It was the early 1980’s. I was mid 20’s and starting a career and a life. I was in a committed relationship with the man who would become my husband and father my two beautiful daughters. We were using birth control, but birth control is not 100%. But I knew that I would end up being as abusive to a child as my mother was to me. She was borderline personality disorder–nothing borderline about the full-blown crazy that I grew up with.
The weekly litany of “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I should save the world and kill us both.” was still alive in my head. I knew that I would pass along that resentment because I had not yet become my own person. I had also not faced and worked through the child sexual abuse that ran in my mom’s family. When I was not yet my own person, how could I be a good parent?
Choosing not to accidentally bring a child into this world when, having never had a parent, I had no idea what it meant to be a parent, was the most adult decision of my life. I have never regretted it.
I am a deeply devout Christian. My faith has never been at odds with this decision because children deserve to be loved and adored. They do not choose to be born. We call them into being. If we are not prepared to do everything in our power to support them, and give them our best selves, then it is a sin against them to call them into being. Children deserve better than to be accidents. children deserve to be chosen, anticipated and adored. Children deserve a life, not just a birth.
If you can’t give them that, then give them back to God. It is the most loving gift you can give them.
If all children were intended and not spawned, desired and not tolerated, adored and not endured then this what sort of world would we live in? How much confusion, angst and anger could never exist if all of us grew up loved and affirmed?
I dream of a world where every conception is chosen and anticipated. Where children have basic human rights to quality food, education, health care and appropriate adult supervision. But as long as the state uses children as weapons to control women, abortion will be a gift to future generations. Children do not deserve to be used as weapons.
