Frederica Mathewes-Green
Parenting, Dec 1991 - Jan 1992
In Edgar Allen Poe’s classic horror tale, "The Tell-Tale Heart", a murderer dismembers his victim and hides the pieces under the floorboards. When the police call to investigate, he prides himself on his cleverness—but gradually becomes unhinged, at last screaming out the location of the corpse. He was undone by the sound of his victim’s heartbeat, drumming in his ears.
Why, after so many years of legalization, does the abortion debate continue in America? Why haven’t we accepted it as matter-of-factly as we do any other surgical procedure? I believe that it has something to do with a tell-tale heart. Deep inside we know: someone dies in every abortion, a tiny growing child with hands and eyes and a face and a beating heart. Four thousand times a day that beating heart is stopped—but in our conscience it seems to go on.
I didn’t always feel this way. I was an abortion advocate in college, and before the Roe v. Wade decision my car sported a bumper sticker that read "Don’t Labor Under a Misconception—Legalize Abortion." But that was when I thought that abortion merely discarded a "glob of tissue". I didn’t know that that tissue was shaped remarkably like a baby, and that it was alive. I didn’t know that the crude process of abortion sucks the child out, piece by piece, through a narrow tube and into a bloody bag.
But once I learned, my stand against violence had to include abortion as well. I simply could do no other. For the tell-tale hearts are our own as well; we cannot deny the beat of compassion that wells from within, that urges us that something is terribly wrong in our land.
The abortion business makes at least $500 million dollars a year in this country, performing over a million and a half abortions. Only a tiny fraction of these are done for reasons of health, rape or incest. Half of all abortion customers were using no form of birth control; nearly half are coming back for a second (or third or fourth…) abortion.
Are these women callous, contemptuous of the lives they have begun? Yet who would choose abortion if she had any other choice? The procedure itself is ugly and degrading, a mechanical vacuuming of the womb’s interior; she must pay for this privilege several hundred dollars in cash, and knows, at some level, that its only purpose is to destroy her child. In the process she runs risks from puncture and infection to colostomy, paralysis, or death; abortion is an unnatural invasion to reverse a healthy process, so even legal abortion will always have its risks. Then there is the psychological trauma, sometimes delayed for years, which accounts for the number of grief-stricken post-abortion women flooding into the pro-life movement.
It seems clear that no woman would have an abortion if her alternatives did not appear even more forbidding. Like an animal caught in a trap, trying to gnaw off its own leg, the aborting woman can see no other escape except this route of violence and despair.
In defending the path of abortion, Supreme Court Justice Blackmun wrote, "Millions of women…have ordered their lives around [access to abortion], and…this right has become vital to the full participation of women in…American life." We recoil to think that something so hideous could have become necessary to our lives. How can it be that we must sacrifice our children to succeed? Is such a sacrifice laid on men? Is any other oppressed or marginalized group required to have surgery in order to participate in American life?
Abortion may not have helped women, but it has helped those who would be inconvenienced by her pregnancy and her child. It is easier for a sexually irresponsible man to pay for a woman’s abortion than to marry her, or to pay child support for eighteen years. It is not out of concern for women’s welfare and dignity that Playboy so enthusiastically supports abortion on demand.
The relentless demands of careerism also have little patience with parenting. It is easier for an employee to abort her child, than for management to worry about providing maternity leave, health insurance, child care, and time off for Mom to go to the school play. She is expected to conform to the male model of worker—never pregnant, with a wife at home to take care of the kids. It’s easier on everyone if the woman has an abortion—easier on everyone, that is, except her and her child. No wonder our hearts are uneasy. Abortion is cruel to children, and it is not much kinder to the women on whom it feeds.
For these reasons, many pro-lifers have turned their time, not toward politics, but to practical aid in the abortion dilemma. There are approximately 3000 pregnancy care centers in America, where a woman can receive many kinds of help ranging from housing, medical care, legal aid, food and clothing, to job and budget planning for the years ahead. All these services are offered free, donated by volunteers who are for the most part women just like her—mothers who care about other mothers in need. No matter how one feels about abortion laws, we can all consider lending our aid to these woman-helping agencies by volunteering time, or laundering donated baby clothes, or opening a guest room to a woman whose family has rejected her. Sometimes all a woman needs is the knowledge that someone cares, that they will stand by her as she tackles a challenging and courageous path.
I have faced this path myself—not as vast a crisis as some women must endure, but still daunting to me. My husband had just lost his job when we found I was pregnant; we knew we would have to move cross-country, but had no idea where. We already had two children under five. Gary and I walked around the block in the late afternoon, choked and fearful. I thought about the tiny, trusting heart already growing beneath my own. Our lives felt out of control; what could we offer this child?
But we did find a job, and we did move, and Stephen was born in our new home, a joyous day among midwife and friends. Nine years later he’s the portrait of boyhood, bold and busy, full of plans and projects. But for all his Ninja-Turtle posturing, Stephen has a tender streak that betrays him when he spots a stuffed animal or sees a sentimental show. Of all the hearts that love me, his is the one that loves me with the most unfettered, blind devotion; to him, Mom is perfection on earth.
I think of all the thousands of women today whose children will be pulled out of them bit by bit, children who are as much like them as any mother and child can be. At some point, that tiny, new heart will beat its last. Who can say whether that would have been the heart that, in all her lifetime, would have loved her best?
