of the horrific Roe v. Wade decision. Because of editorial policies at my paper, it was never printed |
| |
|
Dear Joey, I thought about you this week. It was hard not to. The images surrounding your brief life always come to mind on January 22. For it was on that day--now 25 years ago--that the Roe v. Wade decision made abortion legal in the United States. You, my dear one, were the baby who was taken from me, in the same way so many babies have been taken from their mothers. But unlike them, you were dead before the suction machine did its work. You came along after two babies and a heartbreaking miscarriage. You made your presence known from the very beginning, giving me morning sickness all day. Since you obviously had a personality, I gave you a pre-birth name immediately. At ten weeks, I heard your heart beating and I was thrilled. Then the morning sickness went away. And the next time we checked, you, too, were gone. "Fetal demise at 13 weeks," the doctor said. In "mother words," my baby had died. After the diagnosis, I declined an immediate "Dilation and Evacuation," preferring to wait for my body to miscarry. "Why are you waiting?" someone said. "It's dead, it's not a baby anymore." I knew otherwise. You were still a baby, still my baby. As long as I refused surgery, I could protect you. But the day came when I couldn't wait any longer and the D&E was scheduled. The day before the procedure, I called my doctor. "I can't do this," I said. "It's the same procedure used for abortion. You're going to go in there and rip my baby apart. I can't do that. It's too violent." "You're right, it is violent," he said sympathetically, "but we've got to do it." I'm sorry, Joey. I had no choice. The procedure was done under spinal anesthetic, but it hurt immeasurably. Instead of a warm cheery birthing room it was a cold, bilious-green operating room. Instead of joy, I saw sorrow in my doctor's eyes. I lay there immobile. Instead of giving you a victorious push into the world, you were pulled from me, sucked to pieces by a vacuum machine. The thought of what was happening to you drove a stake through my heart. The probe felt like a ramrod in my uterus. I groaned. "Hang on, Helen," my doctor said. "We're almost finished." And then you were totally gone. Taken away to a lab for tests, to be disposed of like somebody's trash. And I had no baby. No baby to love. No baby to hold. No baby to bury. That was the worst part of it all. I knew you had lived, Joey, but there was no proof--no baby, and no grave. I had no one to grieve over. How could I justify the sorrow I so keenly felt? Had you lived, Joey, you would now be almost 10. I can't imagine what you'd be like--you may not have been whole--but you would have been ours, and we would have loved you. But you didn't live. And in your death, you taught me something. You showed me that abortion has two victims--the precious baby and the grieving, often guilt-ridden, mother. And now my heart aches for both of them. Sometimes I think of you and wonder how you are. In my mother's heart, I believe you are whole now, and you are safe in Christ's--and your grandmother's--arms. Someday I'll hold you. But until then, rest knowing that your life mattered, that you are not forgotten. With much love, Mommy. |