This new year I joined a new hospital for work, and moved across the country to a place where I am not familiar with the local language.
As I sat through my first day with patients at the out patient department, the very first case that walked in was a very anxious lady. On probing her history and complaints, (with the help of a translator) all I gathered was that she was extremely unhappy about her situation. She looked at me with pleading eyes. She was pregnant for a third time and wanted an abortion and permanent sterilisation( tubectomy).
My heart skipped a beat, my mind was racing, and all I could feel was anger. I told the translator to ask her why she wanted an abortion. Her reply was “ I cannot afford another child,” and that broke my heart even more.
It took 40 minutes of convincing and back and forth through a harassed translator, anxious patient, and a upset doctor (me) before she agreed to at least do her basic tests prior to any decision, including a ultrasonogram.
While I waited for her return, I tried to rationalise all the explanations she gave for the purpose of the termination of pregnancy. Nothing made sense … I just couldn’t fathom why a “pure spirit” would cause harm to anyone. Why would she resort to end that life?
She returned with tests and her scan showed a beautiful live baby of 7 weeks gestation … but alas this woman already had her mind made up, and my heart was broken.
The next day she was put in the operating room beside another patient who was receiving a caesarean section.
While I stood outside the door of this termination of pregnancy praying for forgiveness for everyone involved, I could not help but ponder over the irony. Behind one door a new life was being born and behind the other door another life was being killed.
An unborn child is the purest form of life, spotless and away from anything, full of hope, and the DNA of the two human beings who formed it. For someone like me who sees newborn babies everyday, nothing fascinates me more than seeing a child intrauterine and watching the mothers face light up watching her child on the screen during a scan. From a tiny dot, to a blob, to a baby … that journey speaks of nothing but the glory of the creator and the life it has.
Today as Jesus tells us that everyone will be forgiven except those who insult the Holy spirit. I ask each one of us to think about every time we hurt a life, or the spirit of a human life, through a harsh word, a dirty stare, or by an abusive relationship. By not bothering to even care… we cause harm to the Holy Spirit that lives within us.
Pro life is not just about saving the lives of unborn children, but being positive and hopeful about every life we encounter. The terminally ill, those who have mental illness, or are in situations which cause them to not want to live, or even end their lives, people who live in hunger and poverty. Pro life is about every human life being treated with dignity irrespective of color, age, caste, religion, nationality, or economic status. Pro life is making the other person we meet feel worthy and hopeful about the day to come. Pro life is being hopeful ourselves through our daily struggles and pressures of financial, emotional and physical limitations. We have a Spirit within us that was given to us by the Lord, and we cannot disrespect it.
Let us just start our day today, by being positive and hopeful, and end our night with a prayer of thankfulness for our own life.
Prayer : O My God Give us this day full of hope and love to see through good and bad times and move forward towards eternal life with the love for every human spirit created in your likeness and image. Help me Lord to respect every person I meet today even if I do not agree with him/her over anything. Amen.
