A few years ago, I was driving back from a workshop I taught on how to do art with kids with disabilities in Temple, Texas. It was a beautiful, big-skied, sunny afternoon, and I was looking forward to the drive.
I was stopped at an intersection about to get on I-35 back to Austin, and there was, in the median, a man, under a six foot red and black swastika poster, and a woman holding a huge color photograph of a horribly aborted fetus. A small sign stuck in the ground near them read, “Abortion Kills.” The man was tall and husky, in a short sleeved shirt and jeans, and the woman was shy, diminutive, with sandy red curls, sitting in a folding lawn chair. The man was waving to the stopped cars; calling out “God Be With You,” with a great big grin on his face, as if everyone in line was cheering him on, fully in agreement with his position.
My blood began to boil. I couldn’t help it. I had to say something. As the window of my Accord went down, the man approached me, with a rather warm and disarming smile. But before he could speak, I spat out, pointing my finger: “I had to have an abortion for medical reasons. It was the saddest time of my life. But if I didn’t, I would have died!” Tears welled up unexpectedly in my eyes. It had been nearly 18 months since my last ectopic pregnancy, dissolved by a chemotherapy drug called methotrexate, with alternatives of surgery that would most likely leave me infertile (and would still technically be an abortion) or a ruptured fallopian tube that would, if left untreated, quite possibly kill me. It had happened twice. In strict medical terms, I was a habitual aborter. Though they could find nothing physically wrong, I had a very slim chance of ever having a child. I hadn’t realized until that moment how sad I was about it.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am.” The man said sweetly, the fair white man with the huge ugly swastika behind his head. “That’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. You say there, “Abortion Kills.” But you don’t say which abortion, when, or how, for what reason. If you get your way, you would have killed me, you would be the murderer.”
The light finally changed. As I pulled away, I heard the man say, “God Bless You,” as if he had the power to forgive me in the eyes of his small-minded Lord. I looked in the rear view mirror to see the small woman, still hunched over the aborted cardboard fetus, as if none of it had even happened.
Abortion is a horrible thing, and I wish it on no one. I bled for 45 days and cried for months. But there are times when abortion is the only choice: and this conservative right absolutist attitude will always be in the wrong: because it can never account for the shades of gray that make up the decisions of a human life.
I am afraid to live in a country where people can have such completely different views of truth and reality. I am afraid that there is a whole other truth and reality that is believed by fundamentalists of any religion – one that is powerful, irrational, and unquestioning. Because I am still questioning…questioning what happened that day and what exactly God has in mind for me. When I doubt that man has even thought about it twice.
Did I get that point across to that man, the friendly neighborhood pro-white, anti-abortion Christian Fundamentalist in Temple, Texas? Did I make him think for one instant that perhaps the blanket mantra “Abortion Kills” does not apply in all situations?
Is it possible that sometimes, “Abortion Saves?”
I sent this story to all of my state representatives. Will they listen? They should not legislate against abortion after 20 weeks. It’s an inhumane boundary to humane people.
You see, about that very day, a new embryo was implanted, not in my fallopian tube, but where it is supposed to, in my uterus. Everything is fine and in its right place, and I am the mother of a beautiful healthy child. If pressed, I will say, it was by the grace of God, my God, who works in complicated, merciful, and ever-present ways. I’m still not sure if I blessed the man that day, or he blessed me.
Maybe that’s the one thing that all people of faith could finally agree on. God, being by definition greater than us, will always be a mystery. So, doesn’t it stand to reason, that none of us, not citizen nor leader, can truly know and judge God’s Will?
No human or governmental entity has the right to physically enforce “The Will of God” as they see it upon others: in this country, or anyplace here on earth.
So, I am left with an unexpected recipe for peace, from Temple, Texas. Let thy neighbor choose. And drive away.