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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJust found this abortion testimony on Facebook. I don't know if
it is accurate but the read is astounding.
Meredith Broome
May 15 at 3:12 PM
I had an abortion one month after my 13th birthday. Im not sure how else to write that sentence, but its not quite right to say I had an abortion. That implies I had choices. Its more accurate to say it like this: my father, a doctor, raped me from when I was eight years old to when I was 12 years old. When he got me pregnant at 12, he enlisted one of his colleagues to perform an abortion on me when I was 16 weeks pregnant. That was a whole different kind of violation on my body. I didnt choose to be raped. I didnt choose to be a mother or to have an abortion. All of my choices were made by my father and this other man, who was easily convinced that I was a slutty twelve-year-old and he was my fathers saviour from humiliation. I was just a thing that turned into a problem that had to be solved.
A few years ago, there was impending abortion legislation which didnt make an exception for rape and incest, and I brought it up to my mother, believing she would be equally horrified by abortion laws that would have forced me to give birth to my own sister at the end of my seventh grade year. What she said sent a shock through my body that I still feel as I write this. She said, Ill always regret that you had an abortion. It was against Gods will. And now youve had all these fertility problems--you could have had a child of your own.
I blinked through the tears that were pouring down my face, trying to keep the car on the road. I was driving her to the airport after her week long visit with my family, including a daughter who is very much my own, though we dont share the same genes and never shared the same body.
Then my mother said, The things that happened to you happened because God knew you could handle them. I am clear I could not have handled having my fathers baby at 13. Id certainly felt the responsibility of motherhood weighing heavy on my shoulders. I worried constantly about how I would protect this growing baby when I couldnt even protect myself. I hadn't felt like a thing instead of person for years, but my mother, placing me on the board of her God's game made me feel like a pawn--a thing--all over again.
Ive always been afraid to write the story like this--to admit that I felt like this babys mother. To admit I felt her soul insisting on itself as she grew. Ive felt afraid because the argument made on the pro-choice side--which is very much the side that I am on--often centers around the idea that an embryo or a fetus isnt a baby or a human being, and we shouldnt be so naive as to think it is. Well, Im not naive, but I know what I felt, and I am always skeptical of rhetoric that treats any form of life as a thing.
I cant tell you what choice I would have made then, if Id had a choice. I can tell you that I grieved that little soul, who the doctor held up for me to see, so I could learn my lesson and never let this happen again. And I can tell you that if I know anything about the universe, its this: Life finds a way. Thats evidenced in the weeds I found curling out of the molding in my bedroom yesterday, and the overgrown, abandoned lot where Ive seen possums, butterflies and a litter of kittens living where, just two months ago, I filled up my car with gas and bought a bag of Cheetos and lottery tickets.
That little soul that grew in me for 16 weeks found a way into this life. She didnt come through my body, but I know she found a way. And I do know that, if there is a God who is supposedly omniscient, that God saw abortion coming a mile away. And maybe that God gave us the safe technology for abortion as a way to show mercy. I know that if there is a God, my abortion was a merciful gift from her.
EDIT: I need to say this, too. My father was a doctor. His buddy performed the abortion in his office, on a Sunday morning. Nobody was there. Because my father had money and access to abortion technology, my abortion would have happened whether it was legal or not, and nobody would have been prosecuted for it. But this is the most important point--this anti-abortion bullshit isn't just a war on women. It's quite specifically a war on poor women. #allwarisclasswar #donatetoplannedparenthood #burnthepatriarchydown
#prochoice #yourgodsuresoundslikeanasshole #ohwaityouretheassholeforinsistingonlyyouknowwhatgodthinksandeveryoneelseiswrong #fuckallyall #youknowme
cpamomfromtexas
(1,245 posts)Texin
(2,590 posts)I wouldn't be able to speak to such a woman as that who would call what happened "God's will." I would cut off that so-called "mother" entirely for the rest of her life. She would cease to be my mother.
tblue37
(65,227 posts)her "real" grandchild. No doubt she subtly telegraphs her disdain to the child--or maybe not so subtly.
cpamomfromtexas
(1,245 posts)Her own husbands abuse. At age 50 I decided I was done with fathers abuse. Then He stalked, showed up on my doorstep after climbing my fence. He sent threats to my children and me via email and voicemail. Pulled a gun on my son with witnesses. Not to mention financial crimes.
Once I tallied it all up it was around 6 felonies. No way will I give up that leverage.
UniteFightBack
(8,231 posts)'thought process'. Just YUCK.
CDerekGo
(507 posts)Much less your own Mother, can find any refuge in a book of pages written by Men, and find solace that her own Husband is RAPING her own Daughter, and make justification for it. Then, be ok with the fact that she would have to raise this child as her own.
I've always said, religion is just another form of brain-washing, from the moment we're born. We're forced to 'attend' church, recite the lord's prayer, attend Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, weekly Sunday Services, Wednesday Night Services, et.al. And then these 'christians' complain about Shariah Law....astounding....
Stonepounder
(4,033 posts)that while the Old Testament is part of the Bible, it is NOT part of Christianity. The Old Testament was written before the birth of Jesus and Jesus didn't teach from the Old Testament.
If someone writes a book about how to live. And a couple of hundred years from now a person is born who founds a new religion, how could my whole book become incorporated into the new religion, when much of what I wrote is antithetical to the new religion?
colorado_ufo
(5,730 posts)"Both the wine and the skins will be lost."
Leith
(7,808 posts)Are you saying that Christians don't believe in Original Sin or the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve? Then what's the point of dying on the cross to absolve humanity?
How about the 10 Commandments? Are Christians allowed to steal, lie, create and worship other gods?
Why do self-proclaimed Christians say that geological formations were made by Noah's flood? That's Old Testament.
What arguments are left to Christians who argue that homosexuality if against God's Law if they don't quote the OT? Jesus sure didn't have anything to say about it.
These are just a few of the reasons to include the OT as part of Christianity. No doubt there are hundreds of others.
Stonepounder
(4,033 posts)PatrickforO
(14,559 posts)I'm so sorry that this happened, and that this woman was treated so very cruelly. And I'm sorry the mother was so unfeeling, so blind as to say what she said. Daddy should have spent the rest of his life in a cage, because he clearly wasn't fit to be out on the streets, let alone to practice medicine.
Abortion is not a thing to be taken lightly, but I'm utterly convinced it is between a woman and her doctor.
cp
(6,617 posts)I know someone who was repeatedly raped by her father, a doctor, who then aborted her baby while she herself was still a child. And I can verify from firsthand experience that the mother's failure to believe her daughter causes a lifelong wound that is possibly even worse. Good therapy is a lifesaver.
Bayard
(22,011 posts)What a horrifying story. What makes a man think he has the right?
keithbvadu2
(36,669 posts)The right? Some rapists use the Bible to rationalize it.
(a previous comment) "The Old Testament was rife with fathers raping their daughters."
demigoddess
(6,640 posts)being molested/raped by family members. I was molested by older boys when I was 3 years old. I think my mother heard about it because she thought I was the town slut even though I never did anything at all until I was married. I think she told this story to my dad. He was a very good man and my mother could not stand that he was on our side when she beat us. My mother was a monster. Sometimes it is not the men who are horrible but women who always stand on the men's side.
cpamomfromtexas
(1,245 posts)demigoddess
(6,640 posts)Fortunately I had a nice dad but then he allowed her to take the lead on the kids.