No regrets for choosing love over abortion

Indianapolis Star ^ | Jan 22, 2004 | J. Scofield

[redangus]

Today, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I am reminded once again that those who accept abortion as a viable solution to a social problem do not have all the information they need to come to that misguided conclusion. That is why I am telling my story.

In 1969, before Roe v. Wade, and at the age of 37, I became pregnant with my fifth child. I was ill at the time and could barely manage to take care of the children I had. I knew I could not take care of a baby. I was not interested in exploring different options, believe me. Nor did I consult my conscience, my doctor or God on the matter. All I wanted was to get out of the situation the fastest, easiest way possible and I thought that way was abortion. How wrong I was.

I certainly was not thinking clearly at the time. In the years preceding this, some people were beginning to think more liberally about abortion, and I had listened to their reasons why it would be OK, instead of listening to my heart. I had been given permission by society to kill my own baby. That's all I needed to act.

I didn't make a real choice that day. A choice implies a clear mind, free of fear and with full knowledge of the price I would have to pay. The day before the abortion (two doctors signed), my husband took me and our two older children, who were teenagers, into the bedroom to have a private discussion. They all agreed that if I would not do this, they would help me with the baby.

As it turned out, I got very little help. But hey, I'm not complaining, because I raised my son anyway, and I thank my former husband every time I see him for not allowing me to kill my own child, but it was his child too.

I realize now that I was not only choosing for myself, I was choosing for my baby -- and it was his life. I was choosing for my husband. I was choosing for my other children. And I was choosing for their grandparents. The question, then, is not "Did I have a right to choose?" The real question is "Did I have a right to choose for everybody simply because I carried that baby in my body?"

This baby did not belong to me. These babies belong to the ages. He was not my possession to dispose of as I wished. Kahlil Gibran said it well in his famous poem, "Your children do not belong to you. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself." Neither was he a blob of tissue. He was a unique, marvelous, individual human being who was merely in one stage of his life; just as infancy, adolescence or old age are stages.

This child, this particular "mistake," has become very precious to his mother. His name is Dirk. A law against abortion would keep many women from doing something they would regret for the rest of their lives (just as my husband's interference did), at a time when they are in no position to make such a life-altering decision.

But if not a law, at least tell the truth about abortion and its consequences, which affect the whole family and even the world. Apparently, women have the right to choose for everybody, and everybody gets to share in the consequences.

Feminists have told women that abortion is about reproductive freedom and will allow them to be empowered and fulfilled. But real power comes with love and responsibility. And there is neither love nor responsibility connected with abortion. There is no fulfillment or power in being soul-sick either.

Some day we will look back on this abortion era aghast at what we allowed to happen, as we now do with slavery and the Holocaust. The evil keeps popping up and it catches us every time, in spite of our "lest we forget" rhetoric.

What is the opposite of informed choice? Uninformed choice, which is really no choice at all.

[madprof98]

. . . a bigger problem is that the vast majority of prospective adoptive parents want children of the same race as themselves . . .

Perhaps the "vast majority" do, but the many who do not care about the race of the child (and who would gladly go to China or Korea or Africa to adopt) are not even considered as possible parents of African-American children. This is the pitiful legacy of the social work establishment from the Sixties on.

I suspect you know that, but you evidently think raising the spectre of unwanted black babies is an argument for abortion. You're wrong.

[cyborg]

Until we can deal effectively with all the kids (of all races) who are already here and conscious, and being beaten/starved/tortured/raped, I'm not interested in expending resources trying to save early-stage fetuses who have no awareness of anything good or bad.

***I agree with this sentiment. Of course if we all stressed PREVENTION we'd not be having this discussion.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

There are many, many black babies stuck in hospitals and being bounced around lousy foster care, because there are way more of them than there are adoptive parents. It sucks, but it's the truth.

BS. I work in adoption bub. Give me a baby no matter what the color and I can have a couple lined up in under a month.

In the last month we placed a toddler from the Marshall Islands. He wasn't exactly white and he was long past the baby stage and it took less then four weeks to find him parents.

Sorry but if those babies are being bounced around it is because of one of two things, A.) they are not free to be adopted or B.) the state will not place them with parents of another race.

[desertcry]

Are you suggesting that the killing of an innocent unborn child is not selfish, because it might benefit the other children? I don't see the logic or the morality in this.

