My Journey from Pro-Abortion to Pro-Life.

Don Cicchetti  7 11 18

I was liberal.  Weren’t all of us in 1976?  Sure seemed like it. That and bad hair and awful cars. Yes, I remember.

One day a girl I knew came back from summer vacation.  Pregnant. Wasn’t me. I never slept with her. It was a guy she had a fling with over the summer in between her junior and senior years of high school.  She was at her wits end because she really liked kids and did not really want to abort her baby.

So, she asked me what should she do?  In my stupid youth I nonetheless had a few little scraps of how to reason morally, so rather than just giver her my opinion, (which in all honesty was to abort) I asked her questions.

What do you want to be doing next year?

I want to go to college.

Do you want to marry the father?

No. And I think he was careless because he figured he could hang onto me if I got pregnant.

Is that the way to treat someone you love?

No

Do you want to be a single Mom in college?

No, and it will affect my social life, guys I meet and everything.

Are you ready to take this on by yourself?

No

So, what do you think you should do?

Have an abortion.

So she did. She took a friend and held her hand while the doctor killed her child.  I was relieved and with most of her friends (who knew), we thought she had retrieved her future from that bad boyfriend.

But she wasn’t. Relieved, that is.  In fact she was kind of heartbroken and talked constantly of how she wanted to have babies soon so that she could forget the missing one.  We dated for a bit, but though I liked her, it didn’t feel right and didn’t last.

Over time, the whole thing faded in my memory. I went on, being a staunch pro-abort and a good liberal. Then one day I attended an Ethics conference held in the sister health institution to the college I worked at.

The subject was abortion.

There were three positions represented by those on the platform. A secularist who was pro-abort, a Catholic who was anti-abort, and the Ethicist from the institution where the conference was held and his view was something he characterized as “proximate personhood” which basically meant that the closer the baby got to viability the more moral consequence there was to killing her, until, when the baby was viable, it would be murder to kill her.

The Catholic and the atheist both presented their predictable positions and then the Ethicist presented his.  Interestingly, his view was treated with scorn by both the Catholic and the Atheist and quickly, and soundly rebutted.  Who has standing (either legally, or by wisdom and insight) to pick the day of viability? Suppose we get it wrong and kill all sorts of viable babies?  Is it really OK to kill a baby on one day and then wrong on the next?  Says who? If babies have less than full personhood before viability, is it then OK to kill them? And so forth. I found it fairly startling to see just how poorly the local Ethicist’s view was regarded and how easily dismissed it was by the more clearly-reasoned and grounded views held by the other two, and I realized that “proximate personhood” was a cobbled together mess designed to keep the one who held the view from having to join the Catholics and the “religious right” in their deep convictions or the Atheist in his and in fact was really the atheist position dressed up in a kind smile and would lower the abortion numbers not one whit being as it had no real power to convict and to change hearts.  It was  just a neat device to keep the theologically liberal from having to join the great unwashed “religious right” in their view, yet allowed for a certain amount of moral posturing against the atheist position should one find that useful.

Mind you, I had gone into the conference expecting that the local Ethicist’s view would prevail and impress the other two. That it did not, and was so soundly rebutted, was eye-opening for me. It was perhaps the first time I gained respect for a conservative position and for conservative thinking in general.  But I was still a pro-abort, figuring it should be left to the woman to decide. I was starting to awaken though and it wouldn’t be long until this issue blew up in a major way for me.

That happened when the Campus Chaplain asked me to edit a video he had.  It was a sonogram of a live abortion.  I was interested and curious, because I had never seen an abortion and this was an opportunity to do so without anyone proselytizing me with their views.

That video changed my life.

At the end, I was shaking, and in tears for a half hour.  I had seen a poor little boy try to get away from the abortion tools that were pulling him apart.  First an arm, then a leg, another arm, all the while he struggled for life. Then his head. Stillness.  I realized I had just seen a snuff film. Oh, the world called it “medical care” or a “procedure” but that was not what it was.  It was murder.  That little boy could have gone hiking with me. Learned to shoot. Learned to fix his car. Fallen in love.  Now? Pieces.

This is choice?

Still I was pro-choice, but I felt better about myself by saying things like “well I would never want my wife to have an abortion, but it should be a choice”.

I was a slow learner it appears.

The my wife got pregnant. Years before I was ready.  I had 5 more years of travel, running around, seeing shows, watching the sun come up, in me before I wanted children.  I needed to be alone for a few days.  During that time, I prayed to God for clarity. Abortion had become unthinkable, but I thought about it anyway, just to test my convictions, and I knew I could not. One night I had a dream, it was a little girl, sitting on a grassy hillside in the sun, her hair blowing in the breeze and she looked up and smiled at me.  I fell in love then, and there was no longer any doubt about this issue.  Our daughter’s birth only reinforced what I had learned. This is a child. My child. She always was and always will be.  God had finally opened my stupid and stubborn eyes.  Thanks be to God!

Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”.  

Notice, the baby is not referred to as “it” but as “you”.   God views us, not as “it” but as “you” and from the moment of conception.

Then someone recommended to me Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s book “The Hand of God”.  He was a co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League and personally responsible for thousands of abortions.  Then one day, God called him out.  It’s a profound story, actually similar to the calling out of Saul to become Paul.  Nathanson tells the truth.  Read it. Change your heart.  Save your soul.  Save your child.

Oh, and basic Christianity, that much-maligned entity the theological liberals are so afraid of? Well, they’re right. And they have 2000 years of wisdom and the Bible and the Holy Spirit backing them up. They have more scholarship, insight and presence of God than many liberals will ever know.

I wish I could go back to that young girl in San Diego all those years ago. I would tell her I’m so sorry.

Let’s try that conversation, but with more God and less Satan this time.

What do you want to be doing next year?

I want to go to college.

Can you do that with a new baby?

I don’t know.  

Let’s look into it.

How do you feel about this baby?

Well, it’s my baby. I’d hate to lose it.

Do you want to marry the guy?

No. And I think he was careless because he figured he could hang onto me if I got pregnant.

Do you think it’s possible to find a husband when you have a new baby?

It will be hard.

Yes it will.  I’ll help you with the baby when you need it.

Yes!  Please.  Would you ever marry me when I have a baby from someone else?

Let’s give that some time and pray about it, but I will be here for you, no matter what.

Do you believe that God will bless you if you keep your baby?

I hope so.  I’d like to think so.

I think God always blesses us when we put our lives in His hands and do the right thing.

What do you think is the right thing?

I want to keep my baby.

This is how we begin to live a whole life again. A healed life.

Stand up. It’s our only chance.