Stephen comes in, flushed and grimy from running in the afternoon sun. He interrupts me as I sit at my desk, impulsively flinging his arms around me in a baby-bear hug. My head rests against his slender chest. I can hear in there his tender heart, beating faster now than the wings of a bird.
GREEN BAY, Wisconsin, January 12, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A pro-life organization has a novel strategy to reach out to a woman who is thinking of aborting her baby. The plan consists in handing out a ‘night at the movies’ that includes free popcorn, candy, and yes, a free DVD. The strategy has already saved the lives of 445 babies, says the group.
Bella HERO, a non-profit organization, views it as their mission to provide for free what they call the “powerful life-changing” film Bella to any pregnancy care centre that wants it. The program, launched in 2008 by Jason Jones, the producer of the awarding winning film Bella, has as its goal to give the pro-life movie to any woman with an unplanned pregnancy so as to help her in making what the pro-life organization calls “the most important decision in her life.”
The film Bella, released in 2007, is a story about how reaching out in a loving way to someone in a difficult situation can give them hope.
“What the movie does is touch the women where we can’t,” said Tracy Reynolds, program director of Bella HERO in an interview today with LifeSiteNews. “It really shows her what her opportunity would be either to be a ‘mom’ or to ‘choose adoption’ and give that child a home.”
Reynolds compared the film to a “mega ultrasound” which allows a troubled pregnant mother to really see the possibilities in choosing life.
Over 700 pregnancy centres across the USA, Canada, and Australia are now using the Bella film strategy to change hearts and save lives.Counselors receive training how to use the film with pregnant women who are undecided about the fate of their baby and even considering abortion. Some centres have found that the “movie night in a bag” concept, which includes the “DVD, popcorn, candy, and other creative items,” is practically impossible for someone to turn down.
Heartwarming success stories leave no doubt that the strategy is effective.
Abortion minded 16-year-old Anna (name changed) received counseling over the phone from one centre. She was sent a packet which included Bella. Soon afterwards, Anna called the centre back saying, “Bella is the best movie I have ever seen! It helped me decide to keep my baby.”
Another woman, Tina, and her boyfriend came into one centre and discovered that she was pregnant. Not only was Tina in college at that time, but she was also far away from home. She did not think that she was ready or able to bring a child into the world. The abortion-bound couple was given a copy of Bella.
The couple surprisingly returned to the centre for an ultrasound. The staff were delighted to learn that they had decided to keep their baby and parent the child themselves. The father wanted to name his child ‘Bella’ if she was a girl. The couple’s choice did not swerve when the ultrasound revealed twin daughters. They are now the proud parents of Bella and Millie.
Cindy (name changed) visited a pregnancy centre very “confused and scared.” The 25 year-old woman was already the mother of a young son. She did not want to abort, but felt she had no choice since she “felt she loved her boyfriend too much to interrupt his college plans”. She went home with the film Bella, but not before agreeing to return for an ultrasound.
A few days later, Cindy returned to the centre crying. The staff heard that she had not slept for the last few days. The counsellor learned that Cindy had watched Bella and not only decided to keep her baby, but had broken off her relationship with her boyfriend and turned her life over to God. Just like the star in the film, Cindy chose adoption for her baby.
Peggy Hartshorn, President of Heartbeat International, a pro-life organization that works to make “abortion unwanted today and unthinkable for future generations,” endorsed the Bella HERO initiative, saying that many women who feel “pressured to abort an untimely pregnancy need someone to say that it is okay to have a baby.” She believes that the film is a lesson in “compassion, self-sacrifice and the unconditional love of family” and that it will give pregnant woman a “positive message.”
Cindy Collins, Director of a Crisis Pregnancy Center in Louisiana encourages pregnancy centres to put the film to use. “It has been received with enthusiasm at my center, and we already have 5 mothers who chose life after watching the movie,” she said.
Reynolds is convinced that all an abortion-minded woman needs to know so that they will cherish the life within them that there is that “there is hope, that they are not alone, and that somebody is out there who will help them”.
Many staff at pregnancy centres believe that the film captures the heart of their ministry. They look forward to more babies being saved as the story of Bella continues to reach troubled pregnant women with a powerful message of hope.
Father John put window film into the master bathroom window tonight. We have had it in all but one of the bathrooms that we have lived in and really like it! We still have to paint the window frame and I have to iron the shade and trim the ties, but I love airy it looks!
I finally couldn't take of the multitude of different-sized plastic spice jars that littered our cabinet any more. I decided to use some jam jars that I have been collecting as a substitute. I love that the mouths are wide enough for my measuring spoons! The labels are from Martha Stewart's line at Michaels. This was a quick and extremely satisfying project yesterday afternoon. I keep getting a thrill every time I open my seasonings cupboard! Now to organize the art supplies!
Ivy was happy in the market. She walked round and round the stalls, looking at all the things; sometimes a snowflake fell on her head, but she shook it off; sometimes one stuck to her cheek, but she put out her tongue and licked it away. She bought a bag of chestnuts from the chestnut man; they were hot in her hands and she ate them one by one. She had a white cup of tea from a tea stall on wheels, and from a sweet stall she bought a toffee apple. When her legs grew tired she sat down on a step and wrapped the ends of her coat round her knees. When she was cold she started to walk again.
