Posted on 01/30/2003 5:06:38 AM PST by Skooz
Please forgive the vanity.
I received this email from my mom yesterday morning. Amanda is my niece. She is 18 years old and she lives with my parents. She just started college on a full paid academic scholarship:
Hi, Just wanted to fill you in on the latest around here. Miss Amanda is dropping school because she's...............................are you ready................ take a breath....................pregnant. She's going with her boyfriend tomorrow for counseling before having an abortion. His folks told him that unless she has an abortion he can never see her again. She wants him more than anything, so that's probably what she'll do. It's been a bad few days around here. She was going to wait until the end of the quarter (March) to tell us, but she got real sick a few weeks ago and came home. I think part of it was the flu, and part "baby" sickness. She still doesn't feel well. One of the worse things is he won't be 17 until April. So anyway.......I thought I'd give you a little shock to have with your coffee. I'll keep you updated.
Of course, we are stunned. I am really seeking some advice about what I can do or say. My entire family (except for Amanda) is staunchly pro-life. Her mother is beside herself.
Oh, and how about the "His folks told him that unless she has an abortion he can never see her again" thing? How about it pro-choicers? She is being coerced into having an abortion she doesn't really want. She has said (in other correspondence) that she wants to keep the baby. Her "choice" is being made by the father's parents, who want to be spared the embarassment.
She went to see a "counselor" at an abortion clinic yesterday, and they scheduled the "procedure" for today. Of course, the "counselor" at the abortuary is just a salesperson whose job it is to sell abortions.
Anyway, I have run out of options. I have prayed and will continue to do so. I have offered to adopt the baby and have referred her to a wonderful woman who has dedicated her life to finding good homes for children who would otherwise have been aborted, but my niece is not interested. She is ready to have her baby killed to make her boyfriend's parents happy.
I really don't know what else to say. God help us.
Tell her that she will (not might, but WILL) be emotionally scarred for the rest of her life. This will be an event that she will have to reconcile herself with for a VERY long time. Now, as far as I can see, the scar of letting a "young love" go passes. But this type of scar will linger for ever.
I've seen adult women who had abortions years earlier still seeking spiritual and emotional help at church in an effort to deal with a decision that was made under "crisis" conditions.
When I got married some years ago, my husband's son was paying child support for a child he had help conceive at 16. His mother wanted her son's girlfriend to have an abortion, but changed her mind after she held him after he was born (she died soon after and was glad to have had the opportunity to hold her only grandchild). My step-son was able to support the child and go to college because the entire family supported him--both emotionally and financially. This family could too. Now the young man is 27 and as it turns out, it's really the only responsibility he's ever had in his life. I shudder to think what he'd be like if he at least hadn't been forced to do that!
You've gotten a lot of advice on this, and I'm not sure how much more helps, but here goes:
I'm in my early thirties and conservative Catholic. When I was 19 (and not a practicing Catholic), one of my best friends (also 19) got a 17 year-old girl pregnant. He wasn't religious either, but she was. She was from a lower-income family and didn't have the resources to support a baby, and had all kinds of emotional and dependency problems (she had been through rehab a number of times, both for drugs and alcohol). My friend fell for her because, well, she was strikingly beautiful.
Anyway, despite all the things she had going against her, despite her family's financial situation, they were devout Catholics and supported her in her decision to have the baby. Keep in mind--both she and my friend were the perfect example of "stupid, crazy kids"; they thought that love would conquer everything, that it was "them against the world" etc. After a while that wore off and they decided the best course was to have the baby and give it up for adoption.
I and my girlfriend at the time were there when she delivered the baby (not in the room, of course, but in the hospital). The adoptive parents were there as well; they were well-to-do professionals (both nursing professionals), very nice people. The look on their faces when they held their new baby girl for the first time was something that I'll never forget. They already had one adopted daughter, and this new child had been a "bolt from the blue" surprise for them; they'd been on the waiting list for another child for some time and couldn't stop thanking my friends for picking them to be the adoptive parents.
My friend and this young woman left the hospital after she recovered; their relationship lasted less than a month. After a few more reconciliations/breakups, they ended it for good and never saw each other again.
The point? This situation you describe sound a lot like tha situation that happened thirteen years ago (I can't believe it was that long ago--time flies). I don't know the exact situation here, but I would wager than in a year (probably much less) the young man who got your niece pregnant will be long gone...and she'll be left with a lifetime of guilt about this abortion.
But if she has the courage, she can do the right thing and make one of the tens of thousands of parents who are crying for children happier than they've ever been...
I'm praying on this...Christe Eleison
The baby would hopefully be the winner if adopted. But adoption doesn't always have a happy ending either. Certainly it would be the better choice than abortion. However, you can't tell me that giving a baby up for adoption, and never seeing that child again, isn't going to affect the mother long term. It will always be in her mind. As far as the 17 year old kid, it's too bad that he's learning the lesson that there are no consequences to having irresponsible sex out of marriage. I hope that if this child, his first child and his parents' first grandchild is aborted, that it haunts him and them the rest of rest of their lives. Why should the mother be the only one who ends up having to live with the results of her actions?
I used to be a lot more pro-choice than I am now (34), but I saw a lot of things in my college years and more than a few girls in our sorority made the same decision. I thought back then that you do the best with what you have at the time. But I look back and shake my head now, as I'm sure a few other gals, at our acceptance of abortion as "OK" because we were trying to make something of ourselves academically, etc.
Remember folks, that a single girl's confidence to accept her unplanned pregnancy, look a critical world in the eye and have it despite easily obtained options comes from a terrific, loving upbringing by strong parents. I agree with the above recommendations to take away her support.
That said, if this has indeed happened, remember to keep loving this girl as she will need your help. This will be painful for years....
My prayers for your family--
If I were her father, I would consider the fact that my daughter is apparently too... too {something} to make the right choice between young Prince Fahqwad and her baby. Also, there was her earlier choice of fornication over abstinence...
I've tried to teach my 16 year old daughter how much I value life and hate abortion. I hope that she realized on a scale of 10 getting pregnant as a 16/18 year old who is not married is about a 4 and having an abortion is a 9.5.
If she has the abortion, they will end up apart anyway. The parents can change their minds after the baby is born, but there is no way to reverse the abortion. I really hope you can convince your niece to at least see a counselor at a CPC to get more facts.
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