By Susan Dillman
Tribune Indianapolis Bureau

INDIANAPOLIS -- She arrived at 8:40 a.m. Thursday. Another tiny baby in a big, busy world. Born to neither riches nor royalty, the arrival of Jessica Jane Stillson nonetheless made the evening news.

What makes this 4-pound, 12-ounce infant, the daughter of Jane and Tod Stillson, so special is what she represents. In an increasingly secular world, little Jessica is a living symbol of profound religious faith, extraordinary strength, sacrifice and hope. She is the baby that doctors told Jane not to have if she wanted even a slim shot at surviving breast cancer just five more years.

The disease showed up early in Jane's pregnancy and doctors advised her to have an abortion. It would lower the level of hormones on which her cancer was feasting, and it would pave the way for a swift and aggressive course of treatment that otherwise would have killed her fetus.

But Jane and Tod refused.

"They essentially said, 'If you want your wife to survive, you need to kill your child.' I said, 'Abortion is not an option. Now, what do you recommend_' " Tod told The Tribune in an April story about the couple.

"Of all the decisions that we've had to make, that was the least agonizing," Tod said, hours after Jessica's birth at the Indiana University Medical Center.

The couple came from their home in Virginia to have the baby here. They plan to move back to Marshall County where Tod, a physician, plans to open a practice in Plymouth in the fall. Using his knowledge and connections as a physician, Tod researched how other doctors nationwide were treating pregnant women with cancer. Together with Jane's doctor, they settled on an early round of chemotherapy.

"And it was not namsy pamsy chemotherapy," said Tod.

"We've tried to walk that tight rope of having the sanctity of life and trying to save Jane's life as well ... Believe me, Jane wants to live and I want her to live for a long time," he said.

There were also risks to Jessica. Her delivery was induced six weeks early so that doctors could attack her mother's cancer sooner. Jessica reportedly is doing well, breathing on her own and feeding from a bottle. She could be released from the hospital in as little as a week. There also is a chance that Jessica could get leukemia because of the prenatal chemotherapy. So, doctors harvested and preserved some of the baby's own umbilical-cord blood cells, should she ever need them for cancer treatment.

Now, Jane, a pharmacist, is steeling herself for a bone marrow transplant on June 12.

"The children (the couple have an 18-month-old son, John) are certainly my motivation because I want to see them grow up and I want to be the mother to raise them," said Jane on Thursday evening.

Jessica's birth was "just one step in the process," she said.

The transplant will include a particularly poisonous round of chemotherapy that will so weaken her immune system, a common cold could kill her. Regardless, Jane's type of cancer offers her only a 20 percent chance of survival to five years.

"How much (completing the pregnancy) has affected or diminished her chances of living, time will tell," said Tod. They pray God will intervene, either through science or supernatural power. But they are prepared to accept an answer of no.

"We trust in the providence of the Lord," Tod said quietly.

But "don't mistake that as a lack of concern or a lack of pain or suffering," he explained. The couple has their moments of fear and sadness. "But in the midst of the pain and suffering, there can be genuine peace, there can be genuine hope," he said. "This story is much bigger than us," said Tod. "The story is what God's doing in our lives.

"My genuine desire would be that people would see Jane and I and say that we reflect the God that we serve and that when they see us it would make them want to know the God that we serve.

"Jane and I, we'll come and go," Tod said. "People come and go, but the Lord, he doesn't. He's eternal. He's forever."