When Erin was 19 weeks pregnant with her fifth child, she went into early labor at home. She and her husband Kyle were told that she was in a life-threatening situation and risked hemorrhaging to death. Though multiple doctors encouraged abortion in order to reduce the risk to Erin’s life, the couple refused. They recently sat down with Live Action to share their encouraging story.
“To have an abortion would have been to intentionally kill an innocent human being,” Erin explained.
Kyle said that though doctors wanted Erin and Kyle to end the pregnancy, they never said so outright.
“Four different times, the doctors offered a ‘procedure,’ ‘the safest thing to not be pregnant,’ a ‘proactive choice,'” Kyle said. “Never did they lead with, ‘What we’re offering you is an abortion.'”
The couple decided to wait, hoping to get Erin to 21 weeks of pregnancy when there is a chance for the child to survive outside the womb. At this time, doctors were pressuring the couple to decide how much care they would want to offer their daughter if she were born extremely early. Deciding to seek outside advice, they consulted with a colleague of Kyle’s, Dr. Kent Lasnoski, whom Kyle said has spent his life dealing with pro-life issues.
“[Dr. Kent] first stressed there will always be a temptation to say, ‘Because this child will have such a poor quality of life, it justifies choosing death concretely… saying we’re not going to choose to feed her.’ If that’s ever the choice, you can’t choose to deny care,” Kyle said. “It may be necessary to have an emergency c-section, and that the result of the c-section is that the child is not going to be able to live independently of the mother. That is just a radically different thing than intentionally killing the baby.”
“You always need to be willing her life,” the doctor explained to the couple. “That is the moral standard — you’re never willing the death of your child.”
Erin made it all the way to 30 weeks before giving birth. Their baby, Macrina, weighed 2 pounds 13 ounces and spent 105 days in the NICU. The couple reflected that while Macrina was receiving care in the Colorado hospital, it would have been legal in that state for her to be killed in an abortion.
Though she faced many risks and an early start, today, Macrina is a lively, talkative, and healthy four-year-old girl. Her story is an example of what it means to be pro-life in all situations.
Kyle said, “Being pro-life means to be building in small, intensive ways, concrete expressions of that culture of life, in support of the women who feel like they have no choice. In support of the families who need extra help… We need to be creating that culture.”
