As Christian nationalism, the political right and Trump-mania seem to tighten their grip on the country, maybe now is the time for me to take a deep dig into the complex preciousness of . . . life itself.

Hey, guess what? I’m “pro-life” — by which I mean, you know, pro-life in a deep, soul-gripping, planet-loving, war-hating way. By which I mean: Let us reclaim Roe v. Wade from the smug, bureaucratic moral certainty — “your body, my choice” — of the anti-choicers, who apparently could care less about the impact Roe’s overturning has had on medical care and the safety, both physical and spiritual, of women.

But I want to put my words into the paradoxical context of life itself. As a man, I am writing, of course, from the perimeter of the process. I am a dad. I’m also a journal-keeper. The other day I happened to dig back nearly 40 years into an old notebook and reread, for the first time in decades, the journal entry I wrote the day after my daughter was born. Mom and newborn were still in the hospital. That evening, when I came home, I had to let my words flow.

A new being was present on Planet Earth! I was immersed in wonder and awe and virtually undone by the experience my wife, Barbara, had just endured. I was also deeply grateful that we had done Lamaze training — that the medical community now acknowledged there was a role for a male in the agonizing birth process . . . that Mom wasn’t alone and Dad could be fully present through it all.

“I was the guy,” so I explained to my journal, “who presses the three fingers of his right hand as hard as he can against his wife’s back during her contractions. That was the sum total of my life for six hours — perhaps the longest six hours of my life. My role is to apply pressure — that and be gently encouraging and to get Barbara to focus and to do her ‘ah-hee’ breathing. And usually I’d breathe with her, pressing my finger hard against her back as she reached each peak.

“How many contractions did Barbara have? They were coming every other minute for a while. She probably had 150, mostly lying on her side in the bed, but sometimes lying on pillows on the floor and sometimes while she was sitting on the toilet in the bathroom. I’d have to come tearing across the room when she called me and she’d look at me with her beautiful, intense eyes — her face darkened with pain and desperation — and I’d reach behind her back and she’d use my eyes as her focal point.

“The only time it got close to desperate was well into the evening. ‘Talk me out of using drugs,’ she begged me. I felt real positive that she could make it and I just gave her all the encouragement I could muster. . . .

“Then,” I wrote, “came the most intense part of the process, the pushing. She was at this for nearly two and a half hours, from 8:30 till the birth at 10:50. In this phase, I added a new duty to my man’s role. I was the guy who counted to ten during each push. . . .

“And the top of this little baby’s head would slide to the opening, then sloosh back up the birth canal. Oh, so frustrating! Time and time and time again. Oh, I felt so bad for Barbara. She was trying so hard, valiantly hard, but half her pushes were ineffective. She had to figure out exactly which pushing movement worked, and finally she did, and at last could put all that intense effort to good use.

“I knew things were looking good when the doctor pointed out to me a tiny, tiny curl of hair that remained emerging from the vaginal opening after a round of pushing had stopped. The baby was truly right there, waiting to get out. After that, each push seemed to get the head a little farther out. But, oh, the effort was so difficult! I kept looking at Barbara’s face and the intensity she was throwing into this struggle was so fierce!

“I knew she was giving it all she had and I just hoped to God it would be enough. At about 10:30 the doctor warned us that she would have to use forceps if the baby didn’t come out in half an hour. That was when Barbara really threw herself into it — straight into the center of her intense pain. And the head kept emerging, more and more, centimeter by centimeter. Then the doc did an episiotomy — zip! — and on the next push the head came out. And within a few seconds the rest of the body followed, schloop! Slippery, purple body. And the look on Barbara’s face was tearful, disbelieving joy, the wildest joy imaginable. Bring on the champagne, please!”

This is a mini-description of the agonizing complexity of birth — of life! — and of course the complexity of having a newborn continues well afterward. But l leave it here for the moment in order to acknowledge not simply the uniqueness but the cooperative effort involved in every birth, and the danger of something going wrong. (We learned, for instance that one of our Lamaze-class members’ tailbone cracked just as she was giving birth, after, good Lord, a four-day labor process.)

So much is unknown. And the spread of anti-abortion laws across the country since Roe was overturned have put doctors in fear of helping women in serious danger. Sometimes even if the fetus has died in utero, the pregnant woman will simply be sent home and told to wait it out, i.e., give birth to a corpse, rather than have the fetus surgically removed.

A New Yorker story about the Lone Star state notes: “After Roe was overturned, the laws in Texas tightened further, so that abortion was banned at any phase of pregnancy, unless the woman was threatened with death or ‘substantial impairment of a major bodily function.’”

But proving this to be the case might be difficult, if the doctor is charged with performing an abortion. “Violations could send practitioners to prison for life.” So the endangered woman receives no medical intervention. Some women die.

This is virtually beyond comprehension, at least to me (and millions of others). Giving birth is a serious, deeply spiritual and often dangerous choice. Simplistic laws have no place in the process, especially when they interrupt proper medical care and crucial intervention. Life is too precious to be left in the hands of bureaucrats.

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His newly released album of recorded poetry and art work, Soul Fragments, is available here: https://linktr.ee/bobkoehler

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