By Gretchen Keiser

In the middle of the kitchen table at the Slagle’s home in Griffin sits a baby carrier. Johnathan, the newborn in fuzzy yellow baby pajamas, rests quietly, a sweet smile on his face as he sleeps.

Two of his 10 brothers and sisters are coloring in the next room, while the older ones are at school. A hallway near the kitchen is filled with pegs for coats and hats, umbrellas, sweaters and parkas, and the sizes and shapes and colors of all the children’s clothes fill an entire wall. Snapshots of the family dot a corkboard bulletin near the refrigerator and Laurie Slagle, mother of the family, has a pot of homemade soup on the stove in the rambling old farmhouse which has been rearranged, added to and expanded as the Slagle family grew.

Tom Slagle, her husband, sits at the wooden kitchen table, taking a midday break from his hectic work at his own business, a combination “heating, air conditioning, plumbing and electric” firm which serves the rural homes and farms nearby.

A new baby for the Slagles would normally be good news that would reach their immediate circle of family and friends. But in the case of Johnathan, his birth, which is being called a miracle, is likely to provoke much more attention.

“It’s strange that my wife and I, who always fought abortion, were the ones that had to be put to the test,” said Tom Slagle, as he reflected upon the extraordinary events that had enveloped his family in the last year. Of all the books in the Bible, “Job’s been a big help to me,” he said.

Aside from the attention their big family draws, the Slagles normally shun the limelight, even turning down requests in the past from newspapers to do stories on how a family of 10 manages these days, said Tom, who is a permanent deacon in the Catholic Church.

But in March 1985, Tom and Laurie found themselves in the midst of a time they call being “in the fire.” During the course of routine visits to her doctor for her eleventh pregnancy, Laurie, who is 37, was told that she might have breast cancer and was advised to see a surgeon. She had just lost her father in January to lung cancer and had other family members afflicted with cancer. Abruptly shaken from the normal course of a pregnancy, the Slagles found themselves at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta where Laurie was scheduled to undergo a mastectomy, or removal of a breast. But even that grim prognosis worsened.

After performing a biopsy on Laurie, the doctor emerged from the operating room, Tom Slagle said, and told him, “We can’t do anything. Your wife is going to die.”

The biopsy had revealed that Mrs. Slagle had an inoperable form of cancer, the Slagles said, which would only worsen with surgery. The couple was told that she would live perhaps a year or two. Rather than surgery, a treatment of radiation and chemotherapy was recommended, but the doctors were not encouraging that it would succeed, the Slagles said. The particular cancer, called ductal adenocarcinoma, “is not that rare, but in a pregnant woman, it’s very rare,” Tom Slagle recalled. In addition, doctors said that in pregnant women, “it’s aggressive,” or particularly fast moving, Laurie Slagle added.

At that time, the Slagles learned that abortion was recommended for pregnant women with this type of cancer. Several different doctors involved in Mrs. Slagle’s treatment asked the couple whether they would have an abortion, Tom Slagle said. “The radiologist just assumed we were going to have one,” he recalled. Later it was brought up again. “We said no,” Tom Slagle said, and went to the chemotherapist and “said no again.”

Mrs. Slagle was already undergoing radiation treatment, but had not yet begun chemotherapy, according to the couple. When they arrived at the hospital for the first chemotherapy treatment, they were instead brought to an office where they were met by an attorney for the hospital, they said. At issue were the possible consequences of the radiation and chemotherapy treatment on the unborn child, the Slagles said, and the criminal and civil liability that the doctors and hospital would bear. While they offered to waive any rights to sue the hospital for possible damage to the child, the lawyer said that they could not waive the rights of their unborn child, the Slagles said. At the age of 18, the child could independently sue, they were told.

“I was mad,” Tom Slagle said, “not at the lawyer. I was mad at society.”

Facing a situation which would have permitted them to legally abort the child, but not to obtain at Emory the treatment medically necessary for Mrs. Slagle because of possible risk to the child, the family decided to pursue the matter legally.

