The debate about abortion is endless. More thoughtful people will often debate when a fetus becomes human. When you finish this story there will be no doubt. The Catholic Church teaches that you become fully human at the point of conception. Science has discovered that when a sperm fertilizes the egg, a flash of light occurs, signaling the world that all the elements of a viable human being are there when the DNA from the sperm matches with the DNA in the egg. It is no longer just a tissue.
Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
The next question is, when does an infant in the womb develop self-awareness? That question may not be readily answered by science, although doctors doing fetal surgery have reported a tiny hand reaching out and holding the doctor’s finger. While some may react by calling this a reflexive action, the doctors involved responded that there definitely was communication between the fetus and the surgeon in that tiny hand.
This bring the question of self-awareness. What does the baby feel in the womb? More cogently, what does the baby know?
Laura was a mother of ten children in her mid-thirties when disaster struck. Her doctors told her that she had breast cancer. Not only would she need chemotherapy, but the doctors advised her she needed a double radical mastectomy. To make matters worse, during her recovery, she contracted tuberculosis. The doctors recommended institutionalization, but she refused. You see, she had no means to take care of her small children while her husband worked.
Then she found that she was pregnant, the final straw. The doctors told her to have an abortion, since she was still receiving chemo. She refused. She stopped the chemotherapy, instead. The doctors did not report her to Social Services, which surprised her. She dreaded the anticipation of a knock on the door by a social worker to take away the children and send her to an institution. Instead, weeks went by but nothing happened.
“Oh God, why are you doing this to me?” she asked.
“I have my hands full with ten children and now you give me another! Where will I find the energy?”
She sank into a deep depression. Her friends quit seeing her.
“They have trouble of their own.” she reasoned
But it was a lonely existence, living on a farm, so she turned to prayer. But there was no joy in her life, or her prayers, for that matter. She thought a lot about death and dying. There was no consolation when the baby started kicking.
Soon, the baby was born, a healthy boy. The doctors were amazed that the chemo and TB had not affected him. They were even more amazed to find that Laura’s cancer was in remission and that the TB was no longer active.
Laura noticed that the baby boy would not take his eyes from her, Every time she entered his room his eyes followed her, wherever she went. For the longest time, the boy was silent. Then, at the age of two, he started speaking. The very first words out of his mouth were, “You never wanted me.”
Those words haunted Laura the rest of her life.
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