This seems to be the week when everyone posts his abortion memories, so here's mine:

As a teen in the late '70s, I thought abortion was an expensive, yet fortunate, form of last-ditch birth control. In the heat of competition with my peers I wasn't willing to pass up an opportunity for sex with a real girl just because a condom wasn't handy, so a clinic served the same purpose as the backstop on a baseball field. Misjudge, and you might need it.

I knew there was a debate raging out there, but it didn't impose on my world. One woman I worked with at a politician's call center gave me a short lecture to the contrary, and I shrugged it off. I lived in the here-and-now. The subject was never discussed at home, so whatever I learned came from the popular culture.

in my college years, i was interning in d.c. One night I took the Metro out to the suburbs to visit a girl I knew from UT-Austin. Some months earlier, we'd had an appalling, drunken encounter at my college apartment, which we'd both regretted but never spoke of again. As we sat down to dinner, I asked how she'd been. She said not so well; she'd been in the hospital. I asked why.

"When you're three months pregnant, you have to do something."

My breathing stopped, and I stared down at the checkered tablecloth for a very long time. My left brain was busy counting months backward; my right brain pictured a silent, still baby, resembling me, covered in blood.

At that moment my heart aligned with my mind, and I realized I'd been horribly wrong in behavior and attitude for a very long time. The spectacle of an innocent other dying for my selfishness settled down in my conscience and wouldn't budge. In theological terms, I'd been confronted by my sin.

The secondary matter was, the math didn't add up. She'd been with men other than me, assuring them she was infertile just as she'd done that night in my apartment. But somewhere else, in another conversation with her, there would be another young man like me, and I hope he'd stared at a tablecloth for a very long time as well.

d.c. seemed to be where i took most of my moral bearings. It was also where others revealed theirs to me.

A couple of years into my career, I returned to Washington for the weekend to visit with friends and former roommates. Inadvertently, I'd chosen the same weekend as some sort of rally for "choice." I knew what that meant, but what I didn't realize was, the party we were headed to on Friday night was a kind of preparatory rally of its own.

From inside and out, it looked like any other D.C. townhouse blowout: Dozens of casually dressed twentysomethings downing keg beer with R.E.M. filling the space between them.

About an hour into it, and after much goading by his friends, the host stood up on a crate to make an announcement. He didn't say much more than a welcome and a benediction to have fun tonight, but somewhere in the middle he remarked that it seemed funny we were all enjoying such a great time considering "why we're here." That's as specific as he got, "why we're here." He came back to the phrase at least once more before offering a toast.

Then the R.E.M. started up again, and the party went on.

I stood staring at him for a while. Then I turned to the others, and watched them laughing, drinking, dancing. All had taken time away from their usual weekend activities to support a cause, but they could not call it by name.

"Choice" was the word of choice, and they couldn't even say that.

It told me all I needed to know.

as our second child approached term, I made a very bad joke in asking Squeeky if she was sure she wanted to have the baby. She looked puzzled.

"You know it's legal to abort in Texas even now, right?" I asked.

She sat silently for a moment, then burst into tears. No, she didn't know that. She had no idea you could legally kill a baby right up until his hour of birth.

That's what Roe v. Wade did to America. So many of us don't even realize the monstrosity of—as the button I saw taped to a D.C. friend's refrigerator—abortion on demand and without apology.

When I saw that, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade had not yet admitted she'd lied about being raped.

Seven judges used a lie to blunt the will of the people of 50 states.

That's what we commemorate each January 22.

Allow me to lighten things up a bit. Some fellow went to a pro-life rally over the weekend and returned with photos of some of the beautiful women there.

Yes, that includes the young nun, for all the right reasons.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:08 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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