Today, Mother's Day, is a sad time to remember all the women who were mothers and lost their children. Accident, sickness, war - the world is full of grieving in many women's hearts because of circumstances out of their control. It is even more tragic to think about the mothers who are grieving because they have killed their own children. Through ignorance, fear and selfishness, women are being supported in their decisions to choose their own lives over the lives of their children, to the point of death. These women need to be remembered also, with love, because the deep trauma to their hearts and souls is more than we can even imagine.
Unfortunately there are people out there who not only embrace this selfish murder, but are so ignorant as to misrepresent it; painting a pretty white-picket-fence picture of a couple who were "saved" from the terrible prospect of raising the child they brought into this world. They embrace a decision to value finance and culture comfort over human life. Perhaps it is a terrible world to be raised in, full of suffering and pain. But who we are to judge what a persons life will be? I for one am grateful to be alive. And if my mother, or anyone, decides that I am too much of an inconvenience, I will certainly fight for my life. The innocents, the unborn children, they need us to fight for theirs.
I copied (below) an article in the Chronicle Herald that was published today. It is about a women and a man and a baby who wasn't born, but there is little truth in it beyond the selfishness it portrays.
Have a read, and leave a comment. I added a beautiful excerpt of a speech by Mother Theresa after.
And to my mom: I love you. Thank you, for the sacrifices you made that I could live. I pray that I am able to be as loving and giving someday to my children, as you have done for me. You have set an example of faith and beauty in this world, may we all have to grace to do the same.
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Original Article: http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/95186-lowe-a-day-to-be-thankful-for-abortion-access
My friend, Linda, might sleep in this Sunday. Maybe garden. Maybe run. She’ll fritter away the day in just the way she wants.
Linda won’t be ticking off her Mother’s Day blessings surrounded by the
contented chaos of children.
She’ll be happy, instead, that she had an abortion in 2007. She’ll be
celebrating Mother’s Day with the knowledge that she’s not a mom and, given her
druthers, never will be.
And I’ll be happy, too, eating burnt toast and wet eggs and receiving
hand-drawn cards and knowing this: access to safe abortion makes Mother’s Day
all the more special.
“It was the right choice,” Linda says. “It was, in no way, the wrong
choice.”
Linda had been married for a little less than a year when her birth control
failed. She and her husband were carrying debt; he is an entrepreneur who is
away a lot; she’s the primary earner. They have no family in town.
“And more than that,” she says, “I have always been ambivalent (about having
kids.)”
Once she pieced together the missing period, weird-feeling body and mood
swings, she peed on a stick, swallowed the meaning of the two little lines
staring up at her and shuffled downstairs to deliver the news to her husband.
“The look on his face was not joy,” she says, “but devastation and
confusion. And I realized it mirrored what I felt. That it was not right. Not
for us, not for me, not for him.”
Canada’s abortion laws were struck down two decades ago, but there remain
perennial challenges to accessing the procedure, from Conservative backbenchers
putting forward pie-in-the sky anti-choice private member’s motions to last
month’s pre-emptive cancellation of abortions at Capital Health because of the
anticipated strike.
Ninety per cent of Nova Scotia women who receive abortions receive them in
Halifax. Many travel. On Prince Edward Island, there’s no access to abortion
whatsoever. It shouldn’t be this difficult to end an unwanted pregnancy.
Linda was nervous about how her physician might respond to a request for an
abortion referral.
“Turns out, my doctor is one of three in Nova Scotia who performs abortions.
So, it was easy. I didn’t have to struggle at all. She was so helpful and compassionate.”
Four weeks later, it was a merciful memory.
“The next day, I swung my legs out of bed,” she says. “For the first time in
weeks I just felt free.”
Linda hasn’t told many people about her abortion. And that’s why Linda isn’t
her real name in this column.
“No one talks about this,” she says. “There are so many abortion stories.
And they are not what people think they are. It’s not just sluts who aren’t
using birth control, which is the prevailing attitude. That is not the
reality.”
The couple has never second-guessed their choice. Linda laughs that when she
and her husband visit friends with kids, they quietly high-five on the way out
the door.
“I didn’t have a moment of regret,” she says. “I didn’t have a moment of
‘what might have been.’ ”
What might have been, after all, is a fool’s chase. So let’s talk about what
is. Let’s talk about Mother’s Day, why don’t we? Because if there’s any day to
be thankful for abortion access, that’s the one. That’s what I’ll think about
when I’m woken way too early by wiggling weasels crawling on the bed to wish me
a Happy Mother’s Day.
And when Linda wakes, late?
“I will spend a few moments acknowledging that the choice my husband and I
made was without question,” she says, “the right one for us.”
Lezlie Lowe is a freelance writer in Halifax. Follow her
on Twitter @lezlielowe.
About the Author
I’m going to guess that this journalist has never actually
spoken to a woman who has gone through the heart-wrenching, soul shattering
realization that she has killed her child. Even for the people who dis-illusion
themselves that it is “okay”, it is never “easy”.
I found a talk by Mother Theresa, on abortion. Here is the link:
http://www.priestsforlife.org/brochures/mtspeech.html
and an excerpt. Her words are so true. Read/listen. She will touch your heart.
Speech of Mother Teresa of Calcutta to the National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, DC, February 3, 1994
(An excerpt)
...
And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.
By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems.
And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.
Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.
Many people are very, very concerned with the children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about all the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions who are being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today - abortion which brings people to such blindness.
And for this I appeal in India and I appeal everywhere - "Let us bring the child back." The child is God's gift to the family. Each child is created in the special image and likeness of God for greater things - to love and to be loved. In this year of the family we must bring the child back to the center of our care and concern. This is the only way that our world can survive because our children are the only hope for the future. As older people are called to God, only their children can take their places.
But what does God say to us? He says: "Even if a mother could forget her child, I will not forget you. I have carved you in the palm of my hand." We are carved in the palm of His hand; that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God from conception and is called by God to love and to be loved, not only now in this life, but forever. God can never forget us.
