By Faye Barnhart | Guest Columnist
Abortion is not healthcare. Abortion intentionally tortures a child to death. Abortion violates a mother’s body to rip away her child by unnaturally stretching her cervix or putting her into preterm labor and painfully dismembering her child or poisoning, starving, or scalding her child so that she delivers a dead baby.
There is nothing healthy or caring about that. Abortion is the opposite of healthcare in that it intentionally causes death and unnecessary pain and suffering.
There is no reason to intentionally take away the life of a child. Natural childbirth or Caesarean section intended to save the child’s life are safer for mother, too. It is more dangerous for a mother to deliver a dead baby than a living one, as the living child helps position herself to be born. A C-section typically takes less than an hour, making it much faster and safer than an abortion that can take three to six days of injecting an overdose of drugs into the child’s beating heart and putting the mother into labor. In an ectopic pregnancy, the doctor can attempt to relocate the child into the uterus.
A child will move away from touch as early as seven weeks from conception. This is a tiny infant who has a face, arms, and legs no different than any other child, just tinier. Her skin is more sensitive to touch than she will be once she is born. And she isn’t able to block the pain. She has a heartbeat at 21 days from conception – about the time her mother suspects she’s pregnant – that will last for the rest of her life. She can hear her mother’s voice and feels stressed when her mother is stressed. She is born loving the one who gives her birth.
Ending a child’s life chemically or surgically puts a mother at risk for infection, hemorrhage and death. In one year, 57,000 mothers have died and more than 5 million women were hospitalized from an abortion worldwide. Choosing to lose a child, 81% of women experience psychological issues following, including rage, anxiety, depression and increased suicidal tendencies with 158% increase in drug or alcohol addiction. Difficulty in relationships and bonding with other children, and future miscarriage and infertility are not uncommon following the choice to take a child’s life.
Healthcare should be about helping people find health. Reproductive healthcare should preserve a woman’s ability to have children. Pregnancy is healthy. Abortion is not healthy. There is nothing healthy about an abortion for the mother, or her child. A child will be born, living or dead. Every child should be treated as a wanted child where doctors attempt to save all lives and not intentionally take lives. All of us have only one life to live; let’s let children live.
For a mother unable or unwilling to care for her child, there are currently two million couples wanting to adopt in the United States. Adoption is free to the biological mom, she can choose parents for her child, how involved she’d like to be in her child’s life, and how much time she would like to spend with her baby before making the decision. She can try to parent and then choose to place her baby for adoption at any time. While adoption agencies can help with expenses related to pregnancy, most pregnancies and births are covered in the state of Colorado for those making less than $75,000 annually. Pregnancy care centers also offer no-cost emotional support, up to everything a mother needs to bring her baby home, parenting classes and referrals for individualized services.
There is enough love in the world, enough running water and food, enough loving homes and enough medical advances to give children the same opportunity we want for ourselves – to be loved, valued, and accepted. Let’s stop rejecting our own children. Let’s be compassionate and offer these tiny infants the same time, nutrition, and protection we all need to grow and be the people we are created to be. Let’s wrap them in a warm blanket and let them know they are welcome in our world. Let’s grow our ability to love them. The rewards of being loved by a child can be better than the dreams we may have had for ourselves without them.
Real healthcare saves lives; it doesn’t destroy them. I’ve known too many women destroyed by abortion. And too many children are tragically missing who had their own personalities and contributions to make in the world. Abortion is violence. Whether it’s a gun or a scalpel, it isn’t the instrument causing the death, it’s the hands using the instrument. Those causing death in the multi-billion dollar abortion industry – if they care anything about women – should stop tearing children and mothers apart and learn how to save lives and promote health, instead. Because every child deserves a birthday and motherhood is worth protecting.
Rescue those being led away to death, and restrain those stumbling toward the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know about this,” does not He who weighs hearts consider it? Does not the One who guards your life know? Will He not repay a man according to his deeds? (Proverbs 24:11-12)
Faye Barnhart is a life affirming specialist and women’s advocate of 19 years, served in a federal think tank on the co-occurrence of adult and child violence and four pregnancy care centers in two states, including CEO of the largest pregnancy care center geographically in the U.S. and Colorado. She was a prelaw student and aid at the Colorado Capitol, interned in media, and worked toward a master’s in organizational leadership while raising children as a single parent. She pursued a career in management in international ministry and served as a director on several boards. Mrs. Barnhart is the wife of a farmer, the mother of grown and married biological children and an adopted special needs son, and biological grandmother to several miracle babies, including a grandson who needed life-saving surgery at birth.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.