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a boy or a girl. The kids had their preferences, but the standard answer for us was “happy and healthy!”
    I noticed the sonographer was looking at one particular area over and over again, so I asked if there was a problem. Her response was less than reassuring. “The doctor will review the results with you when I’m done,” she said.
    A few anxious minutes after she left the room, the doctor returned, and, with a few words like “Let’s see what is going on here,” he moved the wand around to that same area. Again we asked whether there was a problem. After a few moments, he turned to us and said, “Your son has a fatal birth defect and is going to die.”
    So much for bedside manner.
    Through all the emotions that spilled out during the next twenty-four hours, we focused on two things. First, giving him a name. We weren’t about to let doctors, our friends, and prayer partners refer to him impersonally as “Baby Santorum.” Our child was not going to be an “it” or just a “son”; he was every bit a part of our family as were the other children. His name would be Gabriel Michael, after the two archangels.
    Second, we were determined to do everything possible to give him a chance to survive outside of the womb. Karen and I fought side by side, talking to every possible doctor and specialist to find somebody, somewhere, who could waken us from our nightmare and treat our son’s condition. We ended up in Philadelphia, under the care of a brilliant and exceptionally skilled surgeon, Dr. Scott Adzick, where Karen and Gabriel underwent intrauterine surgery to save his life.
    Miraculously, it worked! The doctor said that although Gabriel was not out of the woods by any means, he should have a good chance to survive the pregnancy. He also said that, as with all surgeries, complications could occur. He focused on the one they always warn you about when you have surgery—infection. His orders were quite emphatic: “If Karen’s temperature starts to rise, go immediately to the closest hospital.”
    We went on with life, believing we had dodged the bullet, that our fight had given us a much-deserved victory. The very next day we headed to Pittsburgh for Karen’s parents’ fiftieth anniversary party. The following day I was in the car, heading to Erie on Senate business, when my mobile rang. It was my sister-in-law, Nancy Garver. With her voice cracking with emotion, she said, “Rick, turn around. You need to get home; Karen has a high fever. I am so sorry. I am so sorry.”
    We all knew what that meant. The womb keeping Gabriel alive was dying. The surgery had caused an infection in Karen’s womb, and the infection would kill her if it weren’t treated. When we arrived at the hospital, Karen was already in labor, her body doing what it had to do to survive. The physicians in Pittsburgh confirmed what we were told in Philadelphia: the only way to stop the infection from killing Karen was to letnature take its course and deliver little Gabriel. He was not even twenty-one weeks, and even without all his complications, we both knew that delivery meant death for our son.
    It was the worst night of my life, trying to comfort my dear Karen, delirious with pain, while she pleaded with me not to allow Gabriel to die, to let him be born. Our dear friend Monsignor Bill Kerr, at the time the president of La Roche College in suburban Pittsburgh, was at Karen’s bedside through the night, comforting us. As the night went on and Karen’s fever subsided, we were able to convince her that she was doing all God would ask her to do—to be the best mother she could be for as long as she could.
    Shortly after midnight, the monsignor took leave, but left us with holy water to baptize our little Gabriel in the unlikely event he would survive this horrible ordeal.
    In the wee hours of October 11, 1996, he surprised us all. The doctor delivered him and, with an air of disbelief in his voice, he pronounced Gabriel alive. Praise God!