From Lauren’s Desk: A Reflection of the Midwife of Auschwitz

There are many assumptions about how millennial women think about politics, and I have often found myself defying those stereotypes in conversation.

I’m disappointed in the rhetoric of the pro-choice movement which reduces women to their reproductive capacity, despite claiming to do the very opposite. Our President does the same thing.

During the State of the Union address he said, “Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America.” Meanwhile, he rarely referenced women in the speech at all except for the desire to abort their children.

In using this kind of language, the President shows himself ignorant women’s political potential, which goes far beyond the ironically labeled issue of “reproductive justice.”

Around the same time as President Biden’s State of the Union Speech, another news story circulated through my feed about the so-called “Midwife of Auschwitz.” This brave Polish woman named Stanislawa Leszczyńska delivered 3,000 babies during her time of imprisonment in the infamous concentration camp. Reading her story, it is impossible to not be awed by her devotion to the dignity of her patients and the preciousness of human life in a place that attempted to erase it.

I wish I had known her story when I visited Auschwitz myself in 2008 because there is very little in beholding this place to keep feelings of hopelessness at bay. Many of the infants did not survive.

But together with her daughter and a few other women, she ignored commands to end their lives and put up a stubborn resistance to let them be born.  Historians still aren’t sure why she was allowed to live.

I would make the argument to President Biden that the true “power of women” does not lie in destruction but bringing forth and protecting life.

Leszczyńska’s amazing story is proof that this power can hold fast even in the face of corruption and coercion. And what better analogy for the role of the pro-life movement today than that of the midwife–the woman who, protecting and respecting the mother, helps her bring her child into the world with dignity and surrounded by care.