On May 19, 2018, Kayla Holmes took a bold step on social media, sharing photos of her miscarried children, Barnabas and Hannah, who each passed away during the second trimester of Holmes’ pregnancies. She shared their photos to reveal “what two precious little babies look like, even at these early stages,” according to her Facebook post, in the hope that people might see the truth about the preborn, especially in light of Ireland’s upcoming referendum on the 8th Amendment, which has served to protect life in the womb since 1983.
Holmes wrote:
With the coming referendum in Ireland, David and I felt we should share these pictures of our two children. We lost Barnabas at 14 weeks and Hannah at 19. This is what two precious little babies look like, even at these early stages. If the abortion laws change in Ireland, it will open the door for babies just like our two children to be killed. We’re sharing these pictures because we want everyone to look closely. Abortion is supposedly about showing love and respect to women, but at what cost? In reality, abortion is about the killing of the most innocent people in our society. Barnabas and Hannah died of natural causes, but if the law changes, hundreds and thousands of babies will be intentionally killed by those who should love them the most. Barnabas and Hannah brought great joy into our lives, and we hope their deaths can also be used to cause others to reconsider the seriousness of abortion. Please feel free to share this with others if you want to.
READ: First trimester babies aren’t blobs of tissue — they’re amazingly complex
As you can see from Holmes’ photo, at 14 and 19 weeks, these babies are very clearly human and very developed, though small. Their facial features are recognizable. By weeks 13-14, “most of the baby’s body is ‘sensitive to touch’ and his teeth are beginning to grow,” and between weeks 15 and 20, “a baby in the womb has a complete corpus callosum (a band of nerve fibers that connect the brain’s hemispheres), develops sweat glands, has ‘hormonal stress responses to invasive procedures,’ has stem cells in his bone marrow, and has functioning digestive enzymes.”
Ireland’s referendum is coming up this week, and social media groups have banned ads on the referendum from their platforms, which primarily affects the reach of pro-life groups, as mainstream media has pushed the pro-abortion, pro-repeal position. The referendum could effectively legalize abortion for any reason in Ireland, a pro-life country with a very low maternal mortality rate — much lower than that of the United States, where abortion has been legal nationwide since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. The U.S. is one of only seven countries which allows abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Ireland should not follow the United States’ example.
While certain U.S. states have abortion restrictions, late-term abortion is legal in other states, like New Mexico and Colorado, where abortionists kill children the same age as Kayla Holmes’ children, and even later into pregnancy. One abortion facility in New Mexico has even been caught offering to abort a child at 37 weeks of pregnancy — for a lucrative $17,000.
Children the same age as Kayla Holmes’ babies are aborted every day in the United States. At that stage of pregnancy, a D&E dismemberment abortion is standard. And it is horrifying. Children at this age feel not only pain, but also sense light and temperature. These are human beings:
When a country legalizes abortion, you quickly learn that the culture of death is never fully satisfied. It continues to push for more and more death, devaluing human beings at every age and stage, replacing real care with killing.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. When it comes to the humanity of preborn children like little Barnabas and Hannah, their picture speaks the truth more than words ever could.
