The first time, I was 18. .... My parents said it would be the best thing... an abortion. So I shut down all my emotions, and did it. .... I was devastated. I cried for months, mourned for at least a year.
A few years later, I married someone else and we had a son. .... Considering the legal issues I was facing and the fact that I could not imagine having another child with such an immature jerk... I did it again... and had an abortion. The only opportunity my son would ever have to have a real sibling. It took me 10 years to mourn and regret what I did that 2nd time!
....
But I'm with someone else now. ....
Now I was faced with the hardest decision of my life. I have a 4 year college education. I make good money, own 2 homes. The one I live in has an extra room for a child. I have a beautiful yard for a child to play in and 2 great dogs that love children. My job would allow me to work from home a day or two a week. But having a child goes against everything I planned for my new future. ....
....
I was so confused... .... I said I would go to the abortion clinic but didn't know for sure what I would do. I went there... shut off many feelings. Broke down and cried several times. ....
.... I was screaming inside to God... please drop a bomb or something to convince me to go home. Don't let me do this... I don't have the strength to walk away on my own.
.... The nurse asked if I was sure I wanted to do this. I said, "NO!"
They never sent a counselor in with me. They didn't make me leave and come another day! I still had 5 weeks before they considered me at 13 weeks. I had plenty of time. Why didn't they help me? Why did they let me do it that day, in that state of mind?
I'm so sad... I'm so regretful for what could have been. .... I want to undo what I did but he doesn't want that. .... Will I ever get over my regret? I want my baby back.
....
I believe in Pro-Choice... but why aren't those clinics given more counseling requirements. Why couldn't they be forced to make me wait another day or week? Perhaps I would be a very happy expecting mother... Now I'll never know whether or not I made the right choice. I'm still so sad. ....
Anybody who reads Shawn's story and finds cause for celebration is missing either a heart or some key brain lobes.
I'm so glad you now have a site you can reference and point to as evidence when you judge women who abort to be irresponsible sluts.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how you're making the leap from "nothing to celebrate" to "what a slut!" Would you care to fill in the gap?
ReplyDeleteI do think that sites which allow readers to submit their own stories are faced with a dilemma in cases like this. Say that you were to start a site dedicated to the stories of women who carried to term pregnancies even in the face of nearly-guaranteed stillbirth or death of the child minutes after birth -- to show that even a few minutes is a blessing, that just because something is hard doesn't mean it's not worth doing, that every life is God's to give and take away, etc. And then say that someone submitted a personal story about how they have, years later, not recovered from the trauma of giving birth to a child who died immediately after, how they are happy with their decision but wish they had received better counseling prior to deciding to continue the pregnancy because they might have been better off that way after all. Do you refuse to print it and, in doing so, run the risk of censoring the real experiences of women merely because their experience does not match the views you hope to spread? Or do you run it and risk highlighting something contradictory to your site's goal?
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ReplyDeleteThough you make an excellent point, Alexandra -- and you'll notice I don't pick and chose the abortion death stories I put in the Cemetery of Choice -- my beef isn't that they included the story. It's about what they do with what Shawn is trying to tell them. To quote Zaphod Beeblebrox, "Ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking."
ReplyDeleteIt's as if they gather the stories, check to see that the woman still endorses "choice", and if so they count it as a victory. How much she, personally, was hurt doesn't enter into the equation.
I would love to see, say, a prochoice site that actually tried to correct the issues Shawn brings up.
I can understand that they blow off the prolifers. We're "The Enemy". We're horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad people who only want to enslave women, et cetera. But why don't they listen to women like Shawn? Like achromic?
I keep hoping that at some point it will happen. But with exceptions like Shawn and achromic (and this happens on both sides of any political or social divide), people get into a mindset of thinking they have to pick sides and just back one faction or the other.
I first got the epiphany when looking at the church. Which side doing less damage, the Baptized in Bong Water Lefties or the Baptized in Vinegar Rightwingers? Which faction do I choose? And perhaps it's an idea C.S. Lewis put into my head (he does address it in terms of sociological trends in Screwtape), but I thought, "What if the point isn't to join a faction, but to follow Jesus? To stop looking at what each extreme is doing and just look to Him?"
