“It’s your right to choose! It’s only a group of cells. It is not a person!”
A little over a year ago, I would have bought into these statements. If I got pregnant, and did not want the baby, sure I would have had an abortion! After all I did not think it was a life.
I could not see the connection between my baby cousin and a fetus in the womb. The fetus in the womb is something intangible. If cannot speak for itself and tell me what it wants.
Ah, how convenient. It is growing and developing on its own, yet is too tiny to articulate. It is too tiny to scream “I want to live” – as I would surely do, if somebody tried to end my life, did this notion give me the okay to destroy the life created within me? The truth gradually began to reveal itself to me. I gained a respect for the newly conceived human life.
The lies and misconceptions I had been buried in began to erode. My new philosophy became: “I would personally never have an abortion, however, who am I to impose my views on another person?”
A girlfriend of mine found out she was pregnant. The conception was the product of a one-night stand. She was beautiful, bright, young and still had graduate school ahead of her. She had an abortion.
Afterwards, she felt relief. She could now go on with her life as if that terrible mistake had never happened. Right? – Wrong.
To my surprise, my girlfriend became extremely depressed. She became fixated on the growing life that was part of her. This life had depended on mommy to be sustained and to develop. Just as an infant depends on parents to be fed and supervised. She knew she was not “supposed” to feel guilty. She was told, “It’s just like having your tonsils out.” But tonsils do not cling to you when they need warmth, or cry when they are hungry.
Lingering worries
My girlfriend’s guilt and depression overpowered her very essence and shaped the person she was. She had to face everyday life with the gnawing reality that she had abandoned her precious child.
I felt every last trace of the lies I had been submerged under wash clean away. ‘Realities rushed through me like waves of frantic ocean: What about post-abortion syndrome? What about the millions of families who would give anything to adopt a child? What about the breast cancer link to abortion? What gives us a right to put an end to an innocent life? Abortion truly does stop a beating heart… I could no longer live my life the same way now, knowing millions of women were having abortions without seeing the truth.
“What gives me the right,” you ask. I have the right to penetrate the distortion of truth the abortion industry is entombing us in. Abortionists make money through abortions, not through adoptions. Should their word be totally trusted? If the world has a right to preach the “benefits” of having an abortion, I feel I have the right to tell people all they are risking through terminating a conceived life.
What do I have to gain? I’ll tell you what I have to gain, the self-satisfaction of knowing that I may be helping women to avoid the trauma my girlfriend experienced.
I was once “on the other side.” I know the life of self-deception and denial pro-choicers are leading.
All I ask is that you take a good look at what you believe. Say to yourself, “Is what I believe a product of the truth? Do I really want to live in a world with so little respect for life?” If you examine these questions genuinely, I guarantee you will find the right answer.
(Kerr-Lee Mullan is in a joint Honor B.A. program in English and Religious Studies at King’s College. This is the first in a series of semi-regular young adult pro-life columns to appear in The Interim.)
