This is a truly horrifying story. It highlights the heartlessness of those who view children, not as gifts from God, made in his very image and beloved by him, but rather as commodities to be had or discarded at the will of the parent. It’s the story of a family who named their baby Reid Owen Edwards—whose initials intentionally spell R.O.E. of Roe v. Wade fame—to honor the killing of the baby’s older sister by abortion!
According to interviews this mother had with news outlets, a couple in Texas were struggling with infertility and turned to IVF (in vitro fertilization) to conceive a child. Bear in mind that this means several, if not many, of their children were already discarded, as traditional IVF sorts embryos based on their “viability” and many clinics screen for disabilities or even the potential of future illness and discard those that are “less fit.” Thus, a number of human beings made in the image of God were killed!
One embryo, a little girl they named Pheobe, was implanted, but at her 17-week anatomy scan it was discovered that, tragically, she had “encephalocele, a rare neural tube defect in which the brain protrudes through an opening in the skull.” As Live Action notes, “While the condition may be treated with surgery, it is not always a possibility if the condition is too severe. Currently, the mortality rate is estimated to be 55%.”
A doctor delivered the news to the parents, who at first wanted to fight for their baby’s life, offering to travel to find medical care or to get surgery. But the doctor assured them the baby would not survive and reportedly offered the parents these options:
He said, you can continue your pregnancy if you’d like; this is what this will look like. You will come in weekly for scans, and wait for her to die inside of you so we can induce labor. Great, great option.
You can carry t[o] term, he said that’s not likely, but you can, if you carry t[o] term and we do labor, she will suffocate to death in front of you.
Or you can terminate your pregnancy, which is going to be the best option for your future fertility. Because he knew we wanted to be parents. And that was the fastest way we could try again for another baby.
After this conversation, the mother says, “I knew I didn’t want to be pregnant anymore,” partly because she “didn’t want to prolong [Pheobe’s] suffering.” She ended up traveling out of state (Texas does not allow these kinds of abortions at this stage of pregnancy) to secure a surgical abortion at 19 weeks, a grisly procedure that her doctor wasn’t even willing to describe to her, probably because he didn’t want to admit that her child would be torn limb from limb and her skull crushed so she could be removed from the mother’s womb.
Yes, the mother claims she didn’t want her child to suffer anymore, so she had her removed from the safety and warmth of the womb in the most violent way possible! The reality of abortion is absolutely horrific. So much pain and suffering!
Her doctor told her this death was “the fastest way [they] could try again for another baby,” but the killing of her child (though the mother blames it on the “delay in care”—a short, two week delay—because she had to go out of state for the procedure) resulted in “retained tissue and scarring” which led to her “having to have full reconstructive surgery of [her] uterus afterwards because of the scarring that was left.”
Yes, the abortion not only violently ended the life of her daughter but it left her with complications. Eventually, she was able to implant another embryo, this time a boy and “a boy she claims was only possible due to her abortion.” And then they chose his name.
We didn’t have a name picked out. And we were like 10 days out from when he was born. And we’ve gone back and forth and we had a short list, and Reid and Owen were both on that list.
And they were names I really liked and was having a hard time choosing between. And I think I was like literally in the shower, and Travis [her husband] came in and was like, “If we name him Reid Owen Edwards, his initials will be R-O-E.” And I said, “Oh, that’s it. That’s the one.” It’s just part of his story. He wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t given an abortion.
This is truly disturbing—a family naming their baby after the procedure that took the life of his disabled sister! What a sad, sick, fallen world we live in.
Think about the alternative: Even if surgery truly wasn’t possible to treat her condition, that little baby girl could have continued to grow in her mother’s womb, comfortable and safe, and be allowed to either pass away naturally in utero or shortly after birth and then be placed in her parents’ arms for them to see and grieve over. Instead, she was violently ripped apart in some clinic, pieced back together to make sure they removed every part of her body, and discarded as medical waste. And then her little brother was named after the court case that initially made it possible for her life to be ended in such a grisly way!
It’s absolutely tragic and heartbreaking that this child received a life-ending diagnosis. Things like this are a consequence of living in a fallen world. But what her parents did to her was inexcusable—and sadly, it’s a decision many parents across the nation make when their child receives a similar diagnosis . . . or even a much lesser diagnosis, such as a non-fatal disability or genetic abnormality. It’s a consequence of a culture that does not value human life but rather views babies as commodities that exist or cease to exist at the whim of the parents.
The biblical worldview assigns babies like Pheobe honor and value, recognizing that they—disability, diagnosis, and all—are knit together by God fearfully and wonderfully for his purpose, with every day of their lives already written for them in God’s book (see Psalm 139).
In the secular view, Pheobe’s life had no value because her parents just wanted to end their own suffering, and supposedly hers—but in a biblical worldview, her life had immense value and she deserved dignity in her life and in her death.
That baby was not medical waste; she was a person made in God’s very image.
