Mothers, Abortion, and Life

What can I say about motherhood? I can tell you that although as a child I didn’t like it nor did I want to be part of it that I grew out of the negative attitude about it temporarily. I did fantasize about having children when I fell in love with my high school sweetheart. I thought about how wonderful it would be to have two little girls that looked like him. However, when that relationship went south the fantasy went away too. I wasn’t interested in being a mother until I started attending church. The possibility became a reality, but did I truly want to be a mother? No. God told me that I would one day become one and when I received that word in my spirit I cried. The tears weren’t happy ones they were sad ones. I knew that to become a mother meant that I was no longer responsible for just me! I didn’t want that duty for the next 18 plus years of my life. However, love-struck me like it did many women and I would drop my defenses and my underwear not caring too much about the “what ifs” of life. What if the father doesn’t stay with me, what if we don’t have enough money to raise the child, what if I become ill and died? No “what if” concept crossed my mind until I later learned that indeed I was pregnant.

Bringing a child into the world is not as wonderful as religion would have you to believe. Some of you mothers reading this know what I am talking about. You see when you are the one carrying the child you aren’t thinking about everything positive and good about this life that is moving and shaking within you. Even worse, some women who are adamant about not having children don’t see “it” as being nothing more than tissue that needs to be removed out of a body that they feel isn’t ready for children. We can argue with one another about what we consider a precious life and what others consider mere tissue, but the reality is that you are a mother whether you choose to accept it or not whether you got rid of the evidence or not. If you aborted a child that didn’t abort the natural process you went through whether you were conscious of it or not at least during the first year (a friend shared her abortion experience with me.) Nor did the abortion stop the memories and the possibilities that creep into a mother’s mind on occasion and the regrets that later follow for many.

I have spoken to women who aborted children and they don’t seem all that happy about their decisions. They all justified their actions by not being ready for a child at the time. But who is ever ready? I was 24 when I had my first child and I wasn’t ready then and later at 34 I wasn’t ready again. Am I judging those who chose to abort? Not at all. I am just reiterating what these “mothers” told me. Were they mothers with cries? You best believe it! They cried for what could have been, what they could have, should have, and wished they had done. Some didn’t cry so much for the child or tissue, but they cried for even putting themselves in such a predicament. They may not have “mothered” a child, but at one time they were a mother.

Written by Nicholl McGuire
http://associatedcontent.com/nichollmcguire