I lost my first baby, Jack, at a day shy of eight weeks gestation, but I didn’t realize his soul was no longer earthside until 10 weeks and two days.
I should’ve guessed something was off since I started to feel less nauseous on Thanksgiving. But I was too happy to be able to eat to think it could possibly be for a tragic reason.
I’ve always been pro-life. It’s never ever made sense to me that there’s a single, legitimate excuse to kill an innocent child just because he isn’t born yet, no matter how dire the circumstances might be. If there isn’t the most basic human right to not be killed when you don’t deserve to be, then all other human rights are moot. We all started out as embryos; what if someone had killed us? My time working in the pro-life movement has only added to this conviction, as I’ve learned the devastating nature of every form of abortion, marveled at what science shows us of prenatal development, and heard the heartbreaking stories of men and women who don’t go a single day without mourning the babies they’ve lost to this terrible act of man.
But losing Jack opened my eyes in a whole new way — in a few ways, actually.
Compassion for moms considering abortion
First, pregnancy is no joke. Every single woman who has ever sacrificed her body to grow a baby is a warrior. I was sick almost immediately after finding out I was pregnant, and I couldn’t get over how out of control I felt — like my body was no longer my own. I know some women love being pregnant, but my short, yet life-changing experience carrying Jack increased my compassion for moms in early pregnancy, especially those considering abortion.
In addition to being scared or broke or alone or all of the above, women who feel abortion is their best option may often feel sick, a state that leaves them all the more vulnerable. This is critical to remember as we consider the best ways to reach moms in their time of need and empower them to choose life.
We know preborn children are real and alive
Second, when you find out you’re pregnant, there are about a hundred different apps you can download that walk you through your pregnancy week by week. These are secular apps without any explicitly pro-life bent. Their assumption, I assume, is that the women downloading these apps want their children to live. From day one, these apps congratulate you on your “baby,” describe “his” or “her” ever-growing features in detail, using both medically accurate and humanizing words to enlighten the expectant mother on the precious happenings inside her.
This, in contrast to how the abortion industry describes pregnancy and fetal development, became more jarring when it could’ve been my baby they were describing. I was struck anew by the subjectivity and callousness with which abortion supporters describe what is a very objective, biological process. When people — even apps — are celebrating each critical, incredible stage of your embryo’s growth if he’s wanted, while the abortion industry poised to profit if you kill him describes him as a “clump of cells,” the “product of conception,” or “pregnancy tissue,” it makes the hairs on your neck stand up. Or it should…
Former abortionist, Bernard Nathanson — who committed and oversaw 60,000 abortions before his conversion to Catholicism — describes in his book, “The Hand of God,” that if humans grew at the same rate of development throughout the entire pregnancy as they do the first two weeks in utero, “we would each weigh twenty-eight thousand pounds at birth.” What led to Nathanson’s conversion in part was seeing what he was doing during an abortion to a growing baby via the ultrasound. He could no longer deny that he was killing a very-much-alive human person.
I don’t know why my Jack’s life ended so soon, but what I do know is that when he died, his 1.5cm body already had a beating heart, forming fingers, nerves, organs, eyes, and a little nose. And aside from what ultrasounds and science show us, I knew he was alive, was real, and was mine.
Having a miscarriage made me more strongly opposed to abortion
Finally, miscarrying Jack made me even more against the abortion pill than I already was. I was told leaving the ER before completing the miscarriage to expect bleeding and cramping “like a period,” which is often what women who take the abortion pill are told they will experience. In reality, losing Jack was a physically and mentally brutal process that resulted in me hemorrhaging clots the size of tennis balls, losing consciousness multiple times, a contracting a UTI and a uterine infection, and the ongoing effects of low blood pressure from blood loss.
Though my Jack died for reasons unknown, the FDA’s own reporting on the abortion pill — mifepristone — shows that at least 5.9 million babies in the womb have been killed by this deadly drug, now comprising nearly two thirds of abortions committed in the United States each year. Adding to the devastation, at least 32 women have died* taking the abortion pill since it was approved by the FDA in 2000 under the Clinton administration. Hundreds more women have experienced complications similar to my miscarriage, or worse, often alone in their dorm rooms or on their bathroom floors.
According to mifepristone’s own label, 2.9-4.6% of women ingesting the abortion pill end up in the ER with complications. I can tell you from my own experience miscarrying that there was a moment in the ambulance where I thought I might die. Mothers being sold the abortion pill are also being sold the lie that it’s safer for them than Tylenol. This is a vile marketing technique of the abortion industry, profiting off of vulnerable, misguided women.
And rather than pulling this drug, harmful to both woman and child, from the market, the FDA under Obama and later Biden inexplicably instead made it easier for abortion businesses worldwide to sell it. It’s mind-blowing that a drug designed to kill preborn children was ever approved to begin with; that it’s now easier than ever to purchase, despite millions of dead babies and hundreds of maternal health crises, is morally incomprehensible. Today, the abortion pill is sold by countless abortion businesses online, including illegally into states with abortion bans. And with no in-person appointment or medical oversight, this means the gestational age of the preborn child is not confirmed, ectopic pregnancies aren’t detected early, and buyers of the deadly drug aren’t just women, but abusers and traffickers.
I’ve long known abortion to be vile – not only because it violently destroys a genetically-unique, growing, developing human being, but because it wreaks havoc on the mother, too. I’m grateful for the short time God let me carry Jack, and even for the suffering I experienced while passing his tiny body, because I now know with certainty the devastation of delivering a dead baby.
And it’s tragic.
*The FDA has received reports of serious adverse events in patients who took mifepristone. As of December 31, 2022, there were 32 reports of deaths in patients associated with mifepristone since the product was approved in September 2000, including two cases of ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy located outside the womb, such as in the fallopian tubes) resulting in death; and several fatal cases of severe systemic infection (also called sepsis). The adverse events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of concurrent use of other drugs, other medical or surgical treatments, co-existing medical conditions, and information gaps about patient health status and clinical management of the patient. A summary report of adverse events that reflects data through December 31, 2022, is here. The FDA has reviewed this information and did not identify any new safety signals. The FDA intends to update this summary report as appropriate.
Tell President Trump, RFK, Jr., Elon, and Vivek:
Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!
