For Argument's Sake

When I was 23, not long after I got married, I became pregnant.  Even though I was married, the pregnancy wasn't planned.  I was living a lifestyle that was far from conducive to good parenting.  I was 23 - young, a tad irresponsible, and still outgrowing my desire to party a little too hard on the weekends.  I drank my share.  I never ate anything. I lived on caffeine and nicotine.  I was having fun with my life, but not in a very healthful way.  By the time I figured out that I was pregnant, I was about 8 weeks along.  Neither of us were happy about it, to be perfectly honest.  We just weren't ready.  We were scared.  We had no money, crappy jobs, we didn't own our home.  It just wasn't the way we had pictured starting a family.  But after about 2 weeks of milling around our options, we started to come to terms with the fact that we were going to be parents.  It wasn't going to be easy, but it was going to be O.K.  We could make it work.

I remember waking up early one Saturday morning.  The sun was shining through the window.  The birds were chirping.  It was late spring, and the weather was starting to be very nice.  I was filled with this sense of peace.  But when I got up to go to the bathroom, I realized I was covered in blood.  I wasn't in any pain at that point, but I knew something was very wrong.  I woke Peyton and he drove me to the ER.  They did a sonogram and told me that there was nothing they could do.  The told me to go home, take Motrin and follow up with my OB on Monday.  Just like that, it was over.  The baby was gone.

On the ride home, neither one of us spoke a word.  I was starting to feel crampy at that point, and emotionally numb.  When we got home, I asked Peyton to go to the store to get me a few things.  He left around 10 in the morning and didn't return until well after dark.  He had to handle the loss in his own way, I guess - even if that meant leaving me to endure the miscarriage by myself.   I can remember laying on the couch with a hot water bottle on my stomach, knowing that with every cramp, my body was expelling what would have been my son or daughter.  I had spent two weeks upset, angry, worried about this pregnancy and now it was over.  I recall telling one of my friends, "Even though I felt like I wasn't ready to be a mother, I never didn't want the baby." And that was the honest to goodness truth.  I mourned - genuinely mourned - the loss of the baby for months.  I felt sad and angry and guilty, and there was nothing I could do to ease the pain except let it run its course.  Peyton wouldn't, or couldn't talk about it.  My family didn't even know I was pregnant.  My friends tried to be supportive, but there's only so much that can be said to a woman after a miscarriage.  I had to come to terms with it myself.  Eventually, the emotions evened out, the sadness went away.  I worked through it, and took away from it what I thought I was meant to learn.  We have all kinds of choices in life.  We can choose to become bitter or angry or chronically sad - to be miserable - or we can learn, grow, and find appreciation even in strife. We are often faced with situations that we may not want, but that somehow we need.  For me, turning those moments of grief into opportunities to grow has been my saving grace, and that's what I did with the miscarriage.  It sounds strange to say that I am grateful for the miscarriage, but in a way, I am.  I'm not grateful that the baby died, but the loss opened my eyes to many things I would not have otherwise seen.

A few years ago, probably about 10 years after the miscarriage, I had this very strange revelation.  Bear with me here, because it is admittedly a bit weird.  I was scrubbing the upstairs bathroom in the house I currently live in when I remembered something that happened during my first pregnancy.  A few days before the miscarriage, Peyton and I were driving somewhere - I don't remember where, but I can still picture the car, the heat from the road, the traffic as clearly as if it were yesterday.  I was in the passenger's seat when I felt the most unusual sensation in my abdomen.  I won't be able to describe it well, but I'll try.  It was as if something were being pulled out of my gut, but not in a painful way.  Actually, every time I think about that moment, I have a visualization of shimmery, glittery, fairy dust-type stuff.  (I told you it was weird.  Don't judge me, please!)  If you will, I felt as if something shimmered out of me.  It was so quick - two seconds, maybe less - and then it was over.  At the time, I had no idea what it was, and honestly, I forgot all about it until that day when I was scrubbing the tub.  On that day I remembered the "shimmering" (for lack of a better description), it was as if God spoke directly to me.  No, I didn't hear a voice, the thought clearly came from inside my own mind, but it was nothing short of a revelation, a divulgence that was given to me from the outside.  I knew, at that moment, that the sensation I felt when I was in the car that day was the baby's soul leaving my body, and that I was beyond blessed to have been given the chance to be privy to it.

