I can understand.

I can understand the fear.

I can understand the shame. 

I can understand the pressure.

I grew up, where when I hit puberty, someone in my family made it VERY clear that if I was ever to get pregnant - this person would pack my suitcase for me and leave it on the front steps. A person who, while I was young, focused on the shame when "it" happened to other people. Their unmarried status. Their growing figure. How limited their life will be now. A person who would talk about easily this could have been prevented by abstaining or by 'making it go away' because this person had grown up poor with many mouths to feed and "no one deserves that". A person who talked about another relative who had adopted twice and both of those beloved adopted children grew into a life of drugs and trouble.

So, honestly, my abstaining from sex in high school was mostly built on the fear of being expelled from my home, the shame of others knowing what I had done if I did, and pressure of how wrecked my life would be if I raised a baby while I was still a baby or how mixed up my child would be if they were adopted.

Nope, it was not so much the beauty of waiting till you met the man you saved yourself for, that you would take vows with, etc. It was never mentioned how RARE, courageous and heartbreakingly heroic it would be to actually carry a baby to term and then give it up to be adopted if I choose to not wait for marriage. I never even got a safe sex talk. My birth control was fear, shame, and pressure. And, those things are not 98% effective at preventing pregnancy but, I can state with 98% certainty I would have sought an abortion first before feeling I could come to this person for guidance.

So while I don't know how I would have really felt, or what I would have chosen to do (I'd like to think I would choose life, but I sometimes really wonder), I can understand. 

Before I continue, I can't imagine how scary and hard it must be to have raise children and teenagers to adulthood with the best possible start. Can I really fault an anxious loved one who was probably so scared of something happening to a child they so desperately loved that they did what they thought was best to ensure the best life possible? As a mother myself, I lay awake at night wondering how would we survive if Lovely, Valiant, Gift or future children developed a terrible drug or alcohol addiction. How do I raise them to wait for marriage when I know the intoxicating power of true love and lust when you are in a wonderful relationship that can lead to marriage? I worry about these things as much as I do teen driving, sexual predators, and childhood diseases. How do I have those talks with my kids? So, I write this knowing that this loved one did what they did out of the love of being a parent. I do know that.

But, I can understand.

When you simply want acceptance, when you crave unconditional love in a conditional world, and appearance is everything -  fear, shame, and pressure can lead to secret keeping, concealing, and that there is only "one" option to "fix" everything.

My becoming married didn't stop this understanding. This same person has made it clear that having multiple children is a weight. While one grandchild per couple has been welcomed with the fatted calf, I somehow have become the only child to go on to have more, and be open to more, and those children have been welcomed with indifference until their birth, or with venomous reaction based on their prejudiced feelings until birth. I am the only to embrace NFP and I have to confess, I battle anxiety at times during my cycle because of the lack of support I would feel and get from certain family, and many friends for a surprise blessing. I am a married woman, and yet I feel fear, shame, and pressure constantly. I can understand. 

I shouldn't let others think for me, or impact me in such a way (I'm working on this), but I can't express enough how those feelings from puberty have permeated my married life. Yoke that to our current struggles, and the temptation to listen to the world and embrace birth control over family planning has been hard to resist. It sounds so much more acceptable and sympathetic and, dare I say, 'responsible' to tell people your birth control failed than "We use NFP." That has GOT to change. It is never a failure when new life is created. It is NEVER a failure. We have got to change our vocabulary and our feelings. To get sympathy for a hormone failing and being blamed for using "that NFP business" for a surprise blessing shows how warped our society has become. So yes, I can understand.

I can understand why abortion is viewed as a needed option. I can understand it can feel like the only option. When a clinic gives more compassion to a fearful, shamed, and pressured girl than those who are called to champion life do, I can understand why it is available. When "pro-lifers" choose to destroy the dignity of the mother by judging the pregnancy, judging her soul, the choice to walk around pregnant for 9 months alone while they stare and gossip,  I can understand why adoption seems to be the horrific option ("She gave it away..."). Why would you put yourself in that position after the fear, shame, and pressure? Shame on us for allowing that to perpetuate. I can understand the great divide between pro-choice and pro-life when I know 99% of those that are pro-choice do not think they are pro-death - they want to protect women, give excellent and free care, etc when "pro-lifers" carry terribly violent signs and dress as the Grim Reaper (BTW, FANTASTIC article on this by Simcha Fisher here on this topic). I can understand.

I don't have any idea what it is liked to face pregnancy after rape, the rationalizations for morning after pills, or face a surprise pregnancy outside of marriage. I can understand the temptation to use abortion as birth control.  But, with the shortage of domestic adoptions leaving infertile couples or families called to enlarge their families through adoption with empty, aching arms, 1/3 of all African Americans killed through abortion in the last 30 years of the 40 year legal history, and 1.2 million deaths of God's precious souls on earth each year - I KNOW we have to start changing our lingo from ending an unwanted pregnancy to supporting an unplanned pregnancy. We have to support those heroes choosing adoption. We have to keep supporting medical advances that are proving what we didn't concretely know in 1973 - how LIFE really starts at conception. I've been astounded at what I've learned through friends going through IVF  - IVF doctors know gender at cell division before implantation! So, how then is it not human?  We've come so far since 1973 and back alley abortions. Surely we can do more to SUPPORT now than terminate? That, I can understand. That I can pray for.

We can't end there. There are two victims during an abortion procedure - the child AND the mother. The fathers also face great loss. We need to do more in post abortion healing. We need to remind them of their dignity in a "pro-life world" of damnation and judgement. They are beloved, fearfully and wonderfully made, and so valued. Who ever WANTS an abortion? How is it the first choice on someone's list? Compassion and love are needed in heaps for healing for these precious souls. How can we forsake them?

So, until prayer and answers come, I can understand I need to march. I need to march for life, if not with my feet than with my heart. I need to speak up on days like today. We need dialogue, not debate. My family usually marches together, though we took off last year after I had a confrontation the year before with a marcher because they had a violent sign and was nervous about Lovely seeing it. Other than that one sign that one year, the silent, prayerful walk had always felt like a safe way to show our support and civic participation for our children (be a part of peaceful change). Our eldest knows we walk for babies that have not gotten to stay in the womb till birth, and that has sufficed for her and her sister. But this year, Lovely returned (the little ones and I could not attend). I knew she would be with a safe group, and DC tends to get the more violent signs than our state's walk. But, it made me VERY nervous when Lovely asked me if she could make a sign to carry (My thoughts..."Oh no! She has noticed the signs!! What do I say????"). I told her yes, and she made the following "sign":

Pretty amazing and touching image, don't you think?

I told her "Oh, Lovely! What a BEAUTIFUL picture of Mary and Baby Jesus!!!! I love all of it!!" to which Lovely replied, "It's not Baby Jesus, it's Mary with one of the babies."

Stunned, choked up silence. 

I'd say she pretty much sums it up correctly. 

My daughter makes a sign to march with, that depicts Mary truly being "our mother". Mary, in her glory and strength, will love and hold these precious souls that have gone back to God. Mary does so with love, grace,  loving arms, and a SMILE of forgiveness and acceptance. I would hope a mother or father who suffer post their abortion procedure days or years later can look at Mary's face and see the love radiating back at them that HEALS. She wears green - a lush color of LIFE and growth. I can't help but think the rainbow is a depiction of the biblical promise of Gen 9:15 "I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life".

March on, sweet love, march on.

I pray we can live up to the covenant too, even if it only seeing these lost souls as citizens that deserve civil rights in a secular sense, if we can't be united in the eyes of God and see life made in His image.

I can understand.

Can you understand me?