[ican'tbelieveit]

So because the current children just can't have all the cool things their friends have, their unborn sibling should die? That makes a lot of sense to me... HEAR OF ADOPTION????????????

[ican'tbelieveit]

Exactly. Most of the kids that are bounced around foster care are held their by selfish, incapable of caring for themselves, much less children "parents." Give them up, let someone who truly is willing to sacrifice take them and give them what they need.

[Bob Eimiller]

This beautiful story and the irrationality of abortion reinforce the obvious fact that extreme liberalism is a mental illness....

[GovernmentShrinker]

The "not free to be adopted" is a huge part of the problem, as is the "birth parent may resurface and grab the child". If anti-abortion activists would direct a little more energy towards the necessary legal changes, and less to hollering about the morning after pill being "murder", maybe the adoption system in this country would really work, and people wouldn't be scared to put babies into it, or to adopt out of it. That said, though, fixing the U.S. laws on adoption would just cut down on the need for international adoptions, leaving more of those foreign kids parentless, and too often being sold into slavery. There really is an oversupply of children in the world for the number of able and willing parents. As long as Asian parents are still selling their spare 10 year old girls to Thai brothels for $20 or $30, nobody's going to get me on the gotta-get-all-those-fetuses-born bandwagon.

[ican'tbelieveit]

And who are you to choose which child is not necessary to this world because they may face hardships?

[GovernmentShrinker]

I'm not choosing.

[cyborg]

Sometimes I think certain segments of the pro-life movement really have misplaced priorities. The EC pill is NOT abortion, it's not RU486. The Roman Catholic groups in particular are against all forms of birth control for instance. Lobbying for more adoption,etc. is better.

[ican'tbelieveit]

You are encouraging the wholesale slaughter of unborn children in 3rd world nations because they can't be cared for to your standard of living. Seems to me that you are choosing by saying there are too many of them.

[madprof98]

There really is an oversupply of children in the world for the number of able and willing parents.

My God! Mother Teresa used to say that arguing there are too many children was like saying there are too many flowers. But, then, people who love abortion probably hate flowers too. Don't you?

[sarasmom]

On Children:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you, but not from you.
And although they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archers hand be for gladness.
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
THE PROPHET
Kahil Gibran
1923

[condolinda]

Yes, but they can also grow up to be vicious gang members who kill and maim innocent people. Lots of people don't survive the acts of the mobs of never-wanted young men who are roaming the streets of our big cities.

And there are children of privilege, wanted and of good families, who kill and main innocent people. They just don't usually do it in gangs while roaming the streets! And it does not follow that if we had more abortions, there'd be less crime. Both abortions and crime are at an all-time high. It could be suggested though that the concept of abortion shows these young gang members that life is cheap and expendable. If your mother could have offed you so easily, then life is nothing sacred, just a choice.

[GovernmentShrinker]

I'd a lot rather see effective use of contraception take hold, both in developed and undeveloped countries. Until then, we're basically facing a choice between slaughter of already born children and slaughter of not yet born children, and I much prefer the latter. And I know I'd a lot rather die quickly of an abortion when I'm a first trimester fetus, than die slowly of abuse and starvation, or of AIDS after being dumped in the street, after spending my pre-adolescent years chained to a bed in a brothel serving 4 customers an hour.

[winner3000]

(Khalil Gibran has much to offer. I used something from his book as part of my wedding ceremony.)

Khalil Gibran is a Lebanese poet. His most well known work, The Prophet, was translated in over 20 languages, and ranks third to the Bible and the Farmer's Almanach in terms of # of copies sold worldwide.

[ican'tbelieveit]

If it were up to you I would have been an abortion. What right do you have to say that because I came from a woman that had too many children, didn't want me, didn't want to give me up, she should have aborted me. WHAT RIGHT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY THAT I HAD NO RIGHT TO LIFE??????????????

[sarasmom]

Now that is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen posted on this topic, at this site.
And I have seen quite a few weird posts!

[GovernmentShrinker]

And it does not follow that if we had more abortions, there'd be less crime.

Actually there's some pretty solid research correlating the drop in violent crime in recent years, with the date that abortion started being legal and widely available. The drop in crime started to be noticeable suspiciously close to the time that the just-post-Roe generation of babies were/would have been reaching their teens, and thus their peak crime years.