How a Mom & Baby Landed on a Billboard

(Continued from Newsletter Edition #46. Her story in her own words.)

I began my journey into the prolife movement in November of 1972, when I had just turned 11 (go ahead, do the math; I’ll wait). My Dad enlisted my help (I felt so grown up!) to go door-to-door distributing flyers to “Vote No on Proposal B” (which would have legalized some abortions in Michigan). Proposal B was defeated, and that time together with my father remains one of my most cherished memories of my Dad; he died a few years later.

In high school and college, I researched abortion, figuring I must be missing something. How could anyone support the killing of babies? My search only reinforced my belief that if anyone honestly examines this issue, the only logical conclusion is that preborn individuals are human and alive. Defending them is a clear civil rights obligation.

When I met Andy, who would become my husband, we discussed our desire for a large family early in our relationship. God, however, had other plans. After we married, we discovered our family would be formed through adoption. Our prolife views were only reinforced as we heard people discuss abortion so casually as we longed to welcome any of those sweet babies into our lives.

We decided to pursue open adoption (which was rather new at the time), and met our 1^st daughter’s birthmother. We visited our baby in foster care for several weeks, before we were cleared for that precious day when we brought her home.

Two years later, we became licensed as foster parents so we could accept our next child, a boy, right from the hospital. That came with the risk that the birthmother could change her mind before all the legalities were finalized. She did. After having him in our home and hearts for two weeks (and after some fleeting thoughts of fleeing to Canada), we were forced to relinquish our precious (only) son.

A few months later, a young woman who had become pregnant at 14 chose us to parent her expected baby girl. Being close to her younger sister, she liked the idea of her baby having a sister. We were overjoyed, once again.

A year later, that same young woman called us. Her sister was now pregnant, and she wondered if we would consider adopting her baby as well. She called us a few weeks later to let us know the sad news: their parents had convinced her sister to have an abortion. Our baby was lost to the culture of death.

Then, one year later, our case worker called. Our 2^nd daughter’s birthmother, now just 17, had gone into the agency, asking if they thought we might be interested in adopting another baby. They asked how far along she was, and if she’d had any prenatal care. She had not. She’d kept the entire pregnancy secret – wearing “Spanx” and loose clothes, afraid her parents would try to talk her into an abortion as they had her sister. The case worker sent her to a doctor, who sent her to the hospital. Our youngest, perfectly beautiful, healthy daughter was born the next day.

And our family, with blessings and losses, was complete. For a time. My husband died several years ago from cancer (it should be illegal), when our two youngest were still teenagers. Our girls are all grown now and moved to different towns. My oldest is a mother herself. My grandson, Andrew, is now four. She had suggested for some time that I consider moving closer. When she became pregnant again, I knew that as a working Mom, she could certainly use the help. I decided to accept her invitation. My granddaughter, Felicity, just turned one (see Nov. Newsletter cover).

Prior to moving to Spring Lake, one of the very 1^st things I did was check to make sure there was a prolife group in the area. That is how I found Tri-Cities Right to Life (and started appearing in car parades).

And I have since become a foster-parent again, in a way. I am currently raising a 4-month-old Papillon puppy to be a service dog for Paws with a Cause. If all goes well, after a year he will go into training to be a Hearing Assistance dog.

[End]

RELATED: An established married couple recently reached out to us saying that they are interested in adopting. If you know of a birth-mom who would consider an open (or even closed) adoption, please let us know so we can put her in contact with them. Thank you!

[This story is a continuation from our November 2020 Thanksgiving issue front page photo inset]

By Theresa Giacalone April 8, 2021 [updated May 2021]

Along with Irene W.’s ninety-seven years comes much life experience, of course; and it was in hearing her story that I experienced a life lesson myself while struggling to regain a little balance after the tumultuous election of 2020.

You might agree that one of the many values of history is how it adds perspective. It was late March 1942 when Irene turned eighteen. It had already been a full twenty-two years since the 19^th Amendment was adopted, granting women voting rights– yet not until they turned thirty. This is something I did not know until asking the question: how many elections are in 97 years? Doing the research for this article revealed still more interesting answers. The year of Irene’s 40^th birthday was when the 24^th Amendment of 1964 finally allowed voting without taxation; then seven years later, the voting age threshold was at last lowered to eighteen. Getting a sense of the timeline of events that helped U.S. citizens gain some key rights is helpful.

Math will also be helpful to answer my first question. Irene hit thirty in 1954 and could start voting. After a quick calculation, we arrive at some estimates surrounding Irene’s voting history. 97 minus the first 30 years she could not vote equals 67 voteable years divided by the 4 year frequency of presidential elections. Instead of doing more research and calculations to determine her potential rate of voting if mid-terms were included, I’ll kiss perfectionism goodbye and be satisfied to know that Irene W. likely voted a minimum of 16 times in her lifetime. Wonderful!

