My family, albeit thirteen years ago.
Those babies are teens and older now.
It’s
late, and I am tired. I was not going to post on my blog tonight because it’s
been a long day. Long, but a good day. I actually began to come to grips with
my new project—a biography of Helen Corbitt, doyenne of food service at Neiman
Marcus. I hope to fit her into the dramatically changing foodways of America in
the fifties and sixties, the years she was at Neiman’s. But writing such stuff
is slow and hard going, and my brain is tired.
So,
tonight I read a bit on a novel I’m currently intrigued by—more about that
another time—and I scrolled through Facebook, partly because you can do that
without truly engaging your brain, but also because I want to read everything I
can about the decisions coming out of our rogue SCOTUS. I am alarmed that they
dismissed charges against two physicians convicted of pushing opioids, that
they upheld a coach’s right to pray at the sidelines in a decision which is
being widely heralded as giving teachers the right to encourage students (Christian,
of course) to pray in class, that the court will probably issue a decision limiting
the EPA’s power to enforce environmental protections on the states. Are they
rushing—for they do seem in a hurry—to destroy every facet of American life? Rumors
are rife that they will next take on contraception and gay marriage. And of
course, somewhere along the line, I’m sure they will enforce book banning and
governmental dictation of school curriculum? Slavery? No, no, you can’t teach
about that. The Greenwood Massacre? Never mention it.
But
the abortion ruling is much on my mind. I have thought about what I have to contribute
to the discussion, and I don’t know that it’s that much. But here I go. I am
pro-life in that I am opposed to abortion, but I firmly believe that’s me, and
I do not have the right to force that opinion on anyone else, not even my daughters.
When I married, I had never given any thought to whether I would have children.
But my then-husband, a physician, desperately wanted babies. After five years
of marriage, endless tests, and more than a few embarrassing moments—the
hospital nurses who asked, “When are you two going to put a baby in our
nursery?”—it was clear that I wasn’t going to conceive. One completely unexpected
miscarriage sealed that conclusion. I had been given fertility drugs, and I
have always thought since that God knew what he was doing. That fetus was not
meant to come into this world. But that experience speaks to me as I read of
women accused of infanticide because they miscarried. And it also left me with
the profound belief that being able to carry a pregnancy to term and deliver a
healthy baby was a gift from God.
We adopted—four
beautiful children. I, the one who wasn’t sure about parenthood, turned out to
be the parent. My husband moved on, out of the marriage, and I, more than a little
frightened, raised four babies by myself, from the time they were ages twelve
to six. Today, they are four wonderful adults—good gravy, can you believe three
of the four have passed fifty? They make me proud every day, they have given me
seven beautiful grandchildren, and we are a huge, rowdy happy family.
If one
of those girls—my two daughters and my two in-law daughters—had ever wanted to
abort a pregnancy, barring a severe threat to their health, I would have been
heartbroken. But I would have kept that to myself, and that never happened. We all rejoiced in the arrival of every
baby. I often think that we live a life of privilege—and I sometimes ask God “Why
me?” because I know the circumstances of my life could be so much harder. But
we were blessed—each of my four were able to provide for their babies without
hardship (yeah, there was a bit of careful budgeting early on) and they have
been able to give their children comfortable and happy childhoods. (Ask me
about family get-togethers sometime.)
So
that’s where I am: pro-life and opposed to what I might call casual abortion, but
a firm advocate of abortion in cases of rape, incest, danger to the mother, or
a severely deformed infant. And an advocate of every woman's right of sovereignty over her own body. What I find frightening in the states’ trigger laws
that the Dobbs decision enacted is the inflexibility, that “one size fits all”
mentality, the refusal to listen to medical science but instead to follow what passes
for scriptural law.
If
anti-abortionists want to follow God’s word, they need to realize that the
Talmud, that source of Jewish wisdom, advocates abortion in the case of the
mother’s health. And the Bible, the ultimate source for so many Christians,
never mentions it. What the Christian Bible emphasizes is love.
Whether
saving babies or keeping women out of power is the real purpose is another
subject for another time. But I am a worried woman tonight.
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