The formation of my prolife ideaology is not due to any political party or persuasion. My prolife views were formed by life experience twenty-one years ago.

In 1986 my wife was pregnant with our first son. It was a difficult pregnancy, and Terri was in the hospital more than she was out during the first trimester of her pregnancy. The OB/GYN she was seeing at the time was concerned about the growth of the baby, ultimately suggesting that we have an amniocentesis test (the one where they draw amniotic fluid to test for abnormalities in the baby). In the third month of her pregancy that test was performed.  Based on the results, her OB believed that there were abnormalities in the baby’s (he said “fetus’s”) spinal cord development which could indicate something like spina bifide. He gently suggested we terminate the pregnancy.

As a sovereign God would have it, he had admitted Terri to Huron Valley Hospital. It was there that we met a wonderful young Christian nurse in the birthing center named Julie. We told Julie our story and she was devasted that our OB would suggest an abortion. She told us about a prolife OB she knew who would under no circumstances suggest an abortion. His name, she said, was Dr. Henry Maicki, and he worked out of Providence Hospital in Southfield.

We made an appointment with Dr. Maicki and two weeks later we were in his office. He looked at all of the ultrasounds and the amniocentesis and suggested that the tests certainly indicated a problem. But then he said something amazing. “It isn’t for us to make life and death choices based on tests. God is the giver of life and we leave those choices to him.”

We continued the pregnancy, and ultimately it ended on God’s terms. On September 30, 1986 our first born son, Justin Paul, was stillborn. An autopsy showed no NO ABNORMALITIES with the spinal cord. To this day we have no medical explanation for his death. God had made the choice our first OB had asked us to make based, as it turns out, on faulty test results. Thanks to the encouragment of a prolife OB, we were able to give God the glory in the midst of sorrow for the choice He had made. This experience made it clear to me that no amount of scientific knowledge amassed can put us in a position to stand in God’s place by making the choice to end a life. Had we chosen to end our baby’s life, it would have been based on our limited knowledge which, as it turns out, was ill-informed by a medical test. In the end, God terminated the pregnancy based on his omniscience and for reasons known only to Him. He is God and we are not.

Two weeks after the stillbirth of our son we were back in Dr. Maicki’s office for a follow-up visit. In addition to attending to Terri’s physical needs, Dr. Maicki took the time to minister to both of us spiritually and psychologically. He encouraged us to try again, in our own time, but not to fear being pregnant again. By February of the next year we were.

Twenty years ago on October 24, 1987 God gave me one of the greatest blessings of my life in the birth of our daughter, Jessica Mae. The early months of the pregnancy were again difficult, and Dr. Henry Maicki was a support to us the entire pregnancy. Just a year earlier he had helped us learn to hold our stillborn son, and to give him away. A year later he rejoiced with us as he handed Terri her very much alive daughter.

My prolife views are not political as much as they are spiritual. They have been formed by the experience of having one OB ask us to make a decision only God has the authority to make, and then watching as God made the decision we would prefer He not make. My prolife views were shaped through the compassion of a prolife OB who was not afraid to allow God to make hard decisions, and then to support us in the wake of the loss, encouraging us to realize that ALL was not lost.

I related this story on my radio program in honor of my daughter on her 20th birthday, October 24, 2007. In telling it, I wondered out loud whatever had become of Dr. Maicki. Was he still practicing? Was he in good health? Was he even still alive?

Imagine my surprise as on my call screen in the studio appeared the words, “Dr. Maicki.” A friend of his had been listening to the program, called Dr. Maicki to tell him that some teary eyed talk host was talking about him on the radio, and he called the program!

We learned (obviously) that Dr. Maicki was very much alive! He had stopped delivering babies in 1995, having established the birthing center at Providence Hospital in 1979 and devoting 18 years of his life to obstetrics. He was still at Providence, though in a different role. He was now working in pallative end of life care through a hospice program he established. His ministry now encompassed both ends of life: bringing it in with joy and easing it out with compassion, with a view to eternal life after physical death. His own prolife views informed him that preserving life to its natural God-given end was just as important as preserving life in the womb. I asked Dr. Maicki to explain how delivering babies compared to pallative end of life care for the dying. He told me,

I see a great similiarity. I’ve often said that the two most spititual times during a persons life, during a family’s life, is during birth and death, and so I see great similiarities in what’s happening. There’s so much emotion, there’s so much sensitivity that’s going on. One we think of as a beautiful thing, but we also have to look at life as God had planned it: we sinned and brought death into the picture. He did give us that option and we brought that on ourselves. Now that that is the situation we all know that (death) is going to happen sometime, and it’s hard to prepare for those things.

So I did have the joy of preparing women and families to bring a new life into the world, and now I talk with a lot of families and try to make them understand that we’re now talking about the other end of life, here on earth at least, and then we can talk about re-birth. One (experience) tends to be a little tearful (dying), one tends to be more joyful (birthing). On the other hand we should really realize that they’re both joyful because those that have served the Lord are going to be in a re-birth situation.

I thank God for the life and ministry of Dr. Henry Maicki. Twenty-one years later my heart still rejoices in how a sovereign God worked to bring this man into our lives, to protect us from making choices that belong only to God, and to help us learn the lesson that God is sovereign in both life and death.  I will be eternally grateful for him.