If we hear no evil, we see no evil

Britain’s Daily Mail had it thus: “Faced with the knowledge that only chemotherapy would save her from terminal neck cancer, newly pregnant Stacie Crimm made the ultimate sacrifice. The 41-year-old, who had been told by doctors she would never be able to conceive a child, decided to refuse the treatment so her unborn daughter could live instead. Stacie was able to survive for five months before being forced to deliver Dottie Mae, weighing just two pounds, one ounce, by Caesarean section — and even managed to hold her on one occasion before succumbing to the disease three days later.”

It’s a story reminiscent of Gianna Beretta Molla, the Italian pediatrician, wife and mother who refused both an abortion and a hysterectomy when she was pregnant with her fourth child, even though she was told — and as a doctor, of course, knew — the pregnancy would almost certainly kill her. She died in 1962, and was canonized in 2004. In the case of Crimm, an Oklahoma woman, the father of her baby left her some time ago, and she asked her brother to raise her daughter. He readily agreed, adding tiny Dottie to his family of four children.

It’s profoundly moving on every level, and indeed the reason it was covered in such detail in the mass circulation British newspaper, and elsewhere, is because it will doubtless bring readers to tears. Motherhood, loss, sacrifice, a baby. A perfect story, unless you’re going for sex, scandal and a celebrity.

But consider all of this just a little further. That same Daily Mail, and I’m sure myriad of the crying readers, would have congratulated Stacie Crimm if she’d had an abortion. Goodness me, forget an abortion to save the life of a mother, most of those readers would not have turned a hair if it was an abortion because of a change of job or a booked vacation!

It’s the ignoring of those who are not instantly visible, the throwing of a stale, ugly cloak of anonymity over people and issues that do not instantly throw themselves in our faces, that is the problem. Americans tolerated slavery for so very long because they had no experience of the lives of black people in the south. It was the novelists and the pamphleteers who humanized the suffering and changed a nation.

Similarly in Europe during the Second World War, there were otherwise good people who knew Jews were being arrested and taken away, but comforted themselves that they were merely being relocated — repugnant enough in itself — so the whole issue could be ignored. It’s not that the average person tolerates evil, it’s that they pretend the evil is not happening.

Which is why a case like that of Stacie Crimm is so important. Suddenly we are forced to confront what occurs when a child is conceived and what our responsibilities are in such a situation. Not Catholic responsibilities, but human responsibilities. This is important. It’s not that abortion is a Catholic issue, but that Catholicism sees the abortion issue more clearly and more correctly because Catholicism understands natural law and is the most acute reflection of a moral code given to us by God.

We are creatures made in His image, so it should go without saying that if we listen to Him properly, we will do His will. His will is life, and the Church — His institution, given to us to deliver His will — has no option but to stand firm for life. So if anyone angrily tells you that abortion is a Catholic issue, you need to reply that this is actually a human issue, but one that Catholics understand best. It might not please your accuser, but it’s true nevertheless.

Stacie Crimm is a model mom and a woman who should inspire us. My own mother died after a long, slow period of Alzheimer’s and she had no idea who I was in her final year. But I knew who she was. She was love, she was my mother. Her soul remained the same, even though her body and her mind were broken. Oh, how we have turned this world upside down. Bless you Stacie for reminding us. And mom, rest in peace my darling.