{"id":1252,"date":"2007-07-14T16:38:27","date_gmt":"2007-07-14T16:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/already-but-not-yet.html"},"modified":"2007-07-14T16:38:27","modified_gmt":"2007-07-14T16:38:27","slug":"already-but-not-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/already-but-not-yet.html","title":{"rendered":"Already but not yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the NYTimes: <\/em>A woman’s account of her decision to not abort. Context: she and her husband had <\/a>just moved to Mexico to pursue free-spirited writing careers. She got pregnant. No way, she thought at first. But then:<\/p>\n

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<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\n

The more he spoke, the more I saw babies. Mexico, for me, was suddenly a country of babies \u2014 chubby-cheeked, squirmy babies cradled in fathers\u2019 arms, swaddled in enormous blankets, or toddling along behind their siblings. In Morelia, the capital of Michoac\u00e1n, people take their children everywhere, to concerts and restaurants and on Sunday evening strolls through city plazas. Watching them now made it seem so natural to start a family of our own.<\/p>\n

The next day, morning sickness overtook me with a vengeance, and my giddy idealism of the previous day evaporated. David was right: We couldn\u2019t have this baby. We were in no way prepared to do this now, or here. What kind of mother would I be if I couldn\u2019t even promise our child basic necessities like a home, good health care or financial security?<\/p>\n

Despondent and ill, I called an abortion clinic in Los Angeles, where my sister lived, and booked an appointment. The woman dispassionately asked me my age \u2014 29. How many previous pregnancies? None. <\/p>\n

I told her I was living in a country where abortion was illegal. If I were to have complications upon my return, I asked, might a doctor suspect I\u2019d had an abortion in Mexico and report me to the police? I imagined having to call the American Embassy and present abortion clinic receipts to Mexican authorities to plead my case. <\/p>\n

She paused and her voice became kinder: \u201cTell them you had a miscarriage. No doctor will be able to tell the difference.\u201d <\/p>\n

I hung up and sobbed. David tried to console me, but I was furious at him. Why had we come here anyway? Our reasons all felt so vague and meaningless. And why wasn\u2019t he as tortured by this decision as I was?<\/p>\n

We had spent months planning our move, and I knew David wanted it more than anything. If I insisted on having the baby and heading home, I feared he would resent me, or worse, resent our baby. But if I went through with the abortion because he wanted it, I would certainly resent him. Or, we could spend six months here and decide we didn\u2019t like Mexico and simply go home. Would this brief experiment have been worth not keeping our baby?<\/p>\n

I turned to the Internet, hoping to find some clarity. Instead I found anti-abortion Web sites that terrified me with images of dead fetuses and stories of women scarred for life. The opposing sites, which listed statistics of women who had thrived postabortion and detailed the political fight to keep access available, were not much better. I was looking for direction and found the political-speak meaningless and unhelpful.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As I said, thank God for her baby’s life and for the decision to let the baby live. What is always, consistently and invariably missing from this kind of reflections is any kind of moral sensibility. There is no essential understanding of right or wrong expressed (although it’s hard to believe it’s not felt at some level) – it is all about what is right for us, right now, in our lives. The baby’s life literally has no inherent value. There is no admitting of what "not having the baby" actually means in real life, in real time, in real actions. <\/p>\n

This is the missing piece, this is the bridge that those committed have to cross – the rhetorical work that abortion advocates have done over the past four decades has worked and worked well. Undoing that work and doing our own is the task – of example, of teaching, of love.<\/p>\n

And, even though some don’t like to hear it – of law as well. The law speaks loudly, and right now we know exactly what it says. That matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the NYTimes: A woman’s account of her decision to not abort. Context: she and her husband had just moved to Mexico to pursue free-spirited writing careers. She got pregnant. No way, she thought at first. 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