OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (BP)–When women call the office of obstetrician/gynecologist Karen Reisig asking for an abortion, her staff urges them to make an appointment as soon as possible.
It’s not that Reisig wants to do the abortion as early in the pregnancy as possible; it’s that she wants to talk the patient out of having an abortion.
“I believe that every pregnancy is in God’s hands, and we don’t have a right to make a decision on whether the baby lives or dies,” said Reisig, who is also medical director for the Oklahoma City Crisis Pregnancy Center.
A native of Guymon, Reisig graduated from Northwestern Oklahoma State College in Alva and the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine.
She said she’s wanted to be a doctor since she was a little girl, although there were no medical professionals in her family, other than an aunt who was a nurse. The aunt, though, wasn’t practicing her profession as Reisig was growing up.
However, she didn’t decide on the specialty of obstetrics/gynecology until she was in medical school.
“I really enjoyed the OB/GYN segment,” she said.
Reisig, a member of Quail Springs Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, got off to a good start during her internship, delivering 600 babies during that year.
Since she opened her practice in 1979, she has delivered thousands of babies, and had numerous opportunities to share her faith and save the lives of babies whose parents were set to abort.
One case in particular stands out in Reisig’s mind.
A woman and her husband, already the parents of two children, came in saying she had to have an abortion. The husband, in particular, was adamant that his wife could not continue the pregnancy.
“She’s on anti-depressants that aren’t recommended during pregnancy,” he told Reisig. “And she can’t stop taking them. She’ll kill someone.”
Reisig said over the next 10 days, there were a lot of phone calls and office visits where she explained that the depression could be controlled without drugs that would affect the baby, and that the child had the right to live.
“One morning, the woman’s sister called my office and said her sister had scheduled an appointment at an abortion clinic,” Reisig recalled. “I immediately gathered my office staff, and we started praying that she wouldn’t go through with it.”
The woman later called Reisig, and said once she got to the abortion clinic, she could not go through with the abortion. She gave birth to a healthy baby boy, who joined his two older sisters.
“He is the pride and joy of their lives,” Reisig said. “She later told me how much she appreciated our counsel, because she would have killed her son.”
There are other examples.
Recently, while doing an ultrasound, Reisig found the baby to be abnormal. She referred the patient to a specialist, who told her the baby was incompatible with life and she needed to have an abortion.
“I told her she didn’t have to make that decision,” Reisig said. “The baby could survive, and it was in God’s hands.”
Reisig said she didn’t have a strong feeling that the patient was listening. The woman scheduled an abortion, but the baby had already died.
“Like I told her, God will take care of it,” Reisig said.
Reisig said her continuing counsel to women who have a difficult pregnancy, or when the baby is in stress, is that it is in God’s hands.
“It’s not our right to take life,” she emphasized. “When women make a decision to abort, it is final and they have to live with that.
“I have never had a woman say she was sorry she gave birth to a baby, no matter what the circumstances,” Reisig related. “But I have had women who have had abortions say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done that.’”
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Dana Williamson is the associate editor of the Oklahoma Baptist Messenger newsjournal. (BP) photo posted in the BP Photo Library at http://www.bpnews.net. Photo title: NO RIGHT.
