A Soul Worth Fighting For

The gusty & unmerciful winds are a dramatic reminder that the season of Anne nips at my heels. Try as I might, I cannot outrun it.... ahhh, the joys of learning to live with a broken heart...

...all we are is dust in the wind, right? moments in time that hardly matter to anyone once they've slipped away. Does anyone even notice the individual grains of sand in the hour glass? or how important each one is to the whole? The world spins & spins and, really, what does any of it matter?

My entire countenance is so distraught. I need to ramble and spin words of heartache. I've been thinking a great deal about this intrauterine suffering thing--the justifiable keyhole, that to some, makes it a noble and responsible thing to end a child's life early. The notion crushes me because it thereby implies that I am selfish and would willingly inflict suffering upon my child by taking her to term. Many have said that waiting to see what God would do rather than take things into my own hands makes me cruel.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot brush away all the countless people in this world who would have disposed of my child had she been theirs to dispose of. It's weighed very heavily upon me, especially this last week or so as we finally get the final working of getting Anne's article published with http://www.benotafraid.net --going through her pictures and remembering her soft presence. Today's BNA cover story is especially gripping and hits me right where I live. I'm overwhelmed with the notion that there is coming a day when a woman will have to fight for her right to carry to term. The medical & cultural pressure to terminate a defective child is already all-consuming. Poor little Anne never stood a chance...

And for as cruel & selfish as they would say we are for carrying such babies to term, I can't help but get bogged down in how utterly cruel they were to deprive her of her right to live--how alone and on her own she was in the eyes of medicine. The vast sea of people who think it all for the best...

Sadly, the carrying to term movement is faced with so many challenges. I occasionally participate in an online carrying to term support group. Many of the women have born severely birth defected children--dwarfisms, choromosomal errors, all manner of things to go wrong in the early weeks of fetal development. Of course they all are met with pressures to terminate and guilt & shame for allowing their child to suffer needlessly. Many of them have to literally fight for medical care once the diagnoses are made--drs dropping them as patients the mintue they refuse an abortion. Several of the women have miracle babies who have defied every medical odd. They too have had to fight for medical care for their children, since most medical providers take a euthanistic perspective. Ironically, none of them is every sorry they carried their child to term, even if their baby dies during birth or shortly thereafter. The love & joy & peace that's met in their children is what it's all about. God forbid medicine would actually present carrying to term as the first-line option, and several are the stories I've read whereby carefully disguised hospice-induced infanticide has been presented as an option (for children that are alive and thriving). And yet I thought medicine was supposed to save lives, not take them. Nope, poor little Anne didn't stand a chance.

It's just so heartbreaking that the medical model often sees parents who carry to term as ignorant, religious zealots who are selfish and willing to inflict unnecessary suffering upon their child. They miss the whole point of the human soul--the preciousness of the human spirit that is here one day and gone tomorrow, and yet eternally valuable to the heart of God.

My baby Anne had a soul that was worth fighting for, no matter what the condition of her body--even if no one else in medicine, government, religion, or culture agrees. I had a responsibility to God--the Giver--to give her soul as much of a mother's love as she deserved--and she deserved so much more...

My Abigail may very well have suffered dramatically as she smothered to death inside my womb. I could make myself sick contemplating her suffering. But I trust that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob held her in His comfort. I trust that He was merciful as she crossed over to the Other Side. I trust that she is happy & so very grateful to have had as long as she did tucked under my beating heart--and how she deserved so much more...

Call me selish & cruel, but I will never ever understand a mother who takes the preciousness of time away from her child...