Lawmakers Should Walk A Mile In This Couple’s Shoes

They saw the baby’s feet. As a technician moved the ultrasound wand across the mother’s body, they saw the baby’s legs and arms. The first time they’d seen the baby move, they thought it was a miracle. Now six months into the pregnancy, they had painted the baby’s room and put up happy wallpaper. They had ordered the baby’s crib, a round crib which the mother saw somewhere. “I just went nuts. I said, ‘This is it, we’ve got to get this crib.”’

The day of the ultrasound examination, Phyllis Baker was 36 years old and pregnant for the first time. Her doctor at Atlanta’s Northside Hospital said she didn’t need this second ultrasound; everything was fine. But she did it anyway. As it happens, it may have saved her life. Her only explanation for having the test: “God. No doubt. God.”

Because ultrasound images are a mystery of grainy blacks and whites, the technician talked the Bakers through the examination. They were mesmerized by the shadowy moving shapes that were the baby they’d been trying to make for two years.

“This child we’d been dreaming of, loving, planning for,” is the way Phyllis Baker puts it. The parents called her by the nickname B.B.

On Feb. 24, 1994, the ultrasound technician moved the wand so slowly that the mother asked, “Where are you now?”

When the technician said, “The head,” the mother fell silent. Then the technician said, “Her head is larger than it should be. I need to get Dr. Stone.”

The mother told her husband something was terribly wrong. With no reason to think so, the father yet believed the doctor would explain it away and everything would be fine again. But the mother knew.

Dr. Lawrence Stone confirmed her fear. He told the Bakers the ultrasound revealed hydrocephaly; in layman’s terms, water on the brain. Unless a neural tube into the spinal column is open, fluid can not flow out of the skull. The accumulating fluid deforms the head and leaves no room for the brain. It is a defect of genetic engineering that cannot be repaired.

Randy Baker said, “No, no, no,” and passed out. Phyllis Baker couldn’t move. She felt cold. She thought of herself as a stone. Sunlight went gray.

This is about babies. This is about miracles. This is also about bulletproof vests and armor-plated cars because this is about abortion. This is about babies born dead and babies born beautiful. This is one family’s story. This is a story the United States Congress should hear.

Congress is considering a law that could send doctors to prison for doing third-trimester abortions, even if the purpose would be to save a woman’s life or to assure her ability to have other children. The House passed the bill, 288-139; the Senate has it now.

President Clinton has suggested a veto, and with reason: Doctors who see tragedy and do miracles should be honored, not arrested.

“I’m pro get-the-hell-out,” Randy Baker said. “It’s just none of a politician’s damned business.”

Until they heard the doctor’s options for B.B., the Bakers had never considered abortion. Then Randy asked, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is this?” The doctor’s answer, “An 8.” The baby might survive six months in a vegetative state.

The baby’s hydrocephaly also could put the mother’s life at risk. No treatment could reverse B.B.’s genetic damage. No treatment could offer hope the baby felt no pain. No treatment offered hope the baby ever would know her mother or father. She would never know she was loved.

These were hellish circumstances. So, as much as they wanted B.B., the Bakers were at peace with their decision. They would leave Alpharetta, leave Georgia, leave their doctors and friends because the law said no such abortions could be done in this state.

In the pregnancy’s 29th week, they went to Wichita, Kan. There they met George Tiller, one of the rare physicians in America who does third-trimester abortions. Rare and brave. He has been shot. His facility has been burned. He has around-the-clock bodyguards. Zealots cry murder and press pictures of aborted fetuses at patients entering Tiller’s building.

Running that gantlet, Phyllis Baker, a Texan, had a Texan’s idea. She wanted to punch ‘em in their ugly faces. “Randy had to hold me back.”

Dr. Tiller performed a Digoxin induction. The baby’s death came with an injection of saline solution. Because her head was too big to move through the birth canal, the doctor drained it. The Bakers later held B.B. “She was beautiful,” the mother said, “and we were able to tell her goodbye.”

The Bakers are grateful to Dr. Tiller and his volunteers. “Dr. Tiller is a gift from God,” Phyllis Baker said. Randy Baker said, “If I had to pay Dr. Tiller a half-million dollars to do what he did, I’d do it. It sounds crazy to thank him for killing my baby, but it’s not. Those screaming people banging on our car don’t care about us or our baby. Dr. Tiller cares. I know he has Austin’s picture on his wall.”

They call him Austin because the Texans conceived him in the Texas capital two months after B.B.’s death. Austin Baker is 10 months old, blue-eyed, blond and rosy-cheeked. For two hours the other night, as his parents told their story, the little boy slept first on his father’s stomach and then in his mother’s arms.

Every night when Daddy comes home, Austin toddles over and hugs one leg or the other. There were no problems with his birth, though the father never quit worrying until he saw his son perfect.

“Instantaneous love,” the father says. The mother says, “I cry about B.B. because I miss her so much, and I know we can’t ever replace her. But because of Dr. Tiller’s skill and courage, we were able to have Austin. He’s the light of our life.”

At the start of this, we mentioned a round crib ordered for B.B.

The same crib was ordered for Austin.

He loves it.

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