If all guidelines had been equal to today’s, Irene would have cast a ballot for president almost 19 times. But all things were not equal as described above. Minimum age and gender played a significant part in the history of election laws thereby affecting our estimate and her own voting rights.

However, being barred from voting until she turned thirty might have mattered very little to Irene given her busy life in northern Ohio. As one of eight children, she was surrounded by her strong, German Catholic family in which faith and church was the center. She raised four children of her own, teaching them to not judge others saying, “It would be a very boring world if everyone was the same.” Politically, Irene aligned like many Catholics in her day with the Democrat party, until it ‘went south’ on abortion.

She supported her husband in his career with NASA and later, as an early widow, re-entered the workforce engaging her talent in mathematics while employed with Sears & Roebuck. Later, in her 60’s, while working for a local business, Irene took classes to learn how to use computers and then went on to set up the computing system for the company.

[Side note: At this point in interviewing her daughter, Irene’s story started sounding like one of my favorite movies. It tells of three women who played an integral role in getting the U.S. space program to the moon. Based on a true story, it’s full of relevant civil rights themes, history, science, and mind-bending math. It’s also humorous in every perfect way. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend “Hidden Figures”, a delightful hybrid of spunk and intellect!]

The similarities between Irene’s story and the characters of a favorite movie felt like an exclamation point to the newfound perspective I had for the intrigue (read: frustration) surrounding the 2020 election. By learning about Irene and her likely 16 presidential elections, I had a new outlook. Compared to the many elections in which Irene voted, one takes on a whole lot less significance. Not that the 2020 election wasn’t really, really important, and due to radically wide divides in policy– was more contentious than any previous election ever, but… I won’t digress down that path right now. All that’s necessary is to bear in mind what one of Irene’s daughters said: “Mom always lived out strong ethics and morals, even in difficult times. She trusted God’s hand in her life, always took a positive approach and taught her children to pray, not worry, and turn it over to God– always giving thanks for the many blessings.” The best advice ever.

To top off her wisdom, Irene’s timeline also includes perseverance. She was the first woman to be on her church’s finance committee… until she was in her 90’s! She was out visiting the sick until 88 years old, and continues watching daily Mass and praying the rosary.

When first seeing Irene’s photo on the cover of Life News #43, did you consider that there was so much depth to her story? At 97, with more years behind her than ahead, life is harder and yet also simpler now that she is being cared for full time by her family.

To follow-up on her birthday last month, Tri-cities Right to Life would like to say, “Happy belated birthday, Irene!” Thank you for helping me, and maybe all of us, recall the value of perspective.

TG
*If you’re so inclined, will you send Irene a message via our contact form? She would love that!

[UPDATE: Irene passed into eternity on May 31, 2021. Please join us in praying for the repose of her soul. Thank you.]

How Pro-life Brianna Wynne, MD is Making a Difference

By Theresa Giacalone, updated Oct. 2021

Our two families became fast friends twenty years ago after meeting in the halls of something called Thursday School in Holland, Michigan. Thursday School was a one-day-per week learning co-op for homeschool students where five elementary-level subjects were taught, then a week’s worth of homework was assigned till they met again. At Thursday school, we came to expect the quality, faith-based academics, but what no one anticipated was the strong friendships that would be forged.

Fast forward a mere two decades, and it’s June 19^th. We’ve been invited to the virtual graduation (due to Covid) of our dear friends’ eldest daughter whose residency in gerontology will be officially commencing. There were six students in all who had helped build the program from the ground up at Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin. But Brianna was “our” graduate. Her mom, two uncles, two of her three sisters, and our family all sat in the physical living room excited for the virtual waiting room to open on the Zoom call so Brianna and her five colleagues could finally wrap up the educational aspect of their careers.

As often happens when approaching a major milestone, we review the landscape of all that led up to the present moment. Included in that view was the empty spaces of those who were missing. Twenty years brings many changes, and our two families had endured some of the big ones, like the loss of both husbands/fathers to cancer. Brianna’s high school graduation (from homeschool) was, in fact, the last one my husband would attend. He sat there that morning in May, overcome with emotion, knowing he would likely never witness his own children’s graduations due to the eventual outcome of his battle with a brain tumor. The depth of emotion that day is hard for me to shake even now. Brianna’s father, Fred, would miss her baby sister’s high school graduation while hospitalized, fighting a literal one-in-a-million rare form of liver cancer. His battle ended a few weeks later. And since then, there have been at least thirteen celebrations of our collective ten kids’ education journeys.

