On January 22, 2022, at a panel titled “Life Is A Gift”, hundreds of attendees at the National Pro-Life Summit sang Happy Birthday to my son Matthew. It was an emotional anniversary for me. Matthew would have been 20 years old.
It was a January day two decades ago that, just shy of 22 weeks pregnant, I went into premature labor. I had no idea that within a few hours I would give birth, and say goodbye, to my first-born son.
My husband Mazen and I were married in March of 2000. Initially we were not especially anxious to start a family, but we weren’t against the idea either. In February of 2001 we became parents for the first time. But it was not at all the journey we expected. On the same day we learned I was pregnant, we also learned it was an ectopic pregnancy and I would require urgent surgery. That very short first pregnancy changed us and made us more anxious to become parents again. When I became pregnant again a few months later, and when it was confirmed our second pregnancy was not ectopic, we were ecstatic. But I wasn’t meant to bring this baby home either. One day I was a young mom excitedly awaiting the arrival of my child, and the next day we were making funeral arrangements and trying to choose a cemetery for our baby boy who was born too soon to survive.
In the days following Matthew’s birth and death, Dr. Bruchalski told me it was not lost on him that Matthew’s birthday was January 22 — the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I had never thought much about abortion before. It had never touched my life so I hadn’t had much reason to. But I learned that it was legal to abort a baby just like the son I had held in my arms at 22 weeks gestation. I had no idea. I was shocked.
Dr. Bruchalski had planted a seed that day and it grew into a passion in me to learn more about the abortion industry. It drove me to become more involved in helping create a culture of life — a culture where people understand the true humanity of the unborn child and where people understand that every life is a gift.
Today I am on the Board of Directors of Divine Mercy Care. I support pro-life medicine and the Tepeyac OB/GYN doctors who walked with me through six pregnancies, including those of the four sons I did get to bring home from the hospital. Twenty years later, at the National Pro-Life Summit, I was honored to be on stage with abortion survivors Melissa Ohden and Josiah Presley, sharing my Matthew’s story on his 20th birthday.
I look forward to meeting Matthew and his older brother or sister someday again in Heaven. Until then I will continue to celebrate their short lives and shout from the mountaintops, any time I can. Life is a gift!
Happy Birthday, dear Matthew.
Love, Mom.
