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Politics : To be a Liberal,you have to believe that..... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (952)	9/7/1999 8:01:00 PM
From: Edwarda	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6418

Bless you, dear LRR! What I am trying to do here--sucked in by E (!)--is ask the questions and try to join a discussion in which some of us may not like the answers we find as we consider the questions. As I tried to suggest, I, who had an abortion, disliked intensely the eventual answers to the questions it raised. I should like to feel the freedom, if I find myself today pregnant by the wrong person in the wrong way at the wrong time of my life, to end the pregnancy. Philosophically, I do not feel the freedom to do so. BTW, one of the moments I felt the deepest respect for my mother was a number of years ago when one friend was pregnant and, having had two abortions, was appalled at the notion of doing it again; but for many reasons having a child would have destroyed her personal and professional life and was distraught. I, over the objections of my then husband, reassured her that we should adopt her child so that she could enjoy her motherhood without ruining her life. My mother, who was then in her mid-sixties and needed such a burden the way she needed a hole in the head, said, "Tell her that I shall adopt her child and retire now (which she was eligible to do but did not wish to) and the child will have a safe and happy home and she can know her mother as often as her mother can come to see and be with her." I was shocked, but my mother's response was, "I am sick to death of all these people who think as I do, that abortion is murder, and then are not willing to put their own lives personally on the line to make a difference. Bombing a clinic and harassing women in trouble is moral masturbation; this is all I can do to live out my own convictions about life and--although my mother was a devout Catholic, the people who have grown up with Judaism on this thread will recognize the quotation with which she finished the conversation--"If not now, when?" P.S. It was an ectopic pregnancy, so the reality did not come to pass. If it had, she would have been a loving mother to a child whose mother she barely knew, a child I'd be raising today because my mother died in 1995. But I respected so deeply her awareness and personal willingness to provide an alternative. It was she who inspired me (N.B. I was too silly to tell her when I was pregnant myself!!!!!) to go to the "Right to Life" presentations at college and, after seeing all the pictures--during my own abortion I could see the tube, which is why I didn't yell to stop; it was already too late--say, "O.K., it's your daughter. Are you going to sit in judgement on her or help her? And what is your definition of help? This is all talk. Talk to me about how you make abortion the last thought in a woman's mind; talk to me about how much you will turn your own precious life upside down to prevent an abortion?" My mother and I are the only people I know who are willing to do more than exhort. People willing to change their lives to offer an alternative. I find this frightening.