Due dates

I've heard a lot of post-abortive women talk about the pain they experience on their baby's duedate, or the anniversary of their abortion. But for me, I don't have any of that. I don't remember what day it was, and I have no idea what my duedate was. I know the abortion was around the first week of May because it was just before the annual Walk for Hunger in Boston that I was planning on attending.

Other than that, I have no idea when my baby would have been born. I never named her/him, it never even occurred to me to do so. When I walked out of that abortion clinic, I never thought about that baby again for years. The happiness I had experienced when I found out I was pregnant was replaced with a bitterness and anger. Anger at those people who kept insisting that abortion was the killing of a child. Didn't they know it was just a blob of tissue? Why did they think it was a baby?

What I realize now is that in having an abortion, in killing my baby, I lost a piece of my humanity. In order to see the humanity of the child, I would have to admit my own participation in murder. And when everyone you know insists that abortion is a good thing, it is very hard to see otherwise. In fact, this is exactly why pro-abortion people villify pro-lifers the way they do and label us "extremists."

It has become extreme to care about the unborn. It is extreme to offer alternatives. It is extreme to care for the babies of women who feel they have no other choice than abortion due to various life circumstances. It is extreme to have compassion. It is extreme to think of human babies as being human. I'll take the extreme label, thank you very much, and in the meantime try to recapture that piece of my humanity that was taken from me when my baby was killed.