Bella's Gift (8 page)

When I came to the United States Senate, I had a 100 percent pro-life voting record in my four years in Congress, but I never took to the floor to debate the issue. In fact, I had made up my mind that I would never cross that red line in politics where I would be marginalized as a pro-life zealot. In all likelihood, one or two speeches on abortion would not draw the wrath of the abortion-supporting media and interest groups, but coming from a lean Democratic state like Pennsylvania, why risk it?

That was the game plan, but in my first year in the Senate, I went through a spiritual transformation. I often say I came to the Senate and found the Lord! Many people think He has long abandoned that place, but in fact, I found many people of faith not only in the Senate but also in ministries devoted to helping people working in the Capitol.

It just so happened that this spiritual transformation was occurring at the time the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was being debated in Congress. This bill sought to ban an abortion
procedure performed on babies that were at least twenty weeks old. I was appalled to learn it was legal for a twenty-week-old fetus to be deliberately delivered alive in a breech position, then killed by the doctor as he or she held the baby and thrust pointed scissors into the base of the baby’s skull. I was shocked even more by watching senators defend this horrific procedure. I could no longer stay silent. I decided to rise and speak against the gruesome practice.

When I went to the Senate floor to speak, you would have thought I had never spoken in public in my life. I was done before I realized what I had said, which turned out to be little more than gibberish. Thankfully, my staff kindly cleaned up my remarks in the
Congressional Record
so they could make some sense. Nine months later, due to a variety of circumstances, including my finding faith, I was on the Senate floor again talking about the issue, only this time I was leading the debate. I was now managing the override of President Clinton’s veto.

The debate was as intense as a debate over life and death should be. Even though I was trained as a lawyer, I had done very little criminal work other than an internship at a public defender’s office during law school. During that debate, I felt I had to bring the passion of a defense attorney who was trying to save an innocent client from being executed. But it wasn’t just one, but hundreds of victims, who would die a brutal death if I failed.

Even though I was in my first session as a senator, it was not my first time around the block. I had managed the welfare reform bill earlier that summer to successful passage, so I was ready for action. But this was a battle beyond the object of the legislation. This was the ultimate moral and spiritual
battle playing out on an unlikely stage. As a thirty-eight-year-old first-term senator talking publicly about this grave issue for the first time, I should have felt chastened or even overwhelmed. I didn’t. Thanks to prayers of support, I had never felt more in the zone.

President Clinton had vetoed a few bills from the Republican Congress, including welfare, but this was the first congressional attempt to override a veto. That was front-page news in every paper in America. As expected, the House had easily overridden his veto, so all the coverage was on the debate in the Senate, where the result was uncertain. This debate was not just about the bill at hand, but the coverage was going to shape public opinion in advance of an election and provide the arguments for candidates running against opponents of the ban in key Senate races around the country. The debate on the Senate floor really mattered.

In the closing hours of the debate, I was struck by the defense mounted by the pro-abortion senators. Senator Dianne Feinstein from California succinctly advanced their argument: “Some women carry fetuses with severe birth defects late into pregnancy without knowing it. For example, fetal deformities that are not easy to spot early on in the pregnancy include: cases where the brain forms outside the skull, or the stomach and intestines form outside the body, or do not form at all; or fetuses with no ears, mouths, legs, or kidneys.”

She and other senators were using examples of children with disabilities (some with problems that are treatable) to justify their opposition, suggesting that the government should not stand in the way of parents who want to kill their children once they find out their babies aren’t perfect. While this
stance came as a shock to me, particularly from some senators who had taken the lead in advancing the cause of the disabled, in retrospect it shouldn’t have. I knew that a very high percentage of parents who find out about disabilities through prenatal testing abort those babies. Some studies have put the abortion rate in such cases as high as 90 percent.

Let’s set aside the fact for now that, according to doctors who performed this procedure, 99 percent of these abortions were performed on healthy babies; let’s wrap our minds around the idea that dozens of US senators, including, later on, Hillary Clinton, opposed the partial-birth abortion bill because it protected disabled children from death.

I don’t recall any of these senators during the course of six debates over eight years ever citing the case of a healthy baby to rationalize their opposition. This bias drove me to respond: “Think about the message we are sending to the less-than-perfect children of America and the mothers who are right now dealing with the possibility of delivering an abnormal baby. My wife is due in March. We haven’t had a sonogram done. We are hopeful that everything is fine. What message are you sending to me in looking at that sonogram in a week or two, if the doctor says to us that our child isn’t what we want?”

Even though we lost the fight, I felt certain I was following God’s will. I was devoting more time at home to Karen and our three little ones, and my prayer life was better than ever. Less than a week later, Karen, the kids, and I walked into that sonographer’s office, and that doctor, in fact, did tell us that Gabriel was going to die.

I had followed what I thought was God’s will to defend the lives of these little babies from a horrible death,
and He kicks
me in the head
? My son’s condition could have been an example used by Senator Feinstein as a reason to abort. I was now forced to decide whether I was going to be true to my words, which had been so easy to speak on the Senate floor. Was Gabriel indeed no different from any of our other children?

