I have heard the reasons that make abortion seem like the best choice and I know intimately the effects of abortion. I know the guilt, fear and shame that lead a woman to a clinic and I know the people who operate and work in those clinics are there because they believe that they are truly helping women.
I have no convincing facts that draw a correlation between abortion and teen suicide, abortion and breast cancer, abortion and eating disorders, abortion and future miscarriage or abortion and post traumatic syndrome – although research is being done in all these areas.
Not long before my 18th birthday, I became pregnant. I was too far along in my pregnancy for a D&C, so I had to wait another month and a half for a saline abortion. Not a quick easy procedure that can convince a person that “tissue” is being removed, but one in which my baby burned to death within my womb. Feeling my baby burn inside of me cannot be forgotten – the amniotic fluid was removed and replaced with a saline solution – the gentle movement of life was replaced with the erratic movements of death – unforgettable. I don’t remember exactly how long it took for my baby to die, or how long my labor lasted. I was in the hospital for 2 ½ days.
The memory for me is not in hours and days but in sounds and feelings – frozen in time. The haunting screams and moaning of the others in the room, crying out for release as they labored to give birth to death. The sound of the night nurse talking on the phone – stopping briefly to give me a bed pan, the panicked cries from my own body as my baby was delivered in a bed pan – the two of us together waiting as the night nurse finished her conversation. The tears I cried as I lay with my baby are the tears that have continued for almost 35 years.
I have no anger toward anyone and place no blame; I love my parents dearly and know that they truly had my best interests in their hearts and my boyfriend was a confused and frightened as I was. I trusted and believed that adults and science knew better.
And now, as a happily-married woman, having had two miscarriages and four beautiful children, ages 20 – 26, I know that my 35-year-old son is missing from my life and from the world. And that yes, he may have turned out to be a drug addict or made other bad choices. But even the worst of us do some good and the best of us do some harm, but we are designed to be a gift to one another. And Death is Death – whether it is in the womb or in a concentration camp, or on the battlefield, or in an accident, or from a drug overdose.
When someone dies, someone is missing from your life… And life, I have come to learn, in all its pain, misery, messiness and joy, is the greatest gift of all.