Preface: The genesis for this sharing started during a
trip years ago to the state fair where I was volunteering to help staff a
booth. On the drive there I passed a lot of road kill deaths. It just struck me
how indiscriminate and capricious death is. Little animals, some obvious family
pets going about their little lives and then gone. We view the ongoing
slaughter in our cars as we drive about our days. Road tableaus.
Death
is woven into the fabric of our existence. Death is the foundation our
Christian faith is built upon. Death. Then resurrection. Death exchanged for our
salvation.
People
living and dying every second of the day. A loved one or friend is here one day
and gone the next, at times without warning.
All
this death is the way life is and has to be.
It's
important for people to know up front on this particular issue who they're
dealing with in terms of position when such a hot button issue is involved. If
you ask me if I'm pro-life I will answer "yes". If you ask me if I'm
pro-choice I will answer "yes". If you ask me if I'm for abortion I
will answer "no".
I’m
addressing the issue of abortion and miscarriage as a man. These terms have
profound, deeply intimate and personal implications for women to which men can
never fully relate. Men are affected but to a much different degree. We are not
capable of having another human being living inside of us. That being said, I
do have a great deal of empathy.
Miscarriage and abortion.
I read a post by Rachel Lewis
concerning miscarriages. Rachel brings the word "miscarriage" into
the discussion of personhood. Rachel Lewis is pro-life and lost 3 children due
to miscarriages. What she wrote is just incredibly poignant and moving. (You
can read her comments about miscarriage at:
http://thelewisnote.com/why-miscarriage-matters-when-youre-pro-life/
)
Her words to all concerned are or
at least should be thought-provoking and a call to think about how we go about
our personal interactions. It's a discussion that needs to continue because it
takes the usual pro-life/pro-choice dialogue to a different level. A place
where loss occurs regardless of one’s position.
For decades I have wrestled with
these words. If it's induced by a woman who doesn't want to be pregnant, it's
called an abortion. If a spontaneous end
occurs to a pregnancy it’s called a miscarriage. Over the years I have heard the
words miscarriage and abortion applied in many different ways to various
circumstances. I’ll get to my experience as it applies to my mother and our
family later.
I remember in high school that
there were stories about various so and so's girlfriend being pregnant and her
being punched in the stomach to cause a miscarriage. Sometimes with consent,
sometimes not. There were other home remedies available.
Then there were the cases of young
girls not coming to school any more or for awhile. They would go to visit a
relative. Sometimes they would return changed.
In high school I also remember a very
pregnant young woman riding on a motor cycle and the talk of how careless,
reckless, thoughtless and a devil-may-care mother she would be; that she was
putting her baby at risk behaving like that!
The ones that talked like that
didn't know that her baby was already dead and would be stillborn. There was
grief riding on the back of that motorcycle.
Miscarriages are common. There
aren’t too many families that are unscathed, given the sheer numbers of them. Estimates
vary but the conservative estimates are that between 10 and 20% of known
pregnancies end spontaneously. One of the reasons that the estimates are
considered conservative is that women can suffer a miscarriage so early in the
pregnancy that they were unaware that they were even pregnant. Also, miscarriages
are often unreported. Some miscarriages occur for definable reasons. They can
at times be attributed to a particular cause. They can happen for no
attributable reason.
The estimates that I found
concerning abortion vary greatly. Abortions are also under-reported. I’m just
going with the 20% range of medically induced abortions per 1,000 births. And
that’s just in this country.
During my service in the Army I did
a tour of duty overseas in Korea. I can't count the number of men that came with
quiet talks at night about how their "steady" turned up pregnant and
then wasn't any more. "Miscarriages" given to dirt floors. (You
probably noticed that I used the wrong word.) Sometimes it changed the man
responsible. More often not. More often it was just something mentioned
casually in passing. Our unit helped an orphanage filled with, and I wish I
could write the Korean words because they sounded like spit out words, GI whore
babies. That is the accurate translation.
I served and talked with a soldier who
grieved when he learned his pregnant steady had aborted. He was single. He
wasn't even asked what he wanted. Why would he have been? She made a business
decision. But that brings up another point—the father. How about the
father/husband/wife/significant other? They share in the loss. Family? Often
times there's no one to care or notice, as if nothing of consequence really
happened anyway.
