Abortion. Let’s talk about it.

I am stranded somewhere between being pro-choice and pro-life. This is a tenuous position to be in, but there I am.

I had two unplanned pregnancies that ended in the light of my life and the breath in my prayers being born. The first pregnancy showed my husband being laid off from his job a little bit in, us having to scramble to find somewhere to live and some way to support ourselves. I won’t go into extreme detail as this is not a personal blog, but suffice it to say that we were strapped for cash, living hand to mouth, and bad off. Very bad off. The second pregnancy we were still in a transitory position when it came to housing. The husband was again without consistent work. Things were still hand to mouth (and still are). So when I see a statistic that says that over 90% of women who had abortions ascribed failure to provide for a child/pay for a pregnancy as their primary reason to abort, I sympathize.

It is terrifying to bring a child into this world, even more so when one asks “where is my next meal coming from” and “how much are diapers again?” Now add into that the physical and emotional rigors of childbearing, instability in intimate relationships- and what do you have? A cocktail for disaster. Any time I am asked I will be frank about the physical symptoms of pregnancy, the strain it puts on the father of the child as well as the mother, the fact that labor and delivery while not the end of the world are not easy. There is an insurmountable psychological impact to pregnancy and childbirth that MUST be observed.

That is why any time I hear someone say, “why can’t the woman just put the baby up for adoption” I cringe. Not to mention that women who are not Caucasian will have a harder time getting parents for their child, and women who have done drugs or drank alcohol before they were aware they were pregnant will also have a harder time finding a family for their child. Ask a poor black woman with no intimate family to afford her who innocently drank alcohol a few times before realizing she was pregnant to just “have the baby and give it up.” Have it? With whom footing the bills? And to whom shall she give it? The overburdened foster system? What if the baby has permanent defects from the alcohol? She’s got no way to know.

When I found out I was pregnant with my son my first thought was, “dear God just undo this.” I was in no emotional or economic shape to give birth to and take care of a child. I had no way to know if we’d have insurance to pay for my care, and we were still in the process of paying off our uninsured delivery of our first child. Have another baby? In my state? With the state of jobs in our area? With no home to live in? With no money to buy healthy food to eat?

There was no way that I would abort. I knew from the second I suspected a pregnancy that I loved this child- but part of the reason I DIDN’T want my child was my love for him. I didn’t want him brought into the kind of life we were struggling through.

And that is why I am pro-choice. Because unless YOU, YOU YOURSELF are willing to take a woman’s child into your own home and raise it yourself, you’ve no right to make that decision for her. Is the unborn child a real life, imbued with soul and breath? That is another thing to be argued about. But consider embryos that implant into a woman’s fallopian tubes. Those are aborted without a second thought, because there is no hope of them being viable. If the woman carries them past the first trimester she will die of internal bleeding. What about the amount of miscarriages that happen? Were all of those sacred life? And if so, why would God allow a God-fearing couple who desperately wants that child to endure such pain?

These are questions we MUST ask ourselves if we enter into the abortion debate. But the greatest question of all we must ask is whom shall we love? The unborn, or the struggling mother? Whom must we embrace? The unreachable, or she who stands outside our door? Whom must we pray for in whispers and moans? Those who are with Father God, or those who must remain on this planet, within our reach?

Ask yourself that. And ask yourself if you were with her, at her side, holding her hand, wiping her tears, and she simply could not bear the thought of bringing her child into this world of pain and distress- would you still judge?

Or would you land with me, somewhere in the gray land between choice and life, choosing to embrace the life that we can see and touch and bear with.