They Told Her

They told her the baby in her womb had an unsurvivable condition. 

This baby she and her husband prayed for, planned for, and already deeply loved.

Devastating. 

Her belief in a God who is able to heal and restore ebbed and flowed from moment to moment, but still she fought for hope. 

They told her the baby’s condition was worsening and when there is a human being fighting for life inside your body, connected to you in sacred ways, there is a likelihood that over time, your health will be in jeopardy as well.

So they dug in their heels. They prayed more. Petitioned more. Believed more. Hoped more. 

They told her that she was developing mirror syndrome. Her own health was now mirroring that of the failing systems of her beloved. Her very life was at risk alongside her baby’s now. 

Her husband faced losing his wife. Her other children faced losing their mama. Her parents would lose their daughter. And on and on. 

They told her that there was nothing they could do for her.

She lived in a land where men without wombs and women with healthy babies decided that the only moral…the only Godly condition for terminating a pregnancy is when baby’s heartbeat stops on its own. 

To abort this pregnancy would make her a criminal. To assist in saving her life before baby’s heartbeat stopped on its own would make her doctors criminals.

Her only path was to wait in agony for the imminent deterioration of health that would claim both her baby’s life and her own. And to hope for a miracle.

There was nobody willing to save her. No one willing to fight for her life. 

And now, added to her anguish was guilt, condemnation and shame for daring to want to live. 

The message they told her was unmistakable: baby’s life mattered more than hers. It was in her newsfeed from fellow Christians.

Her life, in fact mattered more to them when she was in someone’s womb than it did now, when so many other lives depended on her. When her own dreams and destinies were yet to come. 

Baby’s precious heartbeat continued to pump through a tiny, broken body that was never going to be able to sustain life.  And this beautiful woman began to die. 

Her state. Her country. Her church. Told her that life matters. They preached and posted and spouted one-dimensional, mic-drop one-liners on the sanctity of life. But her life was in the margins of their big debate, and so a blind eye turned to the fact that their pro-life stance was a death sentence for her.