Thread by me.
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that euthanasia is a "false solution" to suffering, adding his voice to a bitter debate in Italy over the fate of a comatose woman whose father wants to remove her feeding tube.
During his Sunday blessing, Benedict said that love can help confront pain and that "no tear, from those who suffer and those who are with them, is lost before God."
Benedict didn't mention Eluana Englaro by name, but it was clear he was referring to her case, which has made headlines in Italy for months...
My story starts in my childhood.
I grew up with 2 alcoholics and a stepfather who sexually abused me. My parents divorced when I was 9 years old and my mother quickly remarried. The sexual abuse started within a month of their marriage. I was never raped, but it was always threatened and I lived in constant fear. What a terrible thing for a child to live through. I looked at my kids at 9 years old and wondered how anyone can do something so horrendous to a child.
I decided early on that I would not have sex until I was 18, so I could at least support the child if I became pregnant. I stuck to this promise to myself and did wait. As a child of sexual abuse, I looked for love within sex. I wasn’t going from man to man, but I definitely equated love with sex. I met my husband and we became friends first, then after a period of time, lovers. We started living together and became careless one night and I ended up pregnant. I was 22 years old.
Looking back now, I cannot fathom what I was thinking, although at the time I was drinking and doing drugs to numb the pain of the childhood I had experienced and I believe this played a big factor in my decision. As an adopted child myself, I often wonder why I didn’t chose this route. The sad truth is I felt scared and alone and it was easier at the time to “just get rid of it.”
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