Welcome back to our week long feature from my newest book: I Can't Do it all. Today will be the final installment from the book. Please let me know what you thought. Scroll down to previous posts to read the beginning of this chapter titled:

"It's My Choice."

THE HIGH PRICE OF CHOICE

In her story ‘‘Tea and Crackers,’’ Gail Hayes writes of her experience in an abortion clinic.

The counselor was all too happy to explain that this was not a human life but merely a glob of tissue that needed to be cleaned out of my body. This would be a simple procedure, she said. She took my money, covered my fear with smiles, and undressed me with deceit. I submitted myself and ‘‘this glob’’ to the abortionist’s hand. Afterward, I was served tea and crackers. I ate, not realizing the high price I would later pay for this snack.

A high price indeed. Even after I came to know the Lord it took a while for me to discover how intrinsic my abortions had been to the other dysfunctions that ruled my life. At that time little information existed to help women like me heal, so I paid a high price for my freedom of choice.

I began to deal with the pain of my abortion choices early in my walk as a new Christian. The convictions I felt for my poor choices came hard and heavy during those days, and it took a month-long stay in a Christian program called New Life to help me break through the guilt and shame-based fog that encompassed my life. It wasn’t just post-abortive guilt and shame tearing at the fabric of my life, but a host of other worldly behaviors that I suddenly saw as sin. It would be years before I came to understand the connection between my abortions and that ‘‘host of other worldly behaviors’’ I had embraced for so long.

Jennifer O’Neill, in her book You’re Not Alone: Healing Through God’s Grace After Abortion, says this about that connection:

For years abortion remained a dark place within me, an indefinable root of my pain, because its consequences didn’t exist according to those ‘‘helping me’’ with my bouts of depression. Unbelievably, my doctors never brought up abortion on any level as a possible negative experience in my life, let alone the lynchpin to my pain. The despair I felt when I had my
abortion was nothing, according to the therapists and according to a society that accepts abortion as a legitimate answer to pregnancy.

In pro-life circles the question is often asked: If pro-choice is so right, then why do we keep our abortion a secret after we’ve had one?

Indeed. Why?

I feel it’s because we know deep within our hearts that what we have done is inherently wrong. But if enough people stand up and tell me it’s okay, if I buy enough of the lies being spoon-fed
to me, then I am justified in my selfish actions.

While deciding on the lies to highlight in this book, maybe we should have added this one: It’s all about me, because that is the one all-pervasive lie that has changed the complexion of our world. We’ve become a nation of people who feel entitled to everything we want, whenever we want it, at whatever cost.

Every time I found myself pregnant out of wedlock, the timing couldn’t have been worse . . . never mind that I shouldn’t have been intimate with my partner in the first place. It was never my fault, I reasoned, because I was taking birth control measures that didn’t work. The pill didn’t work, an IUD didn’t work—therefore, I was justified in my pro-choice decision. What a fool I was!

I can say that now, but back then I thought I was oh-so smart. It was my body ... my life ... my future ... and no one could tell me otherwise. Clearly, it was all about me.

Pastor Lowell Lundstrom once said an amazing thing during a media interview. ‘‘I believe in pro-choice!’’ he exclaimed, to the surprise of the reporter. ‘‘Sure I do. I believe every woman can choose to have sex or not. But if she becomes pregnant as a result of that choice, then it becomes a baby—not a choice—and it’s out of her hands.’’

Some Other Reasons

Of course, selfishness is not always at the root of an abortion choice. Some women have gotten an abortion because at the time they felt they had no choice in the matter. Perhaps a boyfriend, husband, or parent was pressuring them, and they knew of nowhere else to go for help. I’m not suggesting that we make excuses for poor choices, but many times poor choices come out of desperate situations. I know women who have had abortions who are as far from selfish as the east is from the west, so we must try and understand the situation that existed at the time the choice for abortion was made. Every situation is different.

Pro-choice advocates often use the circumstance of rape as a way to gain acceptance of the procedure that has killed millions of babies: ‘‘What about the women who have been raped, who literally had no choice in the matter?’’

Yes, what about them? We know there are women who have become pregnant by someone else’s choice. One such brave soul was Heather Gemmen.

Brutally raped at knifepoint in her own home, Heather’s story is powerfully recounted in her book Startling Beauty: My Journey From Rape to Restoration. A few hours after the attack she was given a pill that may have prevented a pregnancy—or aborted it.

‘‘I held the pill in my hand,’’ Heather recounted. ‘‘It seems possible that I was born with the belief that killing unborn babies is wrong. As a child I had eaten warm stew from a thermos at many cold and wet Right-to-Life walks and protests. In high school, when hypothetical situations had black-and-white answers, I discussed long into the night my passionate beliefs on this volatile issue. In college I earned a perfect A on a paper that lobbied against abortion. Integrity is so much more than claiming noble ethics. It is more than holding passionate conviction. Integrity is living out expressed beliefs. It is making choices that accurately reflect
core values.’’

Heather did not take the pill that would have changed the environment of her uterus. Nine months later her daughter Rachel was born.

Heather did not see taking that pill as her choice. Nor did she feel having an abortion at any time over the course of her pregnancy was a choice. The only choice Heather and her husband had was whether to place the child for adoption or raise it as their own.

Now, there’s a choice that was never presented to me at the abortion clinics—adoption. Why didn’t I consider the countless parents that could not conceive, who were aching to have a child to raise? I didn’t think about them because that would mean carrying the baby to term, allowing the world to see what I had done, and then dealing with the aftereffects of placing the baby for adoption. What mother/monster could give up her child? Back then it simply wasn’t done. Let’s not forget the inconvenience adoption would cause, either. I had an exciting career, and there was no time for pregnancy in my plan.

I, I, I—as the world touted—it was all about me. My abortion choices took place during a time in my life when I had fully bought the lie that I deserved to have everything I wanted—that it was my right as a card-carrying feminist to control my body, my destiny, my life, and my future.

No one talked about grief or any long-term effects. No one mentioned that my choices would come back years later to haunt me in unimaginable ways. No one told me they would leave an emptiness in my soul that I would try to fill with drugs, alcohol, empty relationships, and frivolous pursuits.

I must stress once again that not every abortion choice is founded on selfish motives. Many women would have made the choice to have the baby they carried into the abortion clinic, but at the time they felt powerless to take any other steps. Grieving is something that touches every one of us, no matter what our reasons or motives might have been.

This will be the last installment from this chapter. For more from this chapter called: It’s My Choice, pick up my newest book at bookstores everywhere or on Amazon.com. I Can’t Do it All, by Allison Bottke, Tracie Peterson and Dianne O’Brian.