A lot of my regular reads are discussing abortion right now. I know where I stand (abortion is always wrong), but I find it enlightening and somewhat brain-frying to read blogs of pro-abortion folks. I like to understand their perspective and reasonings, though.
Until today I had forgotten one aspect of how deeply abortion could have affected my life, and I never would have known the difference.
My daughters are adopted from foster care. Both entered our home as foster children within a week of their births. When we finally adopted JuneBug, we got a ream of paper detailing every aspect of the case, including her mother’s history. Turns out Bug was her third child and the third removed from her for various reasons. She had aborted several other children. What caused her to not abort Bug? What circumstances were different in her life that led her to make a different choice at that time? Would things have been easier for her if she had chosen abortion? In the short run, yes. She wouldn’t have endured the physical difficulties of pregnancy, the heartache of delivering and having the baby taken away, the depression and sense of failure from trying to work the rehabilitation plan to bring the baby home, spending a heart-rending one hour per week with the baby, weeping but trying to love and enjoy the baby during that brief time, then eventually trying to forget, trying not to remember the sweetness of seven pounds of baby girl in her arms, the baby she couldn’t or wouldn’t get back. With abortion, the potential child is gone, permanently erased from the earth. With pregnancy, delivery and (closed) adoption, the child is sent out into the world and you never know what happens to him or her. The unknown life can be harder on the mother than the known death.
But does that really justify killing a child to ease your mind?
I don’t know any of her personal details, and likely never will, but I am eternally grateful for her choice, her constant choice for nine months, to not abort her baby. Not because I selfishly love that baby, who is now my three year old daughter, although I do. But because I see the beautiful child, the creative, musical, nurturing, sensitive, incredible child before me who otherwise would be long discarded. When I consider her role in our family, in our hearts and on this planet, and then I think about her just flat-out not existing, not being there, never being given the chance to even develop a personality, it’s enough to make me struggle to breathe again. Sure, technically she wouldn’t know the difference. Honestly, we wouldn’t know the difference either, because she never would have entered our lives.
But I am profoundly grateful that she is. And by extension I will evermore be profoundly grateful to her mother for choosing to let her be.
Posted on September 21st, 2007 by Dove
Filed under: Fostering/Adoption, Kids
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