This week President Biden and Vice President Harris kicked off a tour to highlight their #1 campaign issue, enshrining abortion in the law, and spread fear and misinformation about the impact of pro-life protections in the states.
The legacy media have helped them out – bombarding us with horror stories of women allegedly receiving substandard care for complicated pregnancies, despite the fact that every state with strong pro-life laws allows timely and necessary care for pregnant women in a medical emergency.
On the flip side, a wonderful story you probably didn’t see on the evening news recently appeared in The Washington Times:
Amanda Banic might not be here today if it wasn’t for her daughter, Baylor. The Michigan resident was 35 weeks pregnant when she suffered a tear in her aorta known as an aortic dissection. The condition was life-threatening and easily could have killed her. And it might have — if she hadn’t been pregnant.
“Because of the way I dissected, [baby Baylor] kind of was in there, essentially holding everything together,” Mrs. Banic explained in a recent interview with Good Morning America. “Had she not been in there putting the pressure on all the right places, my outcome may have been very different, so she’s kind of a little miracle, in more ways than one.”
Banic has a genetic condition called Loeys-Dietz syndrome, TWT explains. She had three surgeries, including a C-section to deliver her daughter, in 24 hours. Nurses placed the newborn against her skin while she was unconscious, and the effect was stunning:
“Some of the only times I would react on life support was when they would do skin-to-skin with [Baylor], and apparently I would cry when they would do that,” Mrs. Banic said. “Love is a powerful thing, and the bond between a mother and a baby, it’s unreal.”
After the terrifying ordeal, Amanda Banic was finally able to meet her “miracle” baby on Mother’s Day in May 2023. And it was just the motivation she needed to recover much faster than her doctors expected.
“[Derek] was there with me every day and I saw my baby every single day, and my recovery would not have been the same without that,” Mrs. Banic explained. “Once I became coherent again and really knew what had to be done, I just started doing it and kind of exceeding all their expectations.”
In another case, Zoe Plastiras was 23 and eight months pregnant when doctors discovered a grapefruit-sized tumor near her heart:
‘One day I randomly felt like I couldn’t breathe and I thought it was weird because I’ve never had any health issues. Everyone was telling me it’s just because I was pregnant but I still went straight to the hospital,’ Zoe said.
Plastiras was quick to credit baby Ophelia for helping catch her non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma while the prognosis was better:
‘We handpicked the name before I was pregnant and it actually means to help and to aid,’ she said.
‘At first I didn’t [think] much of it but then her name made so much sense because that’s exactly what she did for me. She really did save my life.
‘If it weren’t for the pregnancy pushing my organs around doctors may not have found the mass so early.’
For Danielle Nicholson, it wasn’t cancer or a heart defect, but drug and alcohol addiction and the trauma of abuse. She writes,
My positive pregnancy test was the one thing that jolted me back to reality…There was something about that positive pregnancy test that motivated me, igniting a deeper drive than I’d ever known myself capable of possessing. Envisioning my future daughter struggling with the cycle of abuse and trauma that had plagued me for so many years, I broke down sobbing. “My daughter will NEVER be exposed or subjected to what I have been through,” I promised myself through my tears. I knew right away that I needed to live a sober life…
Danielle found help and hope at a maternity home run by the Paul Stefan Foundation (a Her PLAN assistance provider serving Virginia), where she lived for five years. Today she is a foster care social worker in the Virginia Department of Social Services. What she wants other women to know about choosing life for her daughter Lei’Lani:
So many women resort to abortion because they think it’s their only option, or that their baby will hinder their goals. I wish I could comfort those women and tell them how keeping my baby motivated me to achieve every single goal that I set my mind on.
And Jean Marie Davis, who spoke at the national March for Life last week, credits her son – along with a pregnancy resource center – with helping her finally escape human trafficking:
Photo credit: Anna Lulis
Amanda’s, Zoe’s, Danielle’s, Jean Marie’s and countless other stories illustrate the truth that generations of mothers have known: our children motivate us, they “put pressure on all the right places” inspiring us to be the best people we can, and in so many essential ways they hold everything together. These stories matter, and we won’t let them be ignored.
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, our movement was given a historic opportunity. But the battle for life became much more difficult.
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