{"id":6482,"date":"2006-08-17T08:47:39","date_gmt":"2006-08-17T08:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/i-wasnt-aborted.html"},"modified":"2006-08-17T08:47:39","modified_gmt":"2006-08-17T08:47:39","slug":"i-wasnt-aborted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/i-wasnt-aborted.html","title":{"rendered":"“i wasn’t aborted”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A powerful piece from today’s WSJ – a woman of Russian parents responds to Ms. Magazine’s request that women proudly declare their value-neutral abortions.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Like most Soviet-era fetuses conceived in Russia by couples who were already parents, I was scheduled for abortion as a matter of course. In a society where abortion was the only form of birth control, it wasn’t uncommon to meet women who had double-digit abortion counts. Often a couple would schedule the appointment before they even stopped to remember that they wanted a second child. <\/p>\n

My husband, also a second-born, and I were lucky to have been two such afterthoughts, each brought into the world thanks to one of two parents’ change of heart. (Actually it was Anya Isaakovna, my mother’s usual at the public clinic, who sensed a tinge of reservation and kicked her out.) Coincidentally, both my husband and I were to be the third abortions, each of us having had two siblings who weren’t so lucky, which unfortunately was lucky for us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing, and then clip this out as a quotable quote:<\/p>\n

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We don’t have a crystal ball, but there’s someone who does, and there is a reason for every stork He sends along. I am religiously illiterate, but I have come to understand on the most visceral level why pregnancies are called "blessings"–even if, as often as not, the blessing comes in disguise.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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<\/p>\n

l<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A powerful piece from today’s WSJ – a woman of Russian parents responds to Ms. Magazine’s request that women proudly declare their value-neutral abortions. Like most Soviet-era fetuses conceived in Russia by couples who were already parents, I was scheduled for abortion as a matter of course. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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