I don’t follow football, so I don’t know a Tebow from an elbow. I’m told he has a great one, and that football is better by far because of it. So Tebow and I don’t have much in common except elbows. More precisely, Pam Tebow and I have not a lot in common except a couple: we’re both mothers of children with great elbows who’s doctors recommended they brought into the world.
I don't know why Gloria Allred should feel it fit to have such a hyssie fit over this sort of information, that a woman would be told to have an abortion and she then raises an amazing child. I’m suspecting it happens more frequently than is told. In my case, should I have chosen it, in 1971, abortions were not readily available in “Mormon Country,” were still considered therapeutic, but not a “woman’s right.” Therapeutic to whom?
Within days, maybe hours after being told I was pregnant with Jane I became ill with a virus. The doctor was perplexed by its tenacity and intensity. What should have been a simple localized thing, took over my body, ravaged it, and didn’t let go. It wasn’t life-threatening to me, but my OB was concerned for my child. The virus repeated over the course of my pregnancy. In fact, I still take drugs (once they were developed years later) to prevent its recurrence.
The doctor recommended abortion. Was it self-preservation because she feared post-delivery litigation? Or was it real concern for me, that she didn’t want me tethered to a “damaged” child? Was it concern for the child based on this new term being batted about, quality of life? Who knows. She told me that in her opinion the pregnancy would not end well. Throughout my pregnancy she would say things like, “Well, at least it has a good heartbeat.” She was clearly in disagreement with my decision. I didn’t have a choice. Jane was born in perfect health, to the entire surprise of the doctor. But that is entirely God’s gift to this tale. No matter the circumstances of her birth and condition, Jane is and ever will be the joy and delight of her father and me. She was my child from the moment of her conception. I was her mother even before she was conceived.
Vocation is what God puts into your hand to do. That includes many choices, all of them for the sake of the neighbor. My child, my neighbor, does not require murdering for the sake of my comfort. No child born after 1971 lives free from the shadow of abortion. Feminism likes to think abortion is the premier jewel in her tiara of rights. Strip that away and she whines she has nothing left: “My body, my choice.” That’s because she even denies the God by whom she receives her body, and the Body and Blood by which her body is redeemed and sanctified. Early feminists, even while working for the cessation of abortions and better conditions for women, nevertheless ushered in this present era when they “killed” God and His authority in women’s lives with their anti-religion stance.
Feminism’s (Allred’s hyssie fit) position is not so much anti-abortion as it is the same as Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s: anti-religion. Strip it all away and get to the heart of it abortion is about the right of a woman to control the influence of 1. man’s influence upon her body; and, 2. God’s control of her life. Kill the sperm and it’s product and God is contained; kill God and His word and men are controllable.
Pam Tebow followed her God-given vocation of motherhood after doctors told her not to. Is that so hard to believe? We don’t find it incredulous. However, Christianity and the claims of Christians will become increasingly under attack. Perhaps more of us who faced similar circumstances, even though we gave birth to children with less notable elbows, should speak up and let the Allreds realize that it isn’t such a rare feat after all. should feel it fit to have such a hyssie fit over this sort of information, that a woman would be told to have an abortion and she doesn’t then raises an amazing child. I’m suspecting it happens more frequently than is told. In my case, should I have chosen it, in 1971 abortions were not readily available in Utah. In “Mormon Country” they were still considered therapeutic, but not a “woman’s right.”
We follow the trail fairly easily: Eve is the icon of the Church, Christ's Body. We know this because Jesus said the "Scriptures everywhere testify of Me" (Jn 5:39). Can we not also follow the trail backwards and conclude that anything that attempts to destroy Christ's Body and otherwise deny Him thereby is an icon of sin, death, and the devil? Motherhood is sacred. Jesus' life from womb to tomb is guarantee of that. Women's lives are identified by the life of Christ: His in theirs, theirs in His through Baptism. Yet until feminism can abandon all other reasons than this one as an opposition to abortion, it is still advancing the agenda of all that is destructive to to women and to the Woman who is Christ's Body, the Church.
Christianity and the claims of Christians will become increasingly under attack. Perhaps more of us who faced similar circumstances, even though we gave birth to children with less notable elbows, should speak up and let the Allreds realize that it isn’t such a rare feat after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment