By Leslie Bond Diggins
I hate speaking in public. It makes my
heart pound, my mouth dry out, and my mind go totally blank. Yet here I
was facing 116 teenagers, admittedly sympathetic, but whose expressions
clearly said they anticipated hearing "The Speech" on abortion.
How had I gotten myself into this mess?
Flashback. The phone rings. It is my cousin, Mary Gavin, president of Massachusetts
Teens for Life. She is helping to organize a week of pro-life activities
at her school and wonders if, perhaps, I would give a "short talk."
No fool, I spend the next 20 minutes explaining why someone else (anyone
else!) would be a better choice. Also no fool, she employs the greatest
persuasion technique known to humankind: flattery.
These eager-beaver students, she cheerfully assures me, would really benefit
from hearing from someone "close to their own age." I, having
just turned a spry 36, am flattered into agreeing to come. (Turns out, alas,
that she then adds that one of their more recent speakers was in his 80s.
But it's too late - - I am committed to doing what I dread.)
The next several days produce dreadfully dry speeches that would put an
incurable insomniac to sleep. Please understand, if someone were to come
up and ask me why I am pro-life, I could chat for hours with animation and
even eloquence; it is something about which I feel passionately.
But try to put the same feelings into an organized presentation and it's
sheer torture. Panic, never far away to begin with, becomes my closest companion.
But then an idea comes to mind: I am 13 weeks' pregnant with my fourth
child. A week before, I'd heard my baby's heartbeat for the very first time.
If the students could only hear that, I think, they would be hard pressed
to think of an unborn child as anything but a human life.
What to do? There's so little time. I call the nurse practitioner at my
obstetrician's office to ask if I might borrow the special stethoscope used
to detect the fetal heartbeat.
Her initial response instantly deflates my dreams: At 13 weeks it would
be impossible for me to broadcast my baby's heartbeat with my modesty intact.
Enough said. I start to hang up, defeated.
"But," I hear on the other end of the line, "if you can
come down this morning, I'll make a recording for you."
Oh, sure, I say, as I scan the room, no problem. There's only my own three
children, aged four, three, and 15 months, and two that I take care of for
a friend, aged four and 18 months. The floor is littered with toys and it
is almost lunchtime. Perfect timing.
My response? "I'll be there as soon as I can." Hang up. Call
mother-in-law, who drops everything to help out. Call friend to okay substitute
sitter. Search house for a tape recorder. Search again for a tape. Search
again for batteries. Finally borrow some from husband's alarm clock. Realize
that 18-month-old charge will not want to stay with someone she doesn't
know very well. Head to doctor's office with recorder, tape, batteries,
and toddler in tow. Lie on table. Toddler starts to cry. Hold intermittently
crying toddler on table while tape is made. Learn that nurse practitioner
is 100% pro-life - - a bonus!
Once home tell my kids where I've been, what I did. Prepare to play the
tape. Turn tape on. In the background a toddler can be heard crying! The
kids, in awestruck tones, remark, "I heard our baby say 'No' from your
tummy!" Explain that our baby isn't quite that precocious.
Stay up till three in the morning, still struggling over what to say for
"The Speech." Surely, the fate of the pro-life movement hangs
in the balance.
Kids wake up at five. Talk is scheduled to begin in three and a half hours.
Help! No, make that HELP!
Flash forward. One hundred and sixteen faces look at me expectantly. I
squeak out my first two sentences, before resorting to my ace-in-the-hole.
"I have something I'd like you all to hear." I play the tape,
and ask if anyone can identify the sound.
First student thoughtfully responds, "Sounds like a pig." Not
exactly the shock of instant recognition I had expected. My mouth starts
to go dry. I push ahead.
Second student volunteer raises hand. Prayerfully, I call on her: "Is
it a heartbeat?"
"Yes," I say, my confidence suddenly surging. "But
not just anyone's heartbeat. I happen to be 13 weeks' pregnant, and I had
this recording made yesterday at my obstetrician's office. It's the heartbeat
of the baby inside me right now."
Not trying to be melodramatic, but merely honest, I add, "And on my
way home from here today, I could stop that heartbeat forever by having
an abortion, as easily and legally as I could stop to buy maternity clothes."
Pressure suddenly gone. I can talk to the students now, because I am speaking
as myself, simply one person talking to some others about an issue I care
about as deeply as I care about the baby whose heartbeat they have just
heard.
And then I have a shock of recognition: it suddenly dawns on me
that this is what it's all about. It's not about putting together the perfect
speech, or choosing just the right words, or being able to get up in front
of people without your hands shaking.
No, it's rather about caring enough about those tiny beating hearts - -
and those bigger, almost grown hearts beating inside the listeners - - to
put nervousness and self-consciousness and ego aside and simply speak out.
I go home immensely relieved. I've been told that the sound of that little
heartbeat was the talk of the school all day long. An impression has been
made, and I am very pleased.
As I near home, I reach for my tape player; I want to hear my baby's little
heartbeat again. When I turn it on, the heartbeat sounds slow and blurred.
My
batteries, in near terminal shape, produce one last burst of energy before
they conk out.
Thank you God, I thought, that the batteries lasted long enough to play
the tape for the students.
When I mentioned this near catastrophic mishap to a friend, he pointed
out a chilling irony. Had I stopped for an abortion, my baby's heartbeat
would have briefly sped up, faster and faster...and then stopped forever.
"Thank you, God," I thought, "that my baby's heart is still
beating."
May the day come soon when no tiny heart is silenced in what should be
the safest place in the world: her mother's womb.