“X Factor Australia” contestant gives powerful anti-abortion testimony
Conventional “wisdom” says that when a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer when 16 weeks pregnant, the woman aborts. Not so X Factor Australia contestant Pamela Cook.
The 30-yr-old single teacher was diagnosed in June 2010 but determined to let her son Zion live despite medical advice. “There’s no way I could terminate [my baby’s] life, she told New Idea magazine [via imdb.com]. “I just knew if I prayed hard enough, I’d be okay.”
Zion was delivered nine weeks early “to minimise the baby’s exposure to the drugs used to save her life,” according to the Daily Record.
Cook finished chemo this past March. She and Zion are doing well. Cook decided to audition for the X Factor because through her experience she said she learned “life’s too short.”
On August 30’s show, Cook gave her stirring pro-life testimony before belting out Kelly Clarkson’s Because of You. That show got the highest ratings in Australia for the night. Cook’s video has now been viewed almost 250,000 times on YouTube…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50lY8iXDpY&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
And about that conventional wisdom? It’s outdated. According to BreastCancer.org:
Women who were diagnosed with breast cancer during pregnancy did as well in the long term as women with the same type and stage of cancer who were not pregnant when they were diagnosed.
As for the baby, according to Imaginis.com:
Radiation, chemotherapy, and drug therapy are not typically given during pregnancy because they can potentially harm the fetus. However, recent studies show that women who receive chemotherapy during the second or third trimesters of pregnancy (after the first three months) still have good chances of having healthy babies. In more than one study, women who received chemotherapy during the second or third trimesters of pregnancy had live births and only a few had complications from the chemotherapy, such as early labor and low birth weight.
Sorry to say Cook was cut from the X Factor on September 14. But her testimony will continue to inspire countless mothers diagnosed with breast cancer to let their babies live.
[HT: Thomas Peters at Live Action; photo via Adelaide Now]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Even if she loses her battle with cancer, she may no longer be a Mum, but she will always be his mother, and will always be a hero to him.
Wow….I have no words. In tears. Beautiful.
Yea it was clearly the better choice to expose this fetus to cancer killing drugs and just hope he is born ok and continues to show no ill side effects for the rest of his life that he may very well be spending without a mother and bouncing from foster home to foster home…
Yea inspirational… I wonder if it will continue to be if the boy has to watch his mother die, or if he had been born with some birth defect caused by cancer drugs…
I am glad they are both ok but it is a heck of a gamble just in the birth let alone all the rest of it. Having breast cancer is a bad situation, why complicate it 20 times by adding a new born? It would make more sense to concentrate on beating cancer and then having children after the danger is gone.
I have physically helped my father beat cancer 3 times. I have watched what used to be the triple A modified fast pitch all city pitcher of the year three years in a row turn into a cancer battle fatigued 55yo who struggles to keep 140lbs on his bones. What those drugs and treatments do to a person is one of the saddest and happiest things I have ever seen and I just couldn’t imagine going through all that while trying to care for a new born child…
She took a huge risk for her own life and the life of any children. This is not the last chapter of this story, the next chapter maybe very sad indeed…
Good for her. And it’s nice that she was free to make a choice.
Where’s all the condemnation of her marital status?
Agreed Reality, I am very glad she has the freedom to make her own choice. I would have made a diffrent one but freedom is a wonderful thing.
Yes Biggz. It will be sad if her son does have health issues at some stage and that may find her riding an emotional rollercoaster over her decision. But she was able to make the choice to have her child and I’m sure that overall she is glad of that freedom.
Biggz,
You keep writing “yea” when you probably mean “yeah”. Although maybe this time you were subconciously trying to use the homophone that really fits this story:
“Yay!”
Biggz,
You would much rather that the little boy was chopped up and suctioned out? Figures.
So grateful for my niece who grew in my SIL while she battled cancer too. Killing that sweet baby girl was never an option.
Is it THAT hard to fathom that there are folks in this world that would NEVER consider abortion no matter what??
Love wins.
Amen!
Such a beautiful photo too of mom and son.
Very nice story, God Bless her and her son.
That top picture….. definitely a theme going on here…. Don King, Ryan Bomberger, Pamela Cook….
Biggz,
That’s the beauty of love. Love takes risks.