// March 2nd, 1992 // No Comments » // life the universe and everything
My brief career as a mother began somethyme at the end of January 1992. Unplanned, the pregnancy came to two people who both want children, but are in school and are planning to complete their educations before starting a family. It was confirmed February 22 at Akron Pregnancy Service center. I was six-weeks pregnant. I was excited at the thought of becoming a mother. When I told my boyfriend of almost 4 years, Joe, he hugged me. That night I told the being inside of me that I loved it. I did.
I thought about my life and the requirements that motherhood would bring. I thought of the requirements that I have to myself about school. Many other thoughts for and against all of the possibilities swept through my mind. Changes, options, dreams, hopes, aspirations, opportunities, responsibilities and problems. I talked with counselors. Crisis pregnancy consolers, pre-natal doctors, nutritionists, adoption consolers, abortion consolers, and family planning personnel.
They explained my options and the decisions that I would need to make. I wanted to be a mother, but I had not planned on it being right now. I had to evaluate my life as it presently is and the life that I wanted to lead in the future. How did I see my life if a baby was in the picture. Could I alter my life in the next seven months to become that the mother I wanted to be.
Joe and I mulled over the facts both for and against having the child. We both believe that life begins with conception, but we also see that a child brought into a dysfunctional or negative situation can emotionally, mentally and spiritually impair or kill not just the child, but the lives and minds of all involved. Is it better to end the life of an unborn child and then prepare yourselves to accept that gift later or chance unexpectedly ruining 3 human lives when the parents are not completely sure about their decision to have a child. I didn’t know?
Pro-choice people often said that what was inside me was not alive. They argued that if I removed it from the sanctity of my body, it would die. I explained that my body is an environment for the developing fetus. I told them that every being needs a special environment to be able to live. If removed from that environment it will die. If a human was placed under water and they died, would it be correct then to say that they never had life to begin with? No, they were just removed from an environment that they were capable of living in. The same with my baby. If left uninterrupted, this being would become a human. They didn’t argue with me. I saw their point and they saw mine.
Pro-life people showed me how fulfilling it would be to have my child. They emphasized that I was educated enough to get a job and work. I asked about my education. They said that I could continue my education at a reduced cost because I would then have a dependent child and financial aid and welfare would be available for me. They gave me information on cost-free maternity clothes, baby food, parenting classes and welfare forms. They told me that being pregnant was now a fact and was something that I must adjust my life to.
Pro-adoption people gave me the solution of giving birth to my baby, turning it over to a family that I would help select, and returning to life. I would get satisfaction knowing that my child would be raised in a loving environment by a family that could better provide for the child than me. I asked them for a statistic of how many college aged women chose to give their babies up and after carrying the baby to term, chose to keep it. She said she didn’t have that statistic. We both knew that it must be pretty high.
After many tears, bouts of confusion, and feelings of being completely overwhelmed, Joe and I decided on terminating our pregnancy and extinguishing the life that we had created. More tears and confusion. Was this the right choice? We both wanted this child. We wanted to have it and love it and make our lives as perfect as possible. But we are also realistic. We know of utopian dreams and the pain that not examining all the facts can bring.
We talked endlessly. We love each other. We love our child and all the children we will ever create. We want the best for all of us. Ultimately we realized that we are not properly equipped to become a family yet. It was hard coming to that decision. We weren’t sure it was right. We didn’t know if we could go through with it. We didn’t know if we could support each other as a family.
We role-played different scenarios. Seven months from now. Two years from now. Ten years. Thirty five years. We tried to see our choice in each of these thyme frames. Our loves, our ambitions, our frustrations. Everything. Ultimately we decided to have an abortion and to adjust our lives to the realization that we both want to have kids.
To prepare our lives so that we will be able to have them, not as an accident, but as a loving planned choice.
My brief career as a mother ended March 6, 1992 at 11:53 am. Eight weeks after it began. My first child lie in fragments of it’s 1 inch body, blood, and the system that it has used to grow life in, at the bottom of a vacuum suction jar at the Akron Women’s Clinic. We paid $325 to extinguish the life of something that we loved. Something
that we created. Why? Many reasons, all of them very confusing. All very difficult to understand. Even if it was our choice.
Why did we choose to about our first child? Why, when we felt that we loved the tiny being inside my body, did we choose to violently end its life? I can’t tell you because I don’t know. I didn’t want to have an abortion. But I knew that there was only a very small chance that I could care for that child the way I want to and it deserves to be cared for. I also knew that by carrying the baby to term there was also a very slim chance of me giving it up when I knew that I could keep it. So the event was canceled. Or perhaps postponed is a better word. Postponed until Joe and I finish making preparations to properly receive the miraculous gift of having a child.
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