Now why on Earth would I have thought such a thing in the middle of cleaning the bathtub, nearly 10 years after the miscarriage?  The Lord works in mysterious ways.  I believe that He wanted me to know what happened to me that day for some reason.  Think what you will, I wholeheartedly believe that I felt the baby's soul, and I also feel strongly that it was a gift - a gift from the baby, from God, from both, I don't know.  It doesn't matter, really.  It was awesome, and remembering it was nothing short of awesome too.  (I'm not crazy, really.  Please don't call Mental Health on me!)

I believe that a baby has a soul at the moment of conception.  I believe that it's a baby - a person - as soon as the cells start dividing.  I believe that every life has a purpose, but I don't believe that we, as humans, are necessarily meant to understand the whys and hows of every situation.  I don't believe that the little one who died inside of me lost his life in vain, nor do I any longer feel that it was my fault that he died.  In my heart, I believe that my first baby was only ever meant to live a few short weeks, but in those few weeks to make a big impact.  I believe that God sent the baby to me to help me change my path in life - something not to be taken lightly.  Because of that pregnancy, and its subsequent loss, I started living more healthfully.  I started making better choices - changes which helped me slowly become a woman who is much better fit to be a mother.  Sure, lots of babies are born to women who are in far worse predicaments than I was, but that's their path, not mine or my children's.  It's not for me to know the reasons why their babies survive or don't survive.  Those lessons belong to them.  What I am to do is to grow from the experiences that have been tailored for me.  To a large extent, that's what I did.

Having read all that I wrote above, I'm betting it will surprise you to read that I hold a steady pro-choice stance.  Would I personally have an abortion?  Unless it was deemed medically necessary, no.  I would not.  I couldn't live with myself if I made that a conscious choice to end a life.  But here's the deal - although having another baby is not in my future plans, and although it would mean some pretty big adjustments in nearly every aspect of our lives, our life circumstances are such that we could handle it.  It wouldn't be easy, and it probably wouldn't be all that fun at times, but we would be OK.  I am blessed in that respect, and believe me, I am aware of that blessing every day.

The biggest issue for me in the abortion debate is the fact that a pro-life stance says that it is OK for the government to make the decision about whether or not a woman is able to give birth.  When I say "able to give birth," I am not talking about her physical health.  In fact, I am more importantly talking about all those things besides her physical health - her financial means, her mental stability, her outside support system, whether or not she has the desire and/or ability to nurture another person.  Making abortion illegal doesn't take into account an abusive relationship, a drug addiction, a woman who just got a full ride to law school and has the chance of making something of herself instead of perpetuating her family's cycle of poverty.  I'm betting that many of the conservatives who shout "pro-life" are also the ones who complain about "welfare bums" using their hard earned tax dollars for food stamps.  Contradictory? Maybe just a little.  (Don't get mad, I'm not stereo-typing.  I'm not slamming pro-life conservatives.  Clearly, not all conservatives feel and act that way.  I'm just making a point.)  Making a law that overrules all the subjective factors in such a life altering and personal act, to me, is just asinine.

You can say that outlawing abortion protects the life of someone who cannot protect himself, but what about the protection of the mother, the father, and the other children she may have.  Adding another mouth to her family may mean that instead of 4 people going to bed hungry, 5 do.  It may mean that now she doesn't have enough money to pay for heat, so the family will try to keep warm in the kitchen around the oven for months in the winter.  I'm not making up some of these scenarios.  I've seen them first hand, and I'll tell you, putting a face to desperation changes a person's point of view.  Women who find themselves in a situation desperate enough to have an abortion do not need more hurdles to jump, more judgement to trudge through.  They need support.  Protection takes into account the outliers, it filters the negatives and the positives of the family situation and guides people - the mother, and if applicable the whole family, to make a decision which benefits everyone, a decision not based on selfishness or evil, but rather to be made in the best interest of everyone involved.  Most women who chose abortion do not feel good, or even neutral, about it.  Yes, there may be a few who are cavalier, but that's not the majority.  They agonize, they worry, they feel deeply sorry.  They feel desperation and despair over their choice, a choice that is often not really a choice at all.

