You did not have to be here.

This is a truth that we might be familiar with. If your parents never met, you would have never been born. If one of your ancestors never met their respective spouse, you would have never been born. If one of your ancestors did not express the depths of their love with their spouse on a particular day and at a specific time, you would not be here.

Life is always a gift.

My wife, Joanna, and I have been blessed with two children — and one on the way this fall. There were challenging health circumstances revolving around the pregnancies and deliveries of both of our sons. There were varying levels of seriousness, but the process and experience revealed troubling trends within the medical profession, specifically when it comes to the life of the unborn. First, however, this was seen in the story of my own birth.

Even though I did not see it clearly when I was younger, I am blessed to have a twin brother, Mike. We probably spend much time together, working in the same school and visiting our parents together with our own kids. Neither of us, however, had to be here. I mean that in the fullest sense of the phrase.

When I was in high school, we learned from our parents that the early stages of pregnancy were very difficult for Mom. At first, the doctors did not know that she was expecting twins. Because of this, there were many tests to discover why the readings were off regarding the health of the baby, as doctors thought there might be serious developmental disease.

During one prenatal appointment, the doctor told my parents that they might want to consider “alternative options” — by that he meant abortion. My father was enraged and told the doctor they would never do such a thing — and they left the office and went straight to St. Barnabas parish and prayed. In that church, the one that we grew up attending Sunday Mass in and the one that I was married in, my parents made the commitment to keep the child no matter what might happen.

Several months later, my brother and I were born. If they had not made that prayer; if they had said to one another, “We can always have more children”; if they had sought out “alternative methods,” I would not be writing this article, and you wouldn’t be reading it. My kids would not be here. Neither would the two daughters of my twin brother. At the very core of our existence, we have seen the beauty of what it means to be unapologetically pro-life, especially during pregnancies.

Unfortunately, the story of our birth was replayed in the birth stories of our own children. Mike’s first child, Virginia (Ginny), had a long journey to full health. Her difficulties began in the early stages of pregnancy. My brother and his wife, Sarah, found out that their daughter had C.P.A.M. (Congenital Pulmonary Airway Malformation). Hydrops, fluid in the chest cavity, which is fatal, was their worst fear. At 30 weeks, the baby was developing an “outpouching” of the left ventricle. Doctors feared the baby would not have a strong enough heart to survive outside of the womb.

Mike and Sarah were given two options: They could “terminate the pregnancy” or continue the pregnancy at high risk, monitoring her health three times a week. My brother told the doctor to never bring up abortion again. Their daughter, Ginny, will be 4 years old this November. Her heart condition was unexplainably healed through the intercession of Blessed Michael McGivney. Through the prayers of family members of friends, all asking for his intercession, Ginny was healed. Her condition was strikingly similar to the first miracle attributed to Blessed McGivney.

Finally, I witnessed this anti-life mentality in the three pregnancies that my wife and I have traveled through. Each time, we have denied the genetic testing that is done around 12 to 13 weeks of gestation. This a simple blood test that is able to give insight into the probabilities of the child having Down syndrome or other major developmental diseases. Each time we have declined, the nurses and doctors have been perplexed. We have simply responded, “Nothing the test finds would make us get rid of our child.”

The presumption that a disease or developmental issue of our child would lead to us murdering our child has been consistently puzzling to the medical circles we’ve encountered. The trends from my own family experience speak to the fact that we must make pregnancies more pro-life. Yes, we need laws changed. Yes, we need to bring about awareness of the horrors of abortion. But we also must proclaim that all life is precious — because all of us did not have to be here.

Life, indeed, is a gift.