Why I chose Life

Once you know what it feels like, to encapsulate another being, to be pregnant with love and a little baby heart, you truly can’t imagine. How someone could ever reject this. How someone could possibly ignore that real feeling, deep in your womb, of another life. My heart aches, my head pounds, my eyes leak. For all those babies. Who can’t fight back. Who feel an iron grip clamp down around their precious and tiny leg, and swiftly rip it off. Those unassuming little beings, so mired in trust, surrounded by a warm pool of amniotic fluid. Until one day, for reasons they will never know and reasons that mean nothing–absolutely nothing, compared to this life-and-death– their sweet little womb home is ripped open and, like a helpless ant on the pavement, they are ripped to pieces. Except they are not an ant. Just like my darling little boy, now six months old, they are a human being. A person. And the very same mother who they wholeheartedly trust, gives them up to Death. A terrible, painful death. It hurts my heart to think of their thoughts, as it is happening. So confused. So bewildered. They are not prepared for pain. They are not prepared for violence. They want only to grow. They need only to grow.

I look at my sleeping child. He is a miracle. Such an amazing, sickly-sweet miracle. I remember the way I cried when I found out. I remember the terror I felt grip my heart, for my miracle was unplanned. I was too young, I thought, too poor, too unprepared. I woke up every day for a week, too depressed to even talk. I was mourning my life. Mourning that my life would be over. (Oh how wrong I was!) And throughout the pregnancy, miracle after miracle, my baby kept surviving. It is still so hard for me to believe sometimes, that he is here and he is healthy. But I remember the terror and to all those mothers– the ones with the tiniest humans just beginning to grow inside of them– I wish I could be there with you. At that scary moment when you realize life is about to change. I want to hold your hand and kiss your hair and tell you. Your baby loves you. Your baby is real and she needs you. Don’t hurt her. If there is one thing I can guarantee, it is that you won’t regret choosing life. Be brave. Be brave. Choose love.