A few weeks into pregnancy, it seemed to easy to see it as nothing but a sickness. I could take something to make it go away. I could make it go away, if I didn't want it.
But I did want it. It was just hard to see that the thing that I wanted - a child - and the thing I was feeling - pregnancy - were the same. They weren't the same.
At week ten or so, I saw a typical graphic image of an aborted 12-week fetus, its little red well-formed legs and arms clinging to a coin for size comparison. It was unbelievable to me that something that human looking, that real, and that fragile and innocent, could be terminated. Frequently. Every day. It didn't make any sense to me how people could look at that photo of that human child and still argue for the right to kill it.
Between weeks 10 and 12, I saw a few other pro-life posts. I didn't pay them too much attention because it's harder to look at it when you're pregnant too. It feels so much sadder and scarier that someone the same age as my Little could be ripped apart and tossed aside as "medical waste". After seeing him or her jumping up and down on the ultrasound screen at 11 weeks, looking pretty human and real to me, I can't imagine how anyone can harm that little thing.
At week 13, a moment of sympathizing with the pro-choice perspective returned to me. I felt overwhelmed by negative messages about motherhood, overwhelmed by the cries for advice and listening ears to vent to on mothers groups I was part of on Facebook. In my mind, I couldn't reconcile the scary, overwhelming challenge that motherhood appeared to be with the excited congratulations I was hearing for our "blessing" or our "little joy". I couldn't rectify how it could be a blessing or a joy when it looked so difficult and what-the-hell-am-I-getting-myself-into? And how easy it could be, in another circumstance, in someone else's shoes, to change my mind and back out of the pregnancy because it looks too hard.
Shame on our society for promoting abortion over other options for women in crisis pregnancies. Women should be encouraged in their motherhood and helped through it. No woman deserves to go through the experience of an abortion. I'm sure it must be traumatizing even for those who advocate for it.
My baby, now 13 weeks plus, according to my pregnancy app is fully formed, but still tiny. Looks like normal human baby proportions now, but just tiny. And all I can say is, please, please, please, women of the world, desperate or desensitized or whatever the case may be, don't hurt your little one. Choose life.
I saw another pro-life post today. It's an extremely graphic description of some of the horrors witnessed by former abortionists. You can read it here if you can stomach it. It got to me the same way the others have, even though most of the time I don't click on them anymore. The pictures most of the time are not horrible graphic aborted babies. I've been seeing a lot of the ones that show living, developing fetuses.
They look like babies.
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| 24 weeks |
