By Francis X. Maier
On a cool October afternoon some years ago, a young woman—let’s call her Jenny, age 18—walked into St. John Hospital in Santa Monica and gave birth to a boy. Her friends had urged her to have an abortion. So had her boyfriend, Jack, also 18, who waited with us outside the delivery room, his eyes red from feelings he hadn’t expected and couldn’t name.
I sat beside him and listened as he explained that yes, he really loved Jenny, but things simply hadn’t worked out. He drank too much. He liked to fight. He couldn’t hold a job. And now he had legal trouble after smashing his car into the big plate-glass window of a gas station while completely drunk. The idea of being a dad… well, it just seemed crazy to him.
Jenny, who had followed Jack from the Midwest, dodged her friends through the sixth, seventh, and even eighth months, agreeing that yes, abortion was the sensible route and that she would take care of the problem. Then, on a rainy afternoon, she stepped into a local Catholic church.
The priest referred her to a support group that, at her request, put her in touch with a young pro-life attorney who handled adoptions. The lawyer explained some options: she knew many Catholic and other Christian couples looking to adopt. But Jenny already knew what she wanted. A week later, the phone rang at our house.
What I remember most from the weeks that followed is Jenny’s courage. She had no money. She loved Jack, but she had no illusions about building a life with him. Her friends thought she was foolish to carry the baby to term and never showed up at the hospital. Her family, back in Wisconsin, didn’t even know where she was.
Yet amid her turmoil and anxiety, and completely alone, she focused on one thing: giving her baby the chance to live.
Why Jenny chose us—or more precisely, my wife Suann—was simple. She had seen Suann on local television speaking about the humanity of the unborn child. What moved Jenny was a certain grace or kindness she rightly perceived in my wife; qualities Jenny herself shared.
She could have turned her baby into a profit; many stable couples were eager for a child and could pay. Instead, she chose two people living month to month on writing and freelance work. We had to borrow money to cover the hospital bill. The doctor and the attorney, both Catholic, worked for free. Jenny asked only for the cost of a bus ticket back to the Midwest.
Looking back, all of this sounds implausible. But it happened.
In the hospital waiting room that autumn night, a nurse finally came for my wife and me. And in that moment, the paths that had briefly connected us with Jack—the baby’s natural father—diverged. He shook my hand and thanked us, but stayed behind. We went forward to meet the newborn. When we returned later, he was gone. We never saw him again.
As for the baby: well, as the days flowed into the first months of his life, and we held and played with him night after night, our unexpected gift from God seemed (at least to me) to have his mother’s eyes—the eyes of the mother who would raise and love him: my wife’s eyes.
All of this took place nearly half a century ago. Our son is now a grown man. He has a good job, a talented and beautiful wife, a son of his own with fierce talent, and a daughter, Veronica, who owns his heart.
“Vero” is confined to a wheelchair. She was born with a severe disability. She cannot speak. She cannot feed or care for herself. Yet beneath those burdens is a person with her own personality, a young woman with an eternal purpose in the mind of God, aware of the world, with her own likes and dislikes, joys and frustrations. At 21 now, her smile can light up a room. Her displeasure can be equally clear. But she knows she is loved, and watching the daily devotion—the unsung heroism—of her parents is a master class in what it means to be human for anyone who enters that family’s orbit.
These things have been very much on my mind lately because of the young couple of influencers who aborted their unborn child with Down syndrome and shared the entire experience online. It’s hard to imagine what they were thinking, or even if they were thinking; and perhaps that shallowness counts in their favor.
In the real world, beyond our digital fantasy land, they killed a human life in the womb, a unique and irreplaceable imago Dei. But they also killed something precious and godly in themselves. And actions have consequences: they have already faced abundant criticism. Now they have plenty of time to consider (or ignore) the gravity of what they did. Influencers, like actors, have a short shelf life. Mistakes do not.
I suppose my point here is that memorable passage, freely translated, from the Talmud: “Whoever saves a single soul, Scripture accounts it as though he had saved an entire world. And whoever destroys a single soul, Scripture accounts it as though he had destroyed an entire world.”
As we approach another Father’s Day, I think of that lost and troubled young man in the hospital waiting room so long ago. I hope Jack has become a good man. I hope he has become a good dad. But more often, and with even deeper gratitude, I remember the young woman who chose life and gave us our second and steadfast son.
We never heard from her again; nor has our son sought her out. He knows who his mother is: the woman who raised him, loves him, and always will.
But Jenny, wherever you are, I hope you are happy and well. Because you did good.
About the author
Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church.