What happens when a Pro-life advocate hits the brick wall of a deeply harsh reality?
A mother is pregnant, but now faces the devastating news that not only will the baby not survive, but unless she has an abortion, then it is highly probable that she also will die.
It was perhaps inevitable that at some point this would happen to a strong deeply religious pro-life advocate who decides to ignore all medical advice and instead “trust god” and try and carry the baby to term.
Alex Gooding
This is what has now happened with Alex Gooding. She is a deeply religious lady and is very active on social media, for example she makes lots of posts across various platforms such as YouTube. She has been doing this for over a decade and has rather a lot of followers, so this pro-life Christian Mom’s identity is deeply coupled with her need to play the role for a vast number of followers.
Yep … 7 kids so far, and all birthed via 294 videos, hence she has 51K subscribers.
I would have expected her to be some flavour of evangelical who is an advocate for the quiver full belief that women need to birth as many babies as possible, for example the Duggars whom you might have seen on TV in 19 kids and counting, but no, she is Orthodox.
Actually she was up until about two years ago, Baptist, but then switched.
She is very very religious, and so beyond clips about being a mom and fertility stuff, she also now has videos that discuss head covering for women, holy week, and how she has freedom in Orthodoxy that she did not find in Protestantism.
What has happened?
She has been given the devastating and deeply tragic news that her latest pregnancy is a Cesarean Scar Ectopic Pregnancy (CSEP).
A what?
An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the main cavity of the uterus. This most commonly occurs in a fallopian tube, which carries eggs from the ovaries to the uterus, and is very dangerous. However this is not that, but is something even more rare with an even greater degree of mortal danger.
She has had a previous C-section. The fertilized egg has implanted in the scar tissue from that previous C-section.
Early Diagnosis of CSEP is vital, and the treatment is the obvious one.
See here: “Diagnosis and Management of Cesarean Scar Ectopic Pregnancy: A Case Study“
Early diagnosis through transvaginal ultrasonography is crucial as an untreated CSEP can lead to serious complications, including hemorrhage, loss of future fertility, and maternal death.
If a patient refuses the very obvious treatment then there is a very high risk of death.
The subject matter experts, to use medical jargon, very strongly … recommend against expectant management of cesarean scar ectopic pregnancy.
No matter how strong a religious belief you have, there exists a rather stark brick wall of reality that will not bend. The risks not only include death, but should the mother survive she will most probably end up needing a hysterectomy, and this will also damage her surrounding organs.
Enter stage left, “But abortions are evil and wicked“.
Alex Plans to ignore all medical guidance
She shared on Instagram her plans (but this has, since being posted, attracted a lot of attention, so she had taken it down) …
Within that update she explained …
When I finally saw the [ultrasound] pictures it was very crushing. It was obvious that baby had implanted into my scar. I started researching that day and over the weekend found 2 Facebook groups, every article I could get my hands on, stories from survivors on YouTube and more.
I asked my midwife for a 2nd opinion referral to a different mfm. Which she did happily but they could not get my in until I was 7 weeks.
We came back to my midwife the following week when I was 6w3d. Matt and I were met with some hostility by the OB. He told me 1) that my baby would probably die anyway because her heartbeat was 114 and she was measuring 2-3 days behind (which is perfectly normal btw) and 2) when I told him I wouldn’t be killing my baby today, he turned to Matt only and told him he has to make me terminate then. This was not a good experience and honestly I have zero respect for how he treated us that day.
In essence, it was … “fuck the experts, I have found a Facebook group / YouTube that tells me I can do this“
There might indeed be “survivors”, but for rather obvious reasons there will be no Facebook groups or YouTube clips from those that took the same stance and did not survive.
We have all seen what happens when you embrace “doing your own research” during COVID on a truly epic scale. As you are most probably aware, the estimate is that of the over 1 million who tragically died during COVID … Nearly 319,000 COVID-19 deaths could have been averted if all adults had gotten vaccinated. That’s a vast number of human lives to sacrifice on the alter of “doing your own research“.
There is no ducking the observation that she is being very very stupid. As others have pointed out, she now needs to be preparing her oldest daughter for taking on the role of mother for her six younger siblings because it is now highly probable that she will not be there for them.
What if all goes well?
If indeed she gets through this, then the deeply disturbing aspect here is that she will then proceed to broadcast it far and wide. That in turn will lead to others making a similar choice and so it will in turn lead to many of them enduring a horrendous outcome that is doubly tragic because it is very preventable.
One More Thing
She has 7 kids via IVF.
However, IVF is now a process that she deems to be evil and so now that she has all her kids via IVF she is striving to ban the very concept of IVF being available for others.
Both selfish and deeply irresponsible does not even begin to scratch the surface here.
There is no ducking the fact that she now faces the very distinct possibility of a very bad outcome.
As we have all seen in the election, many people will make catastrophically stupid decisions without fully grasping the consequences of the choices they make.
There are very few documented cases of mother and baby both surviving CSEP.