News

Mother Refuses Chemo for Herself To Save Baby’s Life

My wife and I caught this report this morning on “The Today Show,” and it wrecked us both. Nevertheless, it is definitely worth sharing with you. Consider this giving honor to whom honor is due. This mother was a hero. Here’s her story:

Stacie Crimm didn’t get to share much time with her infant daughter, Dottie Mae — she’d made the ultimate sacrifice to give the little girl life.

Diagnosed with head and neck cancer just months after her little girl was conceived, 41-year-old Crimm opted to skip chemotherapy to protect her growing fetus.

Crimm survived long enough for the baby to be delivered. But shortly after holding her daughter for the first time, the Oklahoma woman slipped into a coma and died.

Crimm’s brother remembers the bittersweet moment when his sister held her child.”I felt like it was probably the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life,” Ray Phillips told Matt Lauer on TODAY Thursday. “I don’t think I’ll ever see anything that beautiful again.”

You can watch the video above or read the rest of the story here.

10 Comments

  • Christiane

    was thinking about that beautiful little one’s name . . . ‘Dottie May’

    it occurred that ‘Dottie’ is a shorter form for the name ‘Dorothy’ from the Greek ‘Theodora’,
    meaning ‘GIFT OF GOD’

    and ‘May’ is a lovely old-fashioned form of the name ‘Mary’, mother of Jesus, the Lord of Life

    I think ‘Dottie May’ is a meaning-full name for the little child whose mother loved her more than life itself,

  • yankeegospelgirl

    Inspiring story for sure. However, I should point out that it wasn’t like the chemo would have saved her life. It would just have given her a little bit of extra time—and probably a pretty miserable bit of extra time. So in the end, I think she did what was best for herself as well as the child. Also, I should certainly hope no Christian mother would consent to have her child torn limb from limb! That should honestly go without saying—I’m not even sure it should be considered supererogatory. The right thing, absolutely. Commendable, absolutely. But when you think about it, all it comes down to is NOT doing something really horrible.

    • yankeegospelgirl

      To clarify what I was saying, no doctor will give a pregnant woman chemo. She would have had to get an abortion before going through with the procedure. So it wasn’t like “We’ll give you chemo, but it could kill the baby.” Because of the way the medical system is set up, it’s a straight-forward abortion case. So that’s why I used the phrase “torn limb from limb.”

    • yankeegospelgirl

      Don’t get me wrong—she did the right thing and we should be thankful and praise God for her choice. And hopefully her story can start people thinking in the right direction about unborn life, people who may have been pro-choice by default otherwise.

      I was just pointing that first, practically speaking, it’s not quite accurate to say “it was her life or the baby’s,” because she would have died with or without chemo—and in fact, I’m confident it was in her own best interests to do without. She shortened her own suffering. And second, even though I’m not going to beat anyone over the head for calling her a hero (like I said, we all agree she did absolutely the right thing), I personally think I would restrict the term “heroism” for a more narrow set of cases—like somebody’s going out of his way to put his life at risk when there was no demand whatsoever. In this case, I’m not entirely sure that the mother’s action was “beyond the call of duty,” as it were.

      But, it’s an interesting topic. It may even have sparked a blog post. 🙂

  • Andy

    All I’m saying is that there are times to point out the fine points that don’t really matter and there are times to let them go. I think your points, while possibly true (but debatable) fall under the just let it go category. That’s all. And in the spirit of my own comments, from here on in, I’m going to let this topic go… 😉

  • Michael

    Denny,

    I always appreciate you for pointing out these stories.

    Thank you so much.

    I share them with my wife as well.

    Michael

Comment here. Please use FIRST and LAST name.