This past Saturday morning, we watched a mother, a woman about my age, go out to the Planned Parenthood escort, so that her daughter would not be distracted by the people across from the parking lot, while she walked into the center. The people who consisted of counselors from the Waterleaf crisis pregnancy center, our high school girls standing there holding signs like "Stop Abortion Now" and "Planned Parenthood Lies" and "Planned Parenthood Kills Babies".
So the escort, in a florescent vest, like you would see on a construction worker, walked over a little closer to where the mother parked. The girl then walked behind them by a few yards as they made their way into the center. I didn't see her face, but I know she must have been young, because she was wearing a pink hoodie and pink sweat pants. I think that color pink goes into hiding when a girl becomes a woman, until she is preparing for a baby girl.
The question in my mind was, "Does that girl have a choice?"
I wondered if her Mom and the Planned Parenthood telemarketing team and on-site counselors explain the choices. A choice of giving life to a baby, and perhaps giving the child up for adoption to a couple that will love and care generously for the child, or putting the baby to death, and dealing with the grief of that decision for many years into the future, until the Lord would forgive and heal her. Or what I hope I would do if one of my daughters gets pregnant before marriage . . . offer to adopt and raise the baby as my own, or as her own, but in my home with as much secrecy and privacy as my daughter needs.
How strong would any of us have been if our mother, who loved and cared for us were telling us things like, "This is the best way. You should have a child when you are older, when you are married, when you can afford to give that child a good life. It won't take long, and no one needs to know."
We know Planned Parenthood says things like, "It is an emotional decision, but know that 1 in 3 women has had an abortion." I got this from a youtube Planned Parenthood video on surgical abortion.
Where do they get that statistic? Do they take the total number of aborted babies, and do we even have accurate data on that, and then divide it by the population of women in the world? Do we have that...even if we calculate it just for the U.S.A., do we know how many aborted children there are to divide it? I just don't think that number is accurate, considering that there is actually a market for aborted baby parts (Korean "vitality pills", some food manufacturers testing, stem cell research).
Maybe if they included women that used birth control that acts as an abortificient as the third method of preventing a pregnancy by weakening the endometrium so a fertilized egg cannot implant, or those that have used IUDs that do the same thing. Somehow I have hard time believing that 1 in 3 women in the U.S. have had a surgical abortion. Maybe 1 in 10 have an abortion . . . which is still high, or maybe 1 in 20 have multiple abortions?
One of the adults that came last month came again this month. She is the one that had an abortion as a young woman, and had spoken in the chapel to the High School kids. She brought her grandchild, a 6 year old, 1st grader with her. One of the people we met was an organizer for "I Regret My Abortion". At her request, she gave a button to this Grandma. I was curious how the woman would handle it when her granddaughter saw the button. I didn't have to wonder for long.
"Grandma, why are you wearing that button?"
"Well, when I was a young woman, 48 years ago, I was pregnant and I went into a place like this. There wasn't anyone outside telling me that what was inside me was a baby. I had an abortion."
The little girl didn't say, "Oh, Grandma! How could you?" or anything similar. She didn't seem shocked at all. Instead she ran right back beside the other girls and picked up her Stop Sign again. She made the connection that it might have helped her grandma not to have the abortion if she would have seen someone letting her know it was a baby inside her, and that there were people who could help her.
It was an amazing thing to see. I walked this little girl over to the Dominick's so we could both use the bathroom. I have a son the same age, and I think I know when they are happy or sad or in between. She was fine. She didn't seem sad or upset about the news from her Grandma.
I told the Grandma afterward, how brave I thought she was. That I thought it was easier to tell strangers, high school kids she didn't know, than to tell her own Grand-daughter. She said she had never talked about it publicly before talking in the high school chapel the previous month.
It turns out both the little girl and the Grandma have had quite a bit of suffering in their lives. The Grandma grew up in two different Catholic orphanages in the northern suburbs of Chicago with her 4 siblings. At one point her birth mother had planned their murder by drowning in her car trunk. The mother had a fifth child that was temporarily in the orphanage with them, but was taken to live with the mother after she married the father of the child. The now Grandma explained that was hard for her and the others that remained orphans, to know that they were not to have a home, motherly love, and good food to eat that their youngest brother would have.
The little girl was taken away from her birth mother. In a few months she will be officially adopted by the Grandma and Grandpa. I didn't pry to find out the history, but for some reason DCFS has already granted the child a college scholarship. I think I will pray the "
Healing Your Family Tree" prayer for them.
I am sadder now writing this than I was sitting in the car hearing her story. Part of it is that I just read this
testimony from another woman that had two abortions. She is a famous, and gifted blogger who is faithful Catholic and also very funny. This post isn't funny. It is courageous, and it is sad. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Please do whatever you are inspired to do. You can sense the pain she has endured because of those two abortions. Even though God will bring good from her witness, don't you just want to spread this story to others both to save the lives of the children, and also so they don't have the same grief to endure?
There is so much suffering, and sadness in this fallen world. Still we have the gift of faith, and the confidence that we are loved. We have the
Gifts of the Holy Spirit that we can witness to God's steadfast love and kindness. We can make a difference whether we are the repentent and forgiven sinner, or the innocent little kid, that has been both a victim and now the recipient of love from one that knows what it is like when your Mom doesn't act like a Mom should act.
Life is really intense and beautiful when you get the opportunity to interact with others grasped by Christ, and acting to support his causes. One of the arguments someone used with me as to why abortion on demand isn't terrible is that it isn't a great loss to be denied a life where the mom doesn't want you or love you.
I think this little girl and her Grandma are evidence against that. I want to say it is a lack of faith in the love of God to think that God isn't there in the midst of the little girl in the orphanage who does know the love of her siblings, and the nuns caring for and teaching her, and the experience of accepting Jesus as her Savior as an adult, and coming to know the faithful love of a husband. Some would say that it would have been better if she would have been aborted than to have been born to a woman that would plot drowning her and her siblings in the trunk of her car. But,
she would say no. She would testify that God has always cared for her and always shown her love and is strengthening her voice now to help persuade others not to commit the sin of abortion.
The little girl now has a Grandma and a Grandpa, gets to go to a great school, has great friends and birthday parties. It is better that she lived. God has acted to show her His great love through her Grandma and Grandpa, her teachers and friends.
Lord God, please bless all the women I wrote about in this post from the youngest little girl, to the high schoolers that came out to witness to your love and truth, to the adults praying and witnessing, some from experience. Please bless and heal them. Please change the hearts and minds of all that work to provide abortion services on demand. Please convict them of the deliberate killing of innocents and give them the grace of repentance and conversion to turn to you and then in reparation to work to end this practice in our country and around the world.
Mary, our Mother, and the mother of these unborn and defenseless little ones, please pray with us that God's grace would change the hearts and minds in this country and around the world to stop this slaughter, and end the suffering of the women that are told it is OK, and then find out afterward, it isn't OK. The pain tells them it is not OK.
If you are a girl that happened to find this post and you are pregnant, please know there are crisis pregnancy centers that can help you. All you need is an internet connection and a phone for a start. Here is a site that has links to local help lines and crisis pregnancy centers:
http://www.lifecall.org/ May God comfort, bless and strengthen you. He loves you and your unborn child more than you can fathom!
I did a quick search and here are some actual words from girls forced to have abortions by their mothers: http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_ess1.htm
http://generationsforlife.org/2006/0809/choice-whose-choice/
http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Had-An-Abortion/1516282
Quote from the last one, "The biggest mistake in my life wasn't getting pregnant. The biggest mistake in my life was ending my pregnancy."