They found out it had never been done before. “Do you mean to say my wife is the first person to walk into this hospital and be refused treatment” because she was pregnant and would not abort the child, Tom Slagle asked indignantly. On the other hand, the family would not go to another hospital because they felt they would get the best care at Emory, they said.

So it came about that at 7 a.m. on May 3, 1985, in a locked courtroom in Dekalb Superior Court, a hearing was held to determine the rights of the five-month-old unborn child of the Slagles in the face of her grave illness and the necessary treatments. Lawyers for Emory and the Slagles brought the matter jointly to the court and a youthful Decatur attorney, John Manning, was appointed by the court to stand in for the unborn baby and guard his or her rights.

Manning recalls that he was assigned the case at 6 p.m. May 1 and had 48 hours to prepare. Reviewing Mrs. Slagle’s medical history, reading medical literature on the cancer involved and seeking other medical opinions, he became very depressed. “I had a feeling as I was doing the research that while I could arrive at an independent decision, whatever decision I arrive at wouldn’t matter,” Manning said, “because I feared that both the mother and the child would not survive based on the medical opinions I had received.”

On the morning of May 3, Manning, lawyers representing the Slagles and Emory, the two key doctors involved, and the Slagles came before Dekalb Judge Ed Wheeler, a juvenile Court judge who in this case was serving also as a Superior Court judge.

The Slagles brought their three oldest children, Janet, Tom and Aaron, in case the judge wanted to question them, but that proved unnecessary. They wondered what John Manning would say when he took the stand to speak for the unborn child. “For all we knew, he could have said, ‘I don’t want her (Mrs. Slagle) to have any treatments at all,” Tom Slagle said. Once the matter came to court, the Slagles were relinquishing their rights to decide upon treatment and giving it over to the judge.

John Manning met the Slagles for the first time in court and listened to Laurie Slagle as she took the stand to explain her viewpoint. “I found her to be a warm, sensitive woman of faith who had a sense of hope about her, while at the same time realizing her condition medically,” he said. “Even though she was frightened,” Manning said he sensed a peace about her and heard “an affirmation of the importance of her life and her relationship with God.”

His own statement on behalf of the child, prepared beforehand, asked that Mrs. Slagle be permitted to have radiation and chemotherapy, since this would afford the child at least a chance of life. Without treatment doctors did not expect Mrs. Slagle to live till her due date. Manning said he left the courtroom in a different frame of mind from his earlier depression. “While I continued to be concerned about the future of both my youngest client and his mother, I’ve got to tell you I felt good about having an opportunity to meet her and to meet Tom and to have a sense of their spirit.”

The court ruled that the treatments could take place, but set up a system of reports that would alert the judge to any possible change in Mrs. Slagle or the baby’s condition. Manning made monthly calls to the family to check on their wellbeing.

Laurie Slagle, whose strength emerges in quiet, simple statements, says, “I always felt it would come out fine.” Her husband acknowledges, “she was always more optimistic than I was,” and that he immediately began to try to figure out how he would manage the family alone. A hospital chaplain, he had seen many people die and knew the risks.

His father moved up from Florida to bring Laurie to and from radiation treatments Monday through Friday for several weeks. Every third Thursday, Tom himself would accompany her to chemotherapy, which he feared would make her terribly sick. He sought prayers from everyone he met. At the same time, his business was failing and on the edge of collapse.

“To say the least, we were all in great turmoil,” Tom said. “My house was in turmoil, my kids were in turmoil, I was in turmoil.”

But, he said, “I had made up my mind that our only chance was to get everybody to pray...If I went and fixed up your house, I’d ask you to pray for my wife. I doubt there was one church in Griffin that wasn’t praying for her.” At a Communion service for the new class of diaconate candidates, some 60 men from the archdiocese, Tom Slagle got up and gave the homily. “I told them exactly where I was, how I felt and that I needed everyone’s prayers.” He also began bringing Laurie the Eucharist from their parish church everyday.