We can take the same attitude when it comes to abortion. Stop looking at the factions and start looking at the people that are caught in the crossfire. Start looking at Ashli and Shawn and asking, "Where did we fail?" and correcting it. That's something that you don't need to take sides to accomplish.
That's something that you don't need to take sides to accomplish.
ReplyDeleteI agree wholeheartedly. My only point was to suggest that perhaps the owners of the site that Shawn's story was posted on would not celebrate her individual story, regardless of the 'purpose' of their site, but that they felt less damage would be done by posting it than by refusing to post it. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who believed Shawn's story to be cause for celebration.
Just as you try to avoid factions, regardless of the polarized tone in Christianity today, there are a lot of pro-choice (and pro-life) people who do the same regardless of the polarized tone of abortion politics today. I do think that as far as 'movements' go, the organizations geared towards both pro-choice and pro-life goals do little to help women like Shawn, who felt trapped despite being pro-choice. But that doesn't mean there aren't lots of individuals working hard in the quiet middle.
Good points, Alexandra.
ReplyDeleteI get a bit fed up with so much of the trying to demonize each other. Mark Crutcher is among the worst at that in his rhetoric, which is bizarre because in practice he's very much of the "strange bedfellows" camp, very pragmatic and will work hand in hand with anybody who is helpful. Most of the expert witnesses Crutcher provides referrals to are practicing abortionists such as Warren Hern. He had no qualms whatsoever about working hand in glove with Hern to sue somebody who butchered some girl, but he'll talk about people like Hern as if they are drippingly evil minions of Satan.
Hern does the same thing. His public statements are that all abortion opponents are vile, heartless idiots, and all abortion practitioners are paragons of virtue, but he'll brave flac in private to shut down the quacks.
I wish Hern and Crutcher could stop the mudslinging and work together to combat quackery. But that would mean each admitting that the other isn't a monster, which they're not willing to do in public.
It is frustrating. I try to remind myself sometimes that one person shouting is louder than one million people thinking -- or praying. But one million people thinking and praying is far stronger and has far more power than one person shouting. It doesn't feel that way a lot of the time, though, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteMabye we can be encouraged at what peopel do behind the shouting. When a particular woman is in need, Hern and Crutcher will set aside their differences and both will help her. (Though they don't really work together. Crutcher refers the woman to the appropriate lawyer and provides the lawyer with resources and assistance, Hern provides expert analysis for a fee. But each knows the other is involved and that doesn't stop them.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not cynical enough to think Hern does it entirely for the money. (Last I heard he charged $5,000 to review a case and write up whether or not he thought it fell short of the standard of care. And for all the weight his opinion carries, worth every penny. I'm sure that the fees for showing up in court and testfying are astronomical.) Hern takes too much flac from his friends to be doing it just for a bit of extra cash. He's already rich. He doens't need the money enough for it to be worth how they attack him. If you heard the NAF tapes, you'd feel so sorry for him. It can't be easy to have people come at you like that, shut you down, and treat you like a traitor.
I thought it was an excellent story that every single prochoice person should be reading. Because we have to stop only thinking it is young confused teens that can't make it. Because we need to provide BETTER then atquate consoling. And we donno what was happening at her clinic for all we know they were handling a despret and unusual case and this woman slip thru the cracks IDK, but we should be talking about it. Of all the things a person should feel when leaving an abortion clinc....... abandoned and alone shouldn't be one of them yet I hear that part of the story over and over and over again.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that gets me, achromic, is that there are people in the abortion lobby that point to women like Shawn and say words to the effect of, "See how distraught she was? People should just leave her alone!"
ReplyDeleteThat was why she was so distraught!Because she was so alone! People should have been rallying around her!
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to encourage you that even though that baby does not have a life on earth, he does have one in heaven. I believe that God plans every life and that baby's life was in God's plans. Even though you did choose to have an abortion, he is still alive in gods arms.