Over 1,100 people filled a sold-out ballroom in Kansas City on Sept. 20 to listen to a man who has saved the lives of countless children and speaks out on behalf of those waiting to be born.
Dr. Ben Carson, world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, thanked the Vitae Foundation and its donors for standing up for women and their unborn babies.
“Thank you for caring for those who can’t speak for themselves. Someone has to do that!” Carson told the overflow audience of pro-life supporters.
As the only pediatric surgeon who has successfully separated Siamese twins who were joined at the head, Carson has traveled the world to share his experiences and to learn from others. He told an interesting story about being at a conference in South Africa with the director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who said to him, “Our job is to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.”
Carson said that inspired him to share a story with the ACLU leader about a woman who came to him at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore who was 33 weeks pregnant. She was on her way to Kansas to get an abortion because her baby had been diagnosed with hydrocephalus, or water on the brain.
“Fortunately, I was able to talk her out of the abortion,” Carson told the crowd. “The baby was born, and we were able to operate successfully.”
After the applause from the audience died down, Carson continued his story by stating he asked the ACLU director if he spoke on behalf of that baby.
“That baby was 33 weeks gestation, which means that baby could survive unassisted outside its mother,” Carson told the audience. “But [the ACLU director] kind of hemmed and hawed and just couldn’t really come up with an answer.”
Later on that evening, the two men were eating dinner together, and Carson wanted to continue the conversation. He tried to make it easy on the ACLU director by asking if his organization would speak out on behalf of babies who are born at 24, 25, even 26 weeks gestation who are using ventilators and are receiving maximum life support.
“We’d definitely advocate for those babies,” the man told Carson.
Carson responded, “The one that is several weeks further along and would be viable with no life support outside the mother’s womb, you would have trouble defending, but the one who is immature and needs a lot of assistance, you don’t have any problem defending that baby?”
The director said, “I realize that doesn’t make any sense. … I believe a mother has a right to kill her baby until one second before it’s born.”
Carson told the audience the current ACLU leader admitted he would never say that publicly.
“That’s the kind of mentality we face in this nation,” he said. “The fact is that we can sit around and talk about ancient civilizations and call them barbaric, yet we sacrifice little babies. We’re no better than they are. We may be worse. Millions upon millions of innocent little human beings who have no chance of defending themselves are placed in the safest environment that God could place them in, and we found a way to go in there and murder them.”
Before Carson’s keynote address, Vitae Foundation Vice President Anne Carmichael shared some good news with Vitae’s supporters.
“Year to date, we have saved 512 babies in the greater Kansas City area and 3,207 babies across the country. Together with our donors, the pregnancy help centers and our high velocity media strategies, we are winning!”