Could it also be that sometimes it is a sin to bring an unwanted child into the world.  It's easy to say that all babies deserve a chance at life.  I don't mean to sound callous - I believe that they do too.  I understand this side of the argument, but at the same time, I also think that we as a society should consider the circumstances that many unwanted children are enduring.   I'm not saying that I value the life of the mother over the child, in fact I'm saying the opposite.  I have seen a lot of heartbreak and suffering.  Not only have I been witness to some horrific circumstances, but with the horror that I have seen and felt for the babies in my own county is also the knowledge that in larger cities, in places where the poverty is worse, the drug and crime rates are worse, so are the lives of these poor little souls.  Perhaps abortion, in some cases, really is the more merciful act.  It can be argued hat a woman has the choice of placing her child for adoption.  Again, I agree that adoption is the absolute best case scenario for an unplanned pregnancy, but that also is not always feasible.  Giving a child up for adoption requires strength, support and resources that many do not have.  Does anyone really believe that God would turn His back on the babies?  I sure don't.  They are scooped up into the safety of his arms, immediately comforted.  They are protected by a source far more powerful than any of our laws.  The women have a much harder road ahead of them than the baby ever will.

On top of that, whether abortion is legal or not, women are going to seek ways to terminate pregnancies.  If nothing else, making it legal, sterile, and medically safe is a way of ensuring that only one life is lost.  How many women have been left scarred and sterile or even died from back-alley abortions?  Probably more than you think.  Keeping abortion legal is absolutely about protection - the protection of one of the foundations of this country - the right to make your own choices - and the protection of the health and safety of our citizens.

Another thing that really bothers me about the pro-choice/ pro-life argument is the judgement that is rampant on both sides of the scale.  Pro-lifers throw out conservative and religious rationale left and right, and pro-choicers counter with biting remarks about narrow-mindedness.  In my opinion, anything that is on the extreme right or extreme left is probably overlooking some crucial components.  None of the major debates in life is black or white.  There are many shades in between that need to be considered, and that means not judging someone for preaching God's word as much as it means not dismissing someone for corroborating feminism.  People tend to make decisions based on their own life circumstances.  That's OK if you are making a decision for yourself.  It's a problem when you are assuming that the rest of the population has the same values, means, socio-economic status, etc. as you.  It's also easy for me to say what I think I would do when I am not faced with the situation first hand.  I hate when a person belittles and judges another person for making an undesirable choice during a crisis.  When I am sitting in my comfortable home, in my comfortable clothing, with my bills paid and my children clean and fed, my job secure, my family healthy, and hours to discuss and contemplate what my course of action should be, then of course I can make a calm and rational decision about pretty much anything.  When the car is about to crash, so to speak, it's a different story.

A long time ago, one of my closest friends had an abortion.  It was a heart wrenching decision for her, one that she did not take lightly, and one that still haunts her well over a decade later.  It was a life changing decision for her.  Much like my miscarriage, her decision to abort was the impetus behind some major changes in her life.  In many ways, the choice to end that pregnancy saved her from herself, diverted her from a path of self-destruction to one of restitution.  Although I know that she still sometimes mourns the baby she chose not to have, I am also certain that her choice made her a better mother to the children she now has than she ever could have been to the one she carried so long ago.  How would her life be different if that option had not not available to her?  If she had to travel hundreds of miles under cover of darkness to find someone to help her?  If no one would have helped her at all?  I clearly remember when she told me what she had done.  I remember not only the agony that she went through, but also my own shock in her decision.  I stood by her then, and I would stand by her again now.  I am glad that she had many options available to her, and I sincerely hope that the women in this country continue to have the freedom of choice.