be shared and no flowers. There was no funeral service to honor a life cut short by a woman’s “choice” and by the abortionist’s blade. No one called.
The choice I made cannot be erased. I could never be sorry enough. But my story can be told as honestly and boldly as possible, with the hope that it will stir hearts, change minds and save lives. I can share it in an attempt to give voice to those who have no voice to raise—the least, the lost, the last—for Melanie, for all children who, even at the first instant of their lives, are children of God—wonderfully knit together by Him in their mother’s womb.
Nancy M. Kreuzer

(This article was published in the May-June 2009 issue of Celebrate Life, American Life League’s bimonthly publication.)

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