Posted on 02/21/2006 5:58:36 AM PST by Neville72
My Choice
Minister's abortion two decades ago was a difficult decision that still resonates with a sense of loss - but it was a mature choice and the right one
By The Rev. Donna Schaper
I am a 58-year-old white woman. I had an abortion 19 years ago. I am not bragging, nor am I apologizing.
I am a mother of three children in their 20s, and I am an ordained Christian minister. I had one child and then twins. Having twins the second time caused me my great good fortune of having three children in diapers. While nursing the twins, I did not think I needed birth control. I was wrong.
When I got pregnant with the child I call "Alma," which means soul, I was not interested in a fourth child. I chose, with some searching, to exercise my constitutional right and ended her birth.
Why do I tell my story now? Because I fear that abortion rights may become even more restricted than they already are. I also find the very intimidation that I experience in telling my story to be the reason I must speak. Why would I be afraid? Because anti-abortion people like to punish people into their version of morality. Plus my editor warned me to expect a lot of heat. Should that fear replace free speech? I think not.
I did what was right for me, for my family, for my work, for my husband and for my three children. I happen to agree that abortion is a form of murder. I think the quarrel about when life begins is disrespectful to the fetus. I know I murdered the life within me. I could have loved that life but chose not to.
I did what I think men do all the time when they take us to war: They choose violence because, although they believe it is bad, it is still better than the alternatives. The "just war" theory assumes that human beings get caught in terrible choices all the time. This freedom is not just for men; it is for women also.
When I made my choice to end one life on behalf of other life, I was terribly troubled. I was in a double bind. I prayed and anguished. Then I made a choice. Adults make choices.
I have long thought that the drama of the abortion battle was not about unborn babies at all. Instead, it is about women and sex and about women and maturity. We are considered babies, sub-adults, in need of supervision over our sexuality. Otherwise we are dangerous. The virgin/whore debates come to mind.
When I made my choice to end life, I was behaving as an adult. I did not shrink from the responsibility of making a choice. I did not ask someone else to make it for me. And I certainly did not request my government's help in my bedroom. Instead, I behaved as an adult who is also a sexual being. Things happen sexually between people that are not always controllable. The unprotected sex I had with my husband while nursing our twins had a consequence that neither of us desired. It was a human life. That's why we named her, wept for her, wanted her but also knew we did not want her enough.
Because women are mature sexual beings who make choices, birth control and abortion are positive moral forces in history. They allow sex to be both procreational and recreational, for men and for women. That is good news, even though most of the world doesn't know it yet. In Africa, for example, too many men assume the freedom to have unprotected sex with women, giving them AIDS and heartbreak. What does our so-called pro-life government recommend? Abstinence! Such a recommendation is immoral to its core.
Obviously, protected sex is the most moral thing of all. Unprotected sex is adolescent, immature, sometimes life-threatening and always stupid. Women are mature enough to handle that. We are not babies. Sometimes, in the battle over killing our babies, I hear the echo of people wanting to kill women's maturity and sexuality. I don't like it. That's why I am breaking my silence about who I am.
I am a 58-year-old sexual, mature woman. That's who I am. I had an abortion. I am not bragging and I am not apologizing.
Abortion that is legal, safe and rare is the best policy conceivable for men and women and for mature, moral sexuality.
The Rev. Donna Schaper is senior minister of Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan.
The only thing that could top it if this woman would have claimed to have had a mind meld with Alma, and Alma had told her that, given the lack of love situation, she wanted to choose limbo over life.
No more phone calls, folks! We have a winner!!
Nicely stated! If poetic justice is served, her congregation will leave her church in droves if not entirely.
I read in a book about working with high school youth groups once, about a guy that was a leader and had taught them to "help others" in a session. After an event they were on their way to McDonald's, when they passed a lady on the side of the road w/ car trouble. The kids wanted to stop and help, but the group youth leader said that they had to hurry to meet the others at McDonald's.
Well, apparently he had trouble getting them to listen to him in subsequent weeks. When he finally asked/inquired, he came to the conclusion that he had lost all of his credibility b/c he "talked" big but when it came time to "ante-up" he was nowhere to be found. Ergo, the kids didn't heed much of what he said thereafter.
People aren't stupid, .... unless they want to be that is.
The woman was convinced to have the baby, and give it up for adoption. That baby went home with the woman from our church as a foster child. After a year, the baby was successfully adopted into a Christian family, and is clean and happy. He was the center of our church for that year, and the entire congregation was praying for him and loving him.
Abortion is NEVER the right thing to do.
It's amazing what the toll is on women that have had abortions. It's worse, IMO, than had those women not had them. Yet, it's squelched.
Of course men have their roles in this as well. : ]
You could be right but I have no doubt that people like her do exist
(I know that in many regards they're the same....)
dschaper@judson.org or DonnaSchaper@gmail.com
"May I suggest that, given the right time and opportunity, you suggest to the friend or his wife that she contact CareNet or SaveOne or a local crisis pregnancy center. Many organizations offer post-abortion healing programs which include, among other things, the opportunity to forgive oneself. That is the hardest part."
Thanks for the suggestions. My friend has checked into organizations such as those you suggest but he says that his wife's sense of shame is so great that she can't bring herself to discuss it with anyone except those very few closest to her. She doesn't know I know. But my friend, her husband, only discussed it with me because he's so concerned about her--that now, 30 years down the road, he still occasionally wakes up in the middle of the night to find her quietly weeping.
Nah, I figured it out. She's an "insurgent." They are above criticism.
Its about desire
I desire not to have anymore children regardless of wheter its murder or not
Its all about ME and what I desire and the Lord, His Word, morals, responsibility, doing the right thing be damned!
>>>Why do I tell my story now? Because I fear that abortion rights may become even more restricted than they already are.>>>
Then they already are!?! My teenage daughter can walk in an abortion center and have a SURGICAL procedure without my knowledge or consent. What do these people want? Drive through abortions? Do you just hang your legs out the window, blip blip and you're done?
Jeez.
I am moderately pro-choice, but not in the extreme this 'constitutional right' has slid too.
... this female is quite lobally-impaired. She imputes her values to encompass her own bigotries. She thinks she is above all others, better than. And while she pleads a "mock" courage article.
She equates "war" as a male-ism, while asserting that women murdering their own unborn is the female-equivalent.
Take it down, baby.. take it all down... she should be defrocked as a hypocrite and heretic.
But she won't. Hypocrisy and heresy are the mainstay of "liberal" psuedo-religionists.
Alma, dear soul, in the Lord's mansion misses nothing.
Bingo. That's exactly what her actions amount to: A ritual sacrifice. A blood offering to her "god" of feminism.
Funny, I know lots of people who would have given their right arm to raise that child she treated like trash. Abortion isn't the only option for an unwanted pregnancy. How can any sane person rationalise that it is easier to kill her own child than to give it up for adoption?
Maybe she's running from the mob.
Or you wouldn't think that she is such a whack job that she is too much for the whack jobs that belong to these liberal communist "churches," would you?
Is this "Church" tax-exempt?!
Why do people like this NEVER comment on the fact that a child in the womb is an INNOCENT life? They never distinguish between a clean slate and a criminal (they are always against the death penalty) or terrorist life? Where were these people when critical thinking was being taught?
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