All of this flashed through my mind on the ten-mile trip to their home last month. And pro-life topics were on the forefront since most of my day had been spent composing the Tri-Cities Right to Life newsletter. I easily recalled just how involved in pro-life activities Brianna had been. For example, she was one of seven selected for the 2013 Medical Students for Life Fellowship from applicants across the nation.

The announcement read:

“Each fellow will participate in a five-week training by some of America’s leading bioethicists, clinicians, researchers, health economists, and legal experts. Their fellowship will commence on June 16^th when they will participate in a week-long intense medical ethics seminar at Princeton University. After their seminar is complete, they will begin work on a medical ethics research project where they will prepare manuscripts and submit their work to journals. During the practicum portion of their fellowship, they will extern with a physician in their field and volunteer their time at a medical pregnancy resource center. We are very pleased to present the next generation of pro-life doctors and leaders.”

Very impressive! It had been a few years since her fellowship, so I wanted an update. I wondered how much she had been able to exercise her love for life in her last several years as an M.D., and during her residency program in Wisconsin. It didn’t take long to find out.

When we entered her family’s home, Brianna was there on the couch, laptop in position, calmly troubleshooting sharing the Zoom link with her grandmother in Georgia, among others (because grandma, with pride in her granddaughter overflowing, had apparently invited many of her own friends). My friend, Michelle, the graduate’s mother, was smiling and recounting how blessed her daughter had been to be in the position that she was in to help so many people. She turned over the telling of just one of many stories to the doctor herself; and there it was—the answer to my question that hadn’t, at that point, even been asked.

In Brianna’s voice, it went like this: “I am really so blessed to have had the chance recently to minister to a young woman and her mom. They came in for a checkup and disclosed that the girl was pregnant. I recommended a clinical pregnancy test then explained how I am legally obligated to tell them about both options… but gently added that I would never personally perform an abortion. And I kept referring to her unborn baby as a “baby”—using that word intentionally. I added how honored I would be to be able to care for her as an OB/GYN if they decide to give birth.” I sat there in amazement at her wide smile, the sparkle in her eyes, and her humble yet self-assured way of relaying her experience. She continued, “They left that day not indicating which way they were leaning, so all I could do was pray. A few days later, I decided to just go ahead and pray with gratitude, believing in faith that the next appointment that I saw on the schedule for this young woman would be for an OB/GYN prenatal appointment.” [Okay, let’s admit right now, that the kind of faith it takes to pray in full confidence, displayed in that moment right in front of me, is really rare. But back to the story…]

Her already full smile got impossibly fuller with, “And I was so happy when there they were—at their next appointment—not for post-abortion follow-up, but for prenatal care!” The young patient and her mom told Brianna that they had been considering abortion until they talked to her. After that, they felt that they could go through with the pregnancy. That they could do it— and would be keeping the baby.

As I sat there reveling in the great news while she recounted the story, it hit me that her mile-wide smile—and her eyes that lit up with pure joy were so endearing that I wondered how anyone could escape an interaction with her feeling anything but hopeful. The questions in my head went something like this: Was it really so simple? If we present the truth with joy, will it be so attractive that people of good will cannot help but follow God’s path and pursue Life?! And when we pro-lifers show up over and over, all we need to do is be sure to bring both truth and joy? Seems simple enough. When we’re painfully honest, though, we know it’s ‘easier said than done’.

I was inspired to see how my very simple question, formulated on the way to the party, was answered without prompting, and how this young woman in her late twenties, who I had watched grow up, was so simply and confidently turning her medical care into a ministry.

My final question was whether I could share her story and put her picture on the cover of our newsletter. Her answer is why you’re reading this now.

How much inspiration can you take in one day?!? If you’ve had your fill, then consider this an encouragement—encouragement that in the world right now, there’s still an abundance of good news, and that our pro-life job can be boiled down to just two things: truth plus joy.

Be encouraged.

Since this story was posted, Brianna has moved to Winter Park, Florida where she secured her first choice for post-residency employment. She is now a family practice physician with Advent Health Network of Orlando where she will be working with the elderly, one of her life-long passions.

UPDATE, late 2021: We were delighted that Brianna could attend my son’s wedding in August. She said she wouldn’t have missed it. She also said she had a story to share with me about the story I had written about her. My interest was piqued. While she was meeting prospective roommates in Florida, one said she had been researching Brianna online (like a good doctor would), and she had come upon this article. After reading it, the prospective roomie said it completely undid the stereotypes she had kept regarding pro-lifers. She once thought we were narrow-minded and rigid; but the way this was written and Brianna’s “Do No Harm” approach absolutely changed her. It also made it possible for them to become roommates. Then there it was: Bri’s mile-wide smile and the radiating JOY that always accompanies it.
This full-circle moment was, for me, a Godsend. Our reach extends far and wide, my friends! Never underestimate that.