I do bring up numbers but this
isn’t about statistics. I accept that the numbers in both instances are
staggering. So much sadness is lost in all those numbers.
There was a sweet young woman we
knew in a church that we attended years ago. I had mentioned to my wife that I
thought she might be pregnant. My wife didn't know or have knowledge one way or
the other. I had asked her because sometimes women talk amongst themselves
about personal matters. Then there came a time when the young woman had a look
of deep sorrow upon her face. We learned after the fact that she was pregnant but
that she had miscarried. It was a story that found its way to being written
into the life journey of other young couples in the church as well.
It's not like people send out cards
in the matter. It isn't talked about much in society. We acknowledge it when
required. Often it's a quiet solitary grief that is borne. Sometimes the grief
is shared. It's so difficult to know what to say or do to those that have
suffered a miscarriage.
Who accepts the responsibility for
miscarriages? The mother? Unknown physical forces? God? No one. Yet even when
there is no fault involved there is guilt. Who or what can we blame? It’s just
human nature. Could something different have been done? Was there some
unintentional action that might have caused the miscarriage? We will always
have more questions than answers to senseless tragedy. The answer that
sometimes it just happens seems unacceptable to us.
I have heard the comment made to
those who have suffered the loss of a child through miscarriage that it was
God’s plan. I believe such comments are made with the intention of expressing
love and compassion. But if God is assigned responsibility then it doesn’t
explain how the pregnancy was allowed in the first place if the plan was to
terminate the pregnancy. Otherwise God’s plan includes teaching lessons in
grief. This places God in the position of micro-managing the entire process and
the numbers mentioned previously suggest otherwise.
Then came the time when at the
Kansas State Fair a nun was asking me why I would want to kill the precious
baby that the young woman she was with was holding. I told the young woman that
her baby was beautiful.
Then I asked the nun if she minded
if I asked her a question. She was okay with that so I told her that my mother
had miscarried between my older brother and me. She had wanted the baby and had
done nothing wrong that she knew of. I asked the nun if my mom was being
punished. Of course she said no and that miscarriages happen.
Then I said, “If my mom did nothing
wrong then why did God kill my unborn brother?” Evidently the question was
above the nun’s pay grade and she scurried off without trying for an answer. I
could see in the furrowing of the young woman’s eyes that she wondered too.
There were 5 years between my older
brother and me. (It still makes me sad that I now write the word “were” instead
of “are”.) Over the years I wondered at times about the brother that might have
been. Given the fact that mom and dad had 3 boys it seems natural for me to
think of another brother even though I recognize that a sister would have been
possible. There isn't anything but sadness in all the possibilities.
Why would God decide that our
mother would never get to hold our brother in her arms? Would we have hunted
and hiked together? Would we have laid down in the tall grass of fields on
crisp autumn days to warm a little as we looked up at the blue sky? Would we
have teased each other? Would he have been the quiet one instead? Would he have been
much smarter and discovered the cure for some disease or would he have been a
serial killer? I never actually wondered that last sentence. I just wanted to
make a point. My musings were much more pedestrian.
The point is I can wonder and ask
questions all I want; the truth is I’ll never know. It never happened. A miscarriage
is a life never lived either. A future that never happened.
Wouldn’t we be better off if we
just accepted that good and bad things happen in life and make the best of it?
Shouldn't we recognize that free will is a part of everything, the very fabric
of existence including the science of the physical world that God created?
Our physical bodies are fallible. If
we believe God is in charge then this fallibility is part of our design. God doesn’t
cause miscarriages to abort fetuses. (We don't need to pretty up the language
just because God we think is involved.)
However, I recognize that as a
choice/option abortion exists just as miscarriages will continue to happen
whether we like it or not because freewill exists outside of man’s law. (In my understanding
of the Christian faith it is God that provides us with free will.) It exists
and will continue to exist regardless of what the law says either way. Unintended
pregnancies or even their termination whether intentional or not can’t be
punished away.
After a couple of thousand years of
history we need to acknowledge that neither can be stopped nor eliminated. That
doesn’t mean that the extremes on opposite sides can’t work together in love
and compassion in order to find common ground. The common ground of reducing
the numbers in both instances. Reducing the numbers of miscarriages and those
needing to even consider abortions.
Even after all these words, and
years, I still can’t help but wonder about the brother that might have been.