(Oregon Right to Life) — Beverly Jacobson was heartbroken when the doctor told her that her unborn baby girl had a condition that made her “incompatible with life.” But she knew she had to give her daughter a chance at life. Today, against all the odds, her daughter Verity is alive and thriving, surrounded by a loving family. Scroll down to watch the video.
“My joke is that Verity never got the memo that she is ‘incompatible with life,’” Beverly Jacobson says at the beginning of a video posted to YouTube chronicling her family’s story.
Jacobson received a prenatal diagnosis of Trisomy 18 (Edwards syndrome) while pregnant with her ninth baby.
“I got a phone call from my doctor. I thought we were just going to schedule our regular 20-week ultrasound,” she recalled. “And instead of a happy phone call, I heard words that I’ve never heard of before: Edwards syndrome, and genetic anomalies.”
“A few days later we were in the doctor’s office to have a diagnostic ultrasound,” she said. “The doctor, when she was speaking to us, her demeanor was very cold, very detached and clinical. She saw our baby as a problem to be solved, not a life to be cherished.”
In a later conversation with her neonatologist, Jacobson said she was told her daughter’s life would be “futile” – if she even survived at all. But there was no question in Jacobson’s mind that she would carry her daughter to term, hoping at least to simply meet her before she passed.
Nine years later, her daughter Verity has beaten the odds, and is living a happy life loved and cherished by her parents and her eight brothers and sisters.
“Who are we to say that a person is or isn’t ‘compatible with life’? Jacobson said. “That’s up to God. If I were to describe Verity to someone who never met her, I would invite you to come to our home and see her. I would want you to see that she is a nine-year-old girl that loves her life. That she is joyful, she smiles, she giggles… I love it when I come up to her to give her a kiss and she just lights up. It rocks my world, it really does.”
Jacobson has since established a nonprofit called Mama Bear Care, which provides free support, community, and connection for moms facing challenging prenatal diagnoses.
Click below to watch the full (11-minute) documentary:
