Choose Life Was the Choice
Since January is known as Sanctity of Life Month I thought I'd share a real life struggle with the abortion issue with you. While much has been blogged here on JU on the abortion issue, it's much more personal when you hear the struggle in action.
A Transformation from Pro-Abortion to Pro-Life
by Wendy Cloyd, assistant editor
God has a way of showing even the hard-hearted why protecting life in the womb shows respect for all of life.
I'm not exactly sure when I realized that I was pro-life. It definitely wasn't in college when I proudly repeated the "woman's right to choose" rhetoric I'd heard all of my life. I was not a Christian and tried with all my might to be committed to the concept of situational ethics — the idea that each person and each situation is unique in determining what is right and wrong. And I would have emphatically debated that with you if you'd asked.
The first inkling that I didn't believe my own speechifying came in the instant I found out I was pregnant. I was in the perfect position to put my life-long belief system into action. I was not married and not even in a stable relationship. I had just begun my career and had no plans to have children. I wasn't ready to be a mother. But try as I might, I couldn't bring myself to end the tiny life growing inside me.
Mind you, I still would have told you that it was certainly okay for others to make that kind of choice. But for me, it wasn't the right choice to have an abortion. It depends on the person and the situation, right?
Six weeks after my daughter was born, I returned to the women's clinic for a check-up. As I sat in the lobby waiting to be called, I had a sudden realization. As I sat there, overwhelmed with the miracle of my beautiful baby girl, other women in the waiting room were there for a much different reason. I watched one scared teenage girl sit at a table with a staff member. The hushed tones and sadness that permeated the conversation clued me in to its content. She was receiving abortion counseling.
Suddenly I felt like I was falling into an abyss. I looked around the room and realized the same doctors that delivered my baby helped others to kill theirs. I felt nauseous. I began to weep. I held my daughter close. Something was beginning to chip away at my lifelong belief that killing a preborn baby was okay.
Move ahead a few years to a room at my pediatrician's office. I was now married to my daughter's father and pregnant with my fourth child. My toddler son and his two older sisters were with me in the room — the doctor was about to give me some difficult news. The three beautiful children at my feet all had a genetic condition called Fragile X syndrome. There was a 50-50 chance the child I was carrying would also receive the gene that causes Fragile X.
The next moment became a defining one. The doctor — after giving me the statistic — asked if I'd like to consider my options with this pregnancy. I had a rough road ahead with the three I already had, she told me. The chances were very good that I'd have another Fragile X child. She didn't say abortion, but that's what she meant. And again that sinking feeling washed over me. What that doctor was saying to me — whether she meant to or not — was "You don't want to have another child like the ones you already have, do you?"
I was numb. I told her I was keeping the baby. I cried in the car all the way home and hugged my children the rest of the day.
That day I knew exactly why abortion devalues children. If the life growing inside a womb is optional, then it is nothing special to have a baby. If it is nothing special to have a baby, then what makes them anything special as they grow to toddlers, to teens, to adults?
I knew, with every fiber of my being, why it was never right to kill a preborn baby.
Now I can't say that my life experience is the only reason for my change of heart. You see, I did become a Christian just before I found out that I was pregnant with my first child. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit undoubtedly had an influence.
But as God so tenderly does, He showed me why His is the right way.
My second son was born months later — without Fragile X.
He is now seven and adds to our family in such a special way. Just the other day he told me that he loves having an older brother who is mentally impaired and autistic because he is so much fun. He told me we have the best family in the world.
And we do.
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