A gift of life like no other

For the better part of two decades, I’ve been a blood donor. This is a simple matter of gratitude; people dear to me have benefited from transfusions. I’ve seen good outcomes.

Once of those outcomes began twelve years ago, and it’s affecting my life and my outlook on pro-life work to this day.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Ann Marie Banfield is a friend of mine. She takes delight in her family. On a volunteer basis, she works for good public policy on issues including the right to life, which is how I met her. She lives life to the full, and it’s not easy to slow her down.

At one point, something did. A hereditary disease began to manifest itself, and it started shutting down her kidneys.

Ann Marie is alive today because of a kidney transplant twelve years ago.

The disorder that laid her low, PKD, is caused by a faulty gene. “You’re born with the gene and it’s a slow process,” she told me. “Some people may not even know they have this, since it can be a slow disease, and it’s possible some patients never get to the point where they need a transplant.”

Ann Marie received a kidney from a live donor, her niece. Then and now, I’m in awe of such an astounding gift. What I didn’t know until after the surgery was how much Ann Marie depended on blood donors as well.

In order to prepare her immune system for the transplant, she needed to be infused with various medications. One of those substances was derived from a particular fraction of blood. Each dose was derived from three units of whole blood. That means that three blood donors who will never meet Ann Marie were figuratively at her bedside every time that life-giving substance went into her IV.

That’s a kind of pro-life ministry that doesn’t get a lot of attention. A remark from Ann Marie a few years after her transplant got me thinking about that. At that time, she was back in action at full throttle. She said to me in a rare calm moment, “I don’t know why the pro-life movement doesn’t do more with this.”

“This” is voluntary blood donation and organ donation. Donors gave Ann Marie her life back.

I asked her what the pro-life community can do to promote such donations. “Learn about the need, the process, and how that gift truly changes and saves lives.”

The process for both Ann Marie and her niece was long and exacting. “It’s amazing how easy it is to abort a child, but it’s extremely difficult to get through the process for a live donor to donate an organ,” she told me. The screening process involves much more than just determining physiological compatibility between donor and recipient. Protocols for informed consent and counseling are in place every step of the way, and there are no shortcuts. “The live donor is assigned a psychologist. The donor is asked questions to make sure she truly wants to do this and is not pressured in any way.” Again, she found the comparison with abortion impossible to avoid as she described the process to me. “It’s amazing what they go through to donate a kidney. If they want to abort a baby, none of this happens.”

Other parts of the world are haunted by the specter of trafficking in illegally-obtained organs. Ann Marie doesn’t envision that here. “I’m not aware of harvesting organs in the US. This would be big news. If there is fear or any scandal that would erupt, it would actually work against organ donation. After all, who would agree to sign [the donor consent on drivers licenses] if they even thought that was going on? It’s crucial for those who need organs to keep [the process] ethical and moral.”

I’ll be in the reclining seat at the Red Cross soon, being relieved of a unit of blood. I’ll hate the initial pinch as the needle is skillfully slipped into my arm. Then I’ll think of Ann Marie, and of the dialysis she endured while waiting for a kidney. I’ll think of all I’d miss – all that we’d miss – if she weren’t here with her mind, wit, energy, and deep faith in God. My apprehension will recede, as it always does, at the thought of her courage and that of her niece.

Think and pray about becoming a donor. A gift to someone who can never repay you, and in the case of a blood donation, who will almost certainly never know your name: pro-life, indeed.

Here’s to you, Ann Marie. May you flourish for many years to come.

This post is a revised and updated version of a post I wrote about Ann Marie in December 2014 on the Leaven for the Loaf blog.

On timing, “moderates,” and life

Is it ever “ill-timed” to assert that life is the fundamental civil and human right? My experience on the sidewalks and in the State House tell me that there will always be people who think so. I find encouragement in Dr. Martin Luther King’s response to a remark about human rights work being ill-timed.

In 1963, a few months before Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, he and many other civil rights activists converged on Birmingham, Alabama to challenge racial segregation. Their campaign was marked by intensive planning, discipline, and urgency as they reached for justice and reconciliation.

From a 1963 UPI report on the Birmingham demonstrations: “King reacted strongly… to a statement by Attorney General Robert Kennedy suggesting that the all-out integration drive here was ill-timed. ‘I grow weary of those who ask us to slow down,’ King told a reporter. ‘I begin to feel that the moderates in America are our worst enemy.’”

As AG, RFK had sent federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders who worked to desegregate public transportation in the South. Yet there he was just a couple of years later, talking about another civil rights campaign being ill-timed. King wasn’t afraid to push back – and maybe put some starch back in the Attorney General’s spine.

King used the word “moderates” ironically. Civil rights, but not yet is a phony kind of moderation.

And so it is with denying not only the right to life but the right to defend it. Such denial will never be moderate, even when cloaked in euphemisms like “reproductive justice.”

Header photo: Pixabay. Post condensed from a series of MLK Day posts by the author at leavenfortheloaf.com.

Not to be denied: abortion survivors speak out together

Abortion Survivors Break Their Silence by Melissa Ohden with Cindy Lambert (Focus on the Family, 2024)

“There’s no such thing as abortion until birth.” I’ve heard that time and again from legislators who resist “born-alive” bills that would ensure care for children who survive attempted abortion.

Melissa Ohden knows better. She survived an attempt to abort her, somehow emerging alive five days after her mother endured what was supposed to be a saline abortion. As an adult, when she learned that there were other survivors – when she experienced a life-changing “you, too?” moment – she founded the Abortion Survivors Network.

As of late 2023, ASN has worked with more than 700 survivors from all over the world. “In a world that has, by and large, turned a blind eye to abortion survivors, we desperately need each other,” says Ohden.

She has collected a few survivors’ stories in Abortion Survivors Break Their Silence. In the book, they share what they’ve learned about the attempts to abort them. Each has a unique story of discovery, struggle, and healing.

Some of the survivors bear physical scars. All have had to come to terms with invisible scars as well. The process of understanding and forgiveness between parent and child is complicated; the survivors in this book recount their varied paths.

There are also stories of the birth mothers, who made their abortion decisions under varied circumstances. Coercion, financial straits, abandonment by the child’s father, bad timing: for each abortion survivor’s story, there’s a birth mother’s story, too. That’s one of the strengths of this book.

Compassion informs every chapter. There’s no condemnation for the people involved in the abortion decisions. Ohden writes, “If, while you’re reading, you find yourself picking up a stone to throw – please, be sure to put it back down.”

The people whose stories are recounted in the book tell of how their Christian faith has helped them come to terms with the attempts to terminate their lives. Their candor about faith is hardly a surprise, after the candor it took to go public with their history of trauma. 

Ohden’s book is a much-needed call to listen to survivors. Their stories can enlighten even pro-lifers who think they’ve heard it all. The book ought to be on the resource shelf of every agency and church engaged in outreach to abortion-vulnerable women. And yes, it belongs on the desk of every policymaker, even the ones who’d want to shove it into a bottom drawer and forget it.

I recall a committee vote a few years ago on born-alive legislation in my state. Before the vote, the committee chair took time to read a prepared statement – was she afraid she’d get the words wrong if she didn’t have a script? – elaborating on a core belief that she reiterated several times: “there is no such thing as abortion until birth.” She had to say it over and over, as though chanting the words could make the false assertion true.

That legislator prevailed that day. She’s still in office, still on the same committee, still defending abortion in the name of reproductive rights.

And at the same time, abortion survivors are speaking out, and they will not be denied a hearing. Look them in the eye and pay attention. Ready or not, they’re here to stay.

(Note: I received an advance review copy of this book.)