I Knew You

Mary was a young nurse – only out of nursing school for about a year.  She worked in the maternity ward of a large hospital in the Midwest. The year was 1972 or so-just shortly before Roe v. Wade – the Supreme Court decision that unfortunately, made abortion a legal and very common practice in America.

My friend, Mary, was on duty one night – a very busy evening at the hospital. Women were coming in to give birth to children they had been eagerly awaiting for months-excited and anxious to deliver their hopefully healthy babies-and take them home to their loving family.

But on this night, Mary would have an experience that would affect her for as long as she lives.  A young woman came into the maternity department that night-not to deliver her full-term baby -but to end her pregnancy and abort her unwanted “fetus”.

The procedure was a “saline” abortion. A strong solution of saline and acids is forced into the uterus through a large needle inserted into the mother’s abdomen.   This deadly combination not only drowns the fetus -but also burns the delicate skin, eyes, and mouth.  The lungs are burned-the infant breathes in the caustic salt and acids.   The baby is eventually expelled from the uterus-sometimes after hours of being in that burning solution.   Most are dead when they are expelled-some are not. This night, instead of coming into the world to it’s loving mother’s arms-the baby was delivered into a bedpan. It was Mary’s responsibility in the neo-natal unit on this night-not to administer any care to the baby- it was her job to leave it alone until it could be taken to the morgue. She and the other nurses were busy taking care of the new arrivals, making sure their needs were met,  checking on babies and mothers, etc. Then Mary noticed that the aborted baby was alive-and struggling to breathe. She brought this to the attention of the doctor that was on duty.   He told her to do nothing. So this young nurse who was trained to help save lives and ease suffering could do nothing and the baby of course, died.  In the bedpan where his mother had “expelled” him earlier that evening.

Mary said it appeared that the mother had misled the doctor into thinking she was not as far along in her pregnancy as she really was. My friend believes this baby was 24 to 28 weeks in the womb.  Six to seven months.  The mother was a young, single woman who had decided that having a baby was not something that she was able or willing to do.

Mary, now a nurse for many years, recounted this story to me a while back. She said the event was heartbreaking and had affected her whole life. She still thinks about that baby who died alone in a bedpan 40 years ago. Thankfully, it wasn’t long after this incident that this hospital stopped doing abortions. Planned Parenthood does many of them in that city. But at least that hospital no longer does.  The nurses were all very thankful when they didn’t have to watch otherwise healthy babies be forced from their mother’s wombs-a place that should be the safest, most loving in the world-but many times is not.

Another painful and tragic aspect of this story: A few weeks, maybe a month, after this terrible event-my friend saw the wedding announcement in the newspaper of the woman who had aborted this baby. She was a professional-and was marrying another very successful professional. Obviously, there was no room in their new life together for their child. Or maybe it wasn’t “their” child. Who knows? We never will. But Mary has never forgotten that little boy-yes, it was a boy. I wonder if his mother thinks of him and wonders “what if”? What would his life have been like?  How much could he have contributed to society?  Did she have other children? Does she even know that he was a boy? Probably not.  And most certainly doesn’t know that he was alive-at least for a while after she “delivered” him.

This is just ONE of almost sixty million of these stories since “abortion on demand” became legal in this country. It is a brutal, barbaric form of killing.  Killing absolutely INNOCENT life.  And many times-not because the mother’s life is in danger.  Not because a young girl was raped.  But most of the time simply because a baby is unwanted.  A “problem” to be dealt with before a person can get on with her life.  Or, as President Obama said-a “mistake” that he wouldn’t want his daughters to be “punished” with.

I will end this with the entire verse of scripture from which I took the title of this article.   It’s from Jeremiah 1:5.  It is the Lord speaking to the prophet Jeremiah.  It simply says:

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

D. Chaney

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