The pastor from their parish, Sacred Heart in Griffin, brought a relic of St. Gerard, the patron saint of pregnant mothers, to their home and told them to keep it until the baby was born. Laurie recalls that her name was registered on prayer lists internationally by friends and acquaintances. At home even the check out girl at the grocery store was praying for her, as were the monks in Conyers.

To Tom’s surprise, as they went to chemotherapy month after month, Laurie never became sick. Each time he brought her home, she sent him off to work and he clung to his beeper, expecting an emergency call that never came. The summer passed and the treatments were stopped because her due date approached, but the baby was three and a half weeks late. Gradually, Tom said his attitude became one of total acceptance. Even his business fortunes reversed and his company began to flourish.

Finally on the morning of September 21, Laurie said it was time to go to the hospital. Expecting to have time to spare, they got her there around 11:30 a.m. and abruptly found themselves in the midst of a delivery nine minutes later. Her own obstetrician didn’t get there and instead a resident, innocent of all the commotion surrounding this baby, delivered Johnathan. “I’m there counting all the fingers and toes” to make sure the baby is okay, Tom recalls, and the resident has breezed through the birth without a pause, announcing a healthy, normal child.

They called him Johnathan, which means gift from God.

Welcomed by his brothers and sisters as the 11th member of the Slagle family, Johnathan was baptized on Oct. 26 by Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan at a ceremony to which the entire town of Griffin was invited by a notice published in the local daily paper.

As part of the baptism, several of the Slagle children carried the relic of St. Gerard up to the altar and returned it to the church. John Manning came to the baptism of his “youngest client” and spent most of the time arguing with the baby’s grandmother about whose turn it was to hold him, he says. The family pediatrician has said that at six weeks, Johnathan appears to be a completely normal, healthy baby. Judge Wheeler, who had sealed the court proceedings until the birth of the child, has now permitted those involved to talk about the case.

Judge Wheeler said balancing the rights of the mother and the child was “an awful position to be placed in, almost a catch-22.” Ordering treatment for Mrs. Slagle was necessary for her well-being and yet could have injured the unborn child, he said. “But thank God it turned out like it did and they both were safe.”

He said the case reminded him of two passages in the Bible. One was “judge not lest yourself be judged,” he said. The other was Jesus’ admonition to “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” and to God that which is God’s, he said. This case, involved both government and faith, had to be decided “according to the laws of Georgia,” he said.

Manning, who is a Sunday school teacher at Decatur First Baptist Church, has talked about Johnathan during the class sections on miracles. His first chance to meet the Slagle family was at the baptism. “As difficult and depressing a situation as the initial experience of being appointed to this case was,” he said, “it was worth it to have the opportunity to feel the joy and warmth in that family. I am convinced that God’s hand was at work in protecting Johnathan and his Mom.” Later he added, “I do consider it a miracle.” Legally, he said, he hopes that the case “would be published so that other expectant mothers in this difficult situation would at least know that in the Slagles’ case an abortion did not take place and that the effect was to have a totally healthy baby.”

The Slagles have the same hope. “There were no enemies in this whole thing. Everybody was doing their job,” Tom Slagle says. “But I think it has made a dramatic effect on these doctors. The next time a woman walks into the hospital and she’s pregnant, they won’t tell her to have an abortion.”

He emphasizes that their decision at the time not to have an abortion was his wife’s, not that of a husband who is also a permanent deacon in the Catholic Church. “It wasn’t my decision,” he says, “It was her decision. She had the faith to say, it can’t be.”

Laurie Slagle, who is still undergoing treatment herself, says, “I knew he’d be fine and I knew he’d be a boy. I just figured God wouldn’t let him be a mess because they’d never let another pregnant woman who needed the medical treatment have it if the child suffered.”

Of her own health, she says she believes that eventually her cancer will disappear. “Of course, you have your bad days,” she says, “but when you do, you just pray a lot.”