In the political arena, I feel it appropriate to use the brutal realities of abortion. These would be the photos of aborted babies, and the *Abortion is murder* signs, but when approaching women on the issue of abotion, there must be a spirit of truthfulness, gentleness, and an attitude that says, *I care about you and your situation*. We can validate her and her feelings without approving of her decision (should it be abortion). We can share information about her choices so that she can make an informed decision. We can offer her emotional support, that says, *I still care for you even though you aborted*.

I write this after being educated. I thought that it was all about the baby. I had this vigilante mindset that I was going to save the babies. I just started the pursuit of being a counselor in a crisis pregnancy center with the intention of “saving babies”, but on the first day of training, I discovered the woman. I was taught that we would be serving women who have been through the ringer, and the situation they are in has them in such a moral and physical deilemmna. And my purpose was not to save their baby from destruction, my purpose was to care for her and minister to her where she is at. My purpose is to share information with her and then hope and pray she makes the right decision concerning her life.

I do not agree with abortion. I think that every woman who gets pregnant should carry the baby to term and either parent, or make an adoption plan for her baby. In a perfect world, this would happen. But since we live in an imperfect world, I urge you to consider the woman. I urge you to feel compassion for the struggle she’s in. I urge you to recognize the pain that the abortion causes her emotionally, physically and spiritually. There are sometimes circumstances that in her mind, although do not make her choice to abort “right” they force her into a decision that no woman should have to make.

So today, my thought is don’t forget about the women. They need people to care for them, and not pass judgment on them.

One of the main focuses of the article should be that no one knew the girl was pregnant.

“People who knew her at school said she wore baggy clothing, and nobody suspected she was pregnant, the Houston Chronicle reported Thursday.”

This girl’s classmates didn’t even suspect she was pregnant, and the parents aren’t mentioned at all in the article.  How could a 14-year-old girl go through an entire pregnancy and no one, least of all her parents, notice until she was giving birth in a school restroom?

The scary thing is that this doesn’t seem like a random occurence.

“The incident came just three days after another 14-year-old girl delivered a stillborn fetus in the bathroom of an airplane on her way back to Houston from a middle-school field trip. “

A similar situation 25 miles away in just three days? This should be addressed. Something needs to be done.

Perhaps the problem is that these girls don’t know any better. Perhaps the problem is that they do know better and that’s why they tried to hide it. Perhaps the problem lies not with the girls, but with their teachers, parents, role models, etc.

Something caused these girls to become pregnant. I’m pretty sure the number 1 cause of pregnancy is sex. I’m even going to go out on a limb and assume these girls became pregnant because they weren’t taught about safe-sex, if they were taught anything about sex at all. (The alternative is that they just didn’t care, which is a more frightening possibility.) If we as a society do not educate our children about the “adult world” that they are becoming a part of at younger ages, there will be more news stories exactly like this one.

We need to step it up. We need to have more education about such matters in our schools instead of just ignoring it and hoping that parents will teach their kids about sex, because obviously some parents aren’t doing that. These children - yes, a 14-year-old is still a child – missed something. Whether it was information about sex,  safe-sex or even other alternatives such as adoption, whatever they missed could have prevented these tragedies.

Something has to be done.

The above is just one statement of several included in an article titled Changing Abortion’s Pronoun that came out in the LA times today.  The author of this article discusses how many men often suffer through the same guilt and depression that women do after abortions.

Therapist Vincent M. Rue, who helped develop the concept of post-abortion trauma, runs an online study that asks men to check off symptoms (such as irritability, insomnia and impotence) that they feel they have suffered as a result of an abortion. When men are widely recognized as victims, Rue said, “that will change society.”

Indeed it will change society.  Before, abortion has often been labeled as women’s problem: something for the women to worry about and fight over, with men only getting involved to  help.  Now society is forced to look at the other half of the relationship. Abortion is no longer a feminist topic.

If it comes into the spotlight that men suffer from abortion too, that it isn’t only the women who are hurt by it (besides the babies themselves, but that’s another topic), perhaps the ease with which abortions are able to be performed will dissipate.

Chris Aubert, a Houston lawyer, felt only indifference in 1985 when a girlfriend told him she was pregnant and planned on an abortion. When she asked if he wanted to come to the clinic, he said he couldn’t; he played softball on Saturdays. He stuck a check for $200 in her door and never talked to her again.

Aubert, 50, was equally untroubled when another girlfriend had an abortion in 1991. “It was a complete irrelevancy,” he said. But years later, Aubert felt a rising sense of unease. He and his wife were cooing at an ultrasound of their first baby when it struck him — “from the depths of my belly,” he said — that abortion was wrong.

“I have this stain on my soul,” Aubert said, “and it will always be there.”

It is no longer a question of women’s choice or women’s rights.  The fathers have to be taken into account as well.  Even men who originally supported the abortions of their babies, like Chris Aubert, have afterwards felt deep regret.
Now the men need to take a step further and stand up to tell others what they go through.  It is the time for awareness and protest.

Aubert pictures men by the hundreds praying, chanting — and waving signs: “I regret my abortion.”
I think that is a good idea.