Terminal Pre-natal Diagnosis: Choosing Life

For the last several years we have made it a rule that I attend doctor appointments with Katie. It seems like when I do, everything is fine and my presence is unnecessary, whereas when I don’t, some terrible doom is pronounced. This trend began a couple of days after Christmas in 2020, when Katie went to review the 20 week ultrasound we had done a couple of days before Christmas. Since we had chosen not to use the doctor/hospital we had used with our three previous children, the ultrasound was performed outside the clinic. We spent several days in ignorant bliss, assuming that all was well, when in fact the ultrasound had revealed a significant cardiac condition in our little girl. So I sent my wife off to what we thought was a routine exam but turned out to be a life altering pronouncement.

I blogged regularly over the next twelve weeks as we visited specialists and made almost-weekly trips to a children’s hospital in Kansas City. You can find those by searching for “Penny” on the blog, as that is the name we gave to the little girl growing inside of Katie, fighting for life with a heart rate of only forty-five beats per minute.

For over twelve weeks we watcher her little heart beat on echo-cardiograms, praying, willing, and wishing it to improve. We met seven different cardiologists – not by choice – but because the clinic at the children’s hospital had a rotation. This gave us the opportunity to experience seven different cardiologists alternately awkwardly, emotionally, or matter-of-factly telling us that there was no change and it was unlikely that Penny would live. All of this was during Covid, so we could only see eyes and hear voices. I still wouldn’t know most of the medical staff if I met them on the street.

I don’t think anyone at anytime brought up the subject of terminating the pregnancy. I was prepared for that conversation but I suppose by our attitude, and possibly because of the medical partners we chose, that everyone understood we were willing to accept whatever God had in store for us.

One feature of the secular world-view is that we can all be whatever we want to be. We cann assign our own meaning to ourselves and others based purely on the desires and thoughts of our heart. This type of thinking has been around for decades as I remember sitting through a literature class in the 90’s which was being taught by a relatively young guy who had graduated from Stamford. As we were discussing a particular passage, I made the comment that I thought his interpretation was pretty unlikely based on what we knew about the author, to which he responded (paraphrasing), “Why do we have to limit ourselves to what the author thinks?” There was probably only about fifteen feet between us, but we were worlds apart in our thinking. He thought the world created by the author was up for any interpretation. I thought that if someone took the time to write, we should at least try to figure out what he meant.

The modern world hates the idea of authorial intent. From the way we interpret literature to the way we interpret the Constitution to the way we talk about our bodies, there is a world of difference between those who use words to describe what is and those who use words to attempt to reshape the nature of existence. To describe Penny as a human being is me describing what is, not what I want. To use language to obscure the reality that unborn babies are fully human and made in the image of God is a modern invention to justify the sinful fears and desires of the heart.

For there to be a standard – just weights and measurements – there has to be something objective. Something that exists outside the scope of what is under discussion. For there to be any real meaning in life, there has to be a God assigning fixed and certain values and making immutable pronouncements. If there is no God, we all become as gods, knowing the difference between good and evil. Except, of course, we don’t, because the terms themselves become meaningless.

I think it is possible – although I never asked and don’t really want to know – that there were folks in the medical community who were willing to treat Penny as a human being because that’s how we regarded her. But it’s possible that those same folks would have treated her as a lump of cells if that is what her mom considered her. I find this kind of thinking…unsatisfactory. When mankind becomes the arbiter of Truth, truth ceases to exist in any meaningful way. When humanity rises up to become as gods, it doesn’t look like dominion: it looks like domination. Every unborn baby has a certain and fixed value -regardless of whether his parents want him and regardless of whether her mom considers her a blob of cells- because that unborn baby’s nature is assigned by God, not by man.

This reality is getting harder to deny as technological improvements have allowed us to see the development of unborn babies. No longer do ultrasound images have the clarity of grainy images of a supposed Big Foot caught on someone’s trail cam. We can see these little living human beings smiling, wiggling, holding their hands, sucking their fingers, stretching, and looking likely tiny little version of what they will look like post-partum. But make no mistake: technology has not re-assigned their value; technology has only revealed to rebellious mankind what God revealed long ago with perfect clarity.

As week 33 of pregnancy approached, we began having discussions with the medical team about what delivery would look like. By this point there were so many different medical personnel involved that it was hard to keep every-body and every medical pronouncement straight in my brain. When I asked about whether they would try to induce labor early so that they could begin medical intervention, the response went something like this, “Mr. Beal, any thing that we can do outside of the womb will be more stressful on your baby’s heart than what your wife’s body is providing for her. There is nowhere safer for your baby than where she is right now.” My great hope is that the womb will always be the safest place for the unborn, not the dock in which the unborn wait while other human agencies determine whether they will live or die.