On why I won’t apologize.

There are some issues that I am very outspoken about and for that, I do not apologize.

The use of premature infants to further a pro-life agenda is one.

This is also a lesson on why sometimes, crossing the streams between social media “real life” and this space is probably not a good idea.

I’d known her almost since I came here.  By my math, that’s at least 16 years.  When this place went belly up, I was friends with her on social media.

Over the last few months, she’d gotten more and more outlandish in her posts, but I’m one of those people that tries to “agree to disagree” and move on.  (Most of the time, anyway.)

But there are some subjects that I do not  apologize for defending.  One of those is the discussion of premature infants as it relates to furthering an agenda about abortion issues.

Some know that ten years ago, I delivered two beautiful twin boys.  I was 21 weeks pregnant and went into spontaneous, unexplained, preterm labor.  My sons were born alive and lived for over an hour.  Their hearts beat.

But medical technology does not work to save babies like mine.  Though they were small and perfect, ventilators are not designed to inflate paper-thin lungs and incubators do not mimic the conditions of the womb.

Even ten years later, medical advances have not come very far.  A single article which evaluated a host of issues determined that maybe, just maybe, in a singleton pregnancy, we can extend the possibility of viability to 22 weeks.

The article shared by this person was an inflammatory piece designed to tug at heartstrings instead of present actual information.  The story centered on a family who delivered twins in a hospital in Ohio.  The twins were born at 22 weeks, 5 days gestation.  They were born alive and they were ultimately not assisted medically.  The twins died shortly after birth.

The palpable outrage shared on this website (and by this person) was clear.  Even the carefully edited narration and text was meant to incense.  “The hospital watched while these children died!” the text screamed out.  The website called for the hospital to be sanctioned, even “shut down” as this person put it, because they failed to provide any medical help to these two children.

There is no science to support effective medical intervention for twins born at 22 weeks 5 days gestation.  Even in the most generous research, SINGLETON babies at 22 weeks have approximately a 5% survival rate, with half of those children being born with moderate to severe disabilities.  There is no reliable research to discuss what happens to twins at 22 weeks 5 days.  As such, while it is painful and horrible to see, this poor family could do little more than watch as their precious babies move, try to breathe (when lungs do not work) and eventually die.  It is the most sickening form of pain; one that I personally lived through and would not wish on anyone.

The same website also encouraged people to support pro-life causes; you see, because babies “like this” are “left to die” and this is why we should outlaw abortion.

There is only two words for that type of rhetoric:

FUCK

YOU.

Ignore the science, go ahead.  Ignore the words like “multivariate analysis” and everything else most don’t understand.  Go be stupid.  GO BE STUPID.  But do not EVER use children like mine to further an agenda rooted in misinformation and hyperbole.  I don’t love abortion, but there are limitless ways to support a pro=life agenda which do not include exploiting grieving families and even more importantly, precious premature children who are born outside of the bounds of medical technology and yes.  Yes.  They die.  They die, and sometimes they cry when they are born, and sometimes they move (my boys did) and they look like tiny precious creatures, not a “clump of cells” – which I know with certainty because I looked each of them in their closed eyes and into sweet faces that had my husband’s mouth and my chin.

I know what it is like to sit, helplessly, as your children’s hearts are beating but there is nothing that can be done. I know how it feels to meet with two neonatologists and a maternal-fetal-medicine specialist and hear “we can’t do anything”.  They couldn’t.  No doctor or hospital is negligent because they followed standard medical convention in a hopeless, horrible situation.

And only the lowest form of human would actually use a tragic situation like this to further an agenda – unless that agenda is supporting families who suffer this type of loss, or to fund research that may someday help children survive when born extremely prematurely.

The pro-life organizations who heinously exploit situations like this, who distort information that involves precious, amazing premature infants, are the lowest forms of human beings.

As are those who sit with ALL CAPS shouting on social media, daring people to UNFRIEND ME IF YOU DONT AGREE and SHUT DOWN THIS HOSPITAL.  Because this video looks upsetting and I probably can’t pronounce half of the words contained in the research article and oh look it’s babies dying so someone must be responsible UNFRIEND ME!

The funny thing is, I didn’t.  But she did.  And that’s okay.  I have to accept that and I have.  I don’t feel sorry for a single word I said.  I will never feel sorry for defending my children, and the thousands of children who succumb to extreme prematurity each year.  Those babies do not deserve to be poster children for pro-life causes.  They deserve to be honored and respected, as do their parents, who suffered mightily.

In the end, I got a tough lesson and learned what I truly meant, but that’s okay because that’s valuable knowledge in and of itself.  And I wish her well, which is true. I do.  I’m sure I was a friend at one point but I am not now.  I think that season of life has passed.