Dr. Jesse Bennett is credited with performing the first successful caesarean operation, commonly known as a C-section. He was only 24-years old. The surgery was done without “any equipment, and no antiseptics, in a humble home in the backwoods of Virginia.”1 Adding to this amazing feat is the fact that C-sections had been attempted in the past and either the mom lived or the baby – but not both. And the situation on this day gets even more dramatic.
The surgery is performed on this day in 1794. The operating table was two boards laid across two barrels. The patient was given a large dose of laudanum. A single candle provided the surgical suite light. With one sweep of the knife, the abdomen was laid open and the baby extracted. The placenta and ovaries were removed. The patient was sewed up with common heavy thread used for sewing garments.
And the baby and Mrs. Bennett, the patient, lived happily ever after! Yes, you read that correctly. The first successful C-section was performed by Dr. Bennett on his wife, Elizabeth.
Typically, when a woman needed to deliver a baby who could not be born naturally, a craniotomy was performed on the baby, crushing the baby’s skull and resulting in the death of the baby so that the mother wouldn’t die. The other alternative was to perform a very crude version of a C-section which up until now had resulted in the death of the mother.2 Dr. Bennett, though, refused to publish the details of how he had accomplished this successfully because he would not “give them a chance to call him a liar.”3 Bennett’s accomplishments, though, were verified by those who had assisted during the procedure.
This coming Sunday in National Sanctity of Life Day. Presidential Proclamation 5147 established a Sanctity of Human Life Sunday and since then, the third Sunday of January has been the official Sunday to celebrate life. Read the proclamation. We need more presidents like this!
January 13, 1984
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
The values and freedoms we cherish as Americans rest on our fundamental commitment to the sanctity of human life. The first of the “unalienable rights” affirmed by our Declaration of Independence is the right to life itself, a right the Declaration states has been endowed by our Creator on all human beings — whether young or old, weak or strong, healthy or handicapped.
Since 1973, however, more than 15 million unborn children have died in legalized abortions — a tragedy of stunning dimensions that stands in sad contrast to our belief that each life is sacred. These children, over tenfold the number of Americans lost in all our Nation’s wars, will never laugh, never sing, never experience the joy of human love; nor will they strive to heal the sick, or feed the poor, or make peace among nations. Abortion has denied them the first and most basic of human rights, and we are infinitely poorer for their loss.
We are poorer not simply for lives not led and for contributions not made, but also for the erosion of our sense of the worth and dignity of every individual. To diminish the value of one category of human life is to diminish us all. Slavery, which treated Blacks as something less than human, to be bought and sold if convenient, cheapened human life and mocked our dedication to the freedom and equality of all men and women. Can we say that abortion — which treats the unborn as something less than human, to be destroyed if convenient — will be less corrosive to the values we hold dear?
We have been given the precious gift of human life, made more precious still by our births in or pilgrimages to a land of freedom. It is fitting, then, on the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that struck down State anti-abortion laws, that we reflect anew on these blessings, and on our corresponding responsibility to guard with care the lives and freedoms of even the weakest of our fellow human beings.
Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Sunday, January 22, 1984, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon the citizens of this blessed land to gather on that day in homes and places of worship to give thanks for the gift of life, and to reaffirm our commitment to the dignity of every human being and the sanctity of each human life.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this 13th day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and eighth.
Ronald Reagan
The Psalmist leaves us today with this familiar yet powerful words. Psalms 139:13-18 declares, “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. (14) I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. (15) My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. (16) Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. (17) How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! (18) If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.”
1http://pages.swcp.com/~dhickman/journals/V5I2/doctor.html
2https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/jesse-bennett-1769-1842
3https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=231758
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