I felt God was putting me to the test. After going through a period of vacillating between disbelief, anger, and a resolve to fight, I had an epiphany. It struck me what an amazing opportunity God had given us. It was no coincidence that I had led the debate on partial-birth abortion a week before this sonogram. It was no coincidence that children with disabilities were being used to justify that procedure. And it was no coincidence that I had mentioned our soon-to-be-born baby as an example of accepting all God’s children into our human family, no matter what their condition.

I thought maybe this wasn’t a test at all but the perfect opportunity for God to show the way. He was going to use Gabriel’s condition as a sign for the world that He loved every baby in the womb. I was convinced God was going to save Gabriel’s life so I could tell the miracle of His love not just for the unborn but also for the disabled.

We were encouraged that the doctors could surgically fix Gabriel’s condition in the womb. They cautioned, however, that, should Gabriel survive in the womb long enough to be born, they weren’t sure he could survive outside the womb. And if he did, he would have serious health issues involving constant care, expense, and stress. I was ready for a miracle, but was I ready for all that Gabriel’s life could bring?

Frankly, I never faced that possibility in my mind. I was convinced Gabriel was going to be the miracle boy. I could see
God’s hand everywhere in this saga. He was not going to pass up the chance to let the world know of His glory!

I dove into my plan for God’s glory, but there was no water in that pool. Gabriel died, and with him, my plan for revealing God’s glory.

As God revealed His plan through Karen’s book
Letters to Gabriel
, I saw how faithful He had been in the end. I also saw how living through this pain of having a baby in the womb with a severe problem gave me a powerful personal witness to share. The abortion debate was now very personal. It spurred both a passion and compassion. Passion to defend what I now knew firsthand—that child in the womb is one of us, part of our human family—and compassion to help all the wounded women with unplanned pregnancies who had believed the lie of sexual freedom without consequence.

I championed every pro-life bill in the Senate for the next twelve years, including the passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act. I fought for funding for pregnancy care centers that provide care and support for pregnant women in a crisis situation.

To me the pro-life debate was about abortion first and foremost. Then Bella arrived on the scene to teach me a whole new dimension of the issue.

As I previously mentioned, I was horrified that senators wanted to keep late-term abortions legal so parents could kill their children if they found out they were disabled. As the lead sponsor of the bill, I was bombarded by letters from parents of disabled babies in the womb who were outraged because they
had to go to multiple hospitals to find both an obstetrician and a hospital willing to deliver their babies. Most reported that the hospitals were more than willing to do an abortion but didn’t want to risk the legal liability of delivering a child with severe health complications.

As we became more involved with the pro-life issues, we discovered the battle is also waged at the bedsides of the very sick and disabled. It is one thing to know of parents fighting to get care for their babies or trying to find professionals to deliver their babies; it is another to be a father afraid to leave his child’s side for fear of what may happen when he is away.

George W. Bush made the case for education reform with a devastating line that put the educational establishment on its heels. He referred to the lax attitude and standards of education professionals for minority and poor children as the soft bigotry of low expectations. When it comes to medical professionals and children in the womb with severe mental or physical disabilities, the soft bigotry of low expectations for the disabled is often deadly.

The culture of death is everywhere. Not that the hospitals are crawling with evil mercy killers, but rather, with many people who value human life according to what a person is able to
do
, rather than on how he or she can love and be loved. Bella, like so many other people with severe disabilities, can’t “do,” but she is loved, and we are especially blessed that she can love. What is more valuable than that?

5
LOVE THROUGH CHANGES

•
Karen Santorum
•

One sees great things from the valley;
only small things from the peak.

—G. K. CHESTERTON

T
en days after she was born, Bella came home from the hospital. Outside the hospital walls, the sun was shining. The weather seemed to be God’s way of welcoming us home. I’ll never forget fitting Bella’s tiny body into her car seat. She seemed lost in the infant seat, with her curly-haired head nestled in the preemie head support. Looking at her
bewildered expression and wide eyes, Rick and I smiled. As she tried to stretch but couldn’t seem to move in her little coat, we laughed for the first time since her birth. It felt good to hope. Our little girl was coming home. She had graduated from the NICU. She had survived the combat zone when no one thought she would. No one except us.

Although usually a lead foot in the car, Rick drove slowly. Coasting over the bumps, he took care to make sure Bella wouldn’t wake up. As I watched scenes of office buildings change to trees and sky, I exhaled. I inhaled. The May air was fresh, not sterile or tinged with rubbing alcohol. I heard the hum of the engine and the silence of my own thoughts. Spring was changing to summer. Closing my eyes, with the sun warming my face through the window, I felt like a bird just out of a cage. Fresh air and sunshine were the perfect medicines to begin healing my brokenness.

When we arrived home, we heard pounding footsteps from upstairs and squeals of joy. “She’s home!” All the children were there to welcome their sister. As they rushed into the hallway, they beheld her. Their animated excitement turned quickly into hushed, awe-filled whispers. The little boys started tiptoeing closer, eyes wide with anticipation. Gathering around her, they were all mesmerized.

Bella had fallen asleep in the car but had begun to shift and awaken to the sound of their voices. A pink hat hid her curly hair, and her rosy skin lay against the soft, downy blankets surrounding her. Such serenity. We watched as her long eyelashes batted awake, revealing her sea-blue eyes that moved to take in all the faces surrounding her. Sarah reached and grabbed Elizabeth’s hand. Caught up in the moment, I felt a
knot forming in my throat and then Rick’s arm around me. Strength returned to my limbs.