A Survivor's Take on Abortion

Three separate influences this weekend set me to thinking about abortion. First, my gaze was riveted yesterday to a billboard on Franklin Avenue entreating every passerby to fast and pray (beginning Ash Wednesday) for the end to abortion. Next, Jo and I watched an interview with Bill Donahue of the Catholic League concerning the movie Philomena (which I've yet to see), and it's negative view of both adoption and the Catholic Church. Finally, I read this morning a quote by my favorite author, Frederick Buechner, on the subject, in which he  pushes us to be wider in our perspective. While I can appreciate anyone's honest struggle with abortion, I must confess a personal vested interest in every human outcome of the debate. I was born to an unwed mother in 1960 and would have had a damning designation on my birth certificate were it not for the tireless efforts of Edna Gladney on behalf of children like me some twenty years before. As bad as it would have been to have a prejudiced label on my birth certificate, the good news is that I had a birth certificate. The even better news is that my birth mother had the courage to enter the Sellers Baptist Home in New Orleans and gift me to Henry and Lois, a couple with hearts large enough to allow a child to flourish in the arms of great nourishing love.  I would never denigrate that poor young woman's angst over yielding her child, and, in fact, attempt consciously to live in such a way as to validate the outcome of her own soul debate. Two things get lost in the debate over choice versus life: the enduring turmoil of the mother-in-waiting and the enduring destiny of the child-in-waiting. Buechner helps at this point:

"And yet, and yet. Who knows what treasure life may hold for even such children as those, or what treasures even such children as those may grow up to become? To bear a child even under the best of circumstances, or to abort a child even under the worst — the risks are hair-raising either way and the results incalculable."- Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

For those who uphold the individual's choice as superior to the unborn child, you will, no doubt, abhor my opposition to your position.  For those who vilify the individual in support of a moral dilemma, you must excuse my sensitivity to the turmoil of the woman.  The bottom-line is this: I write not on this critical issue as a physician or a scientist or a theologian or a liberal or a conservative; I speak as a survivor.