I was just reading some of the comments on this article: Is My Baby Among the 2,200. It’s a bit triggering but I think more people need to be made aware of this situation in Indiana. Some of the comments tell the mothers who are now mourning this heinous collection of bodies that they are not allowed to do so. It’s not a choice. It’s not something they can do, just to “not feel anything.” How do I know? Well, that’s touchy but with my wife’s permission, I want to talk about it.
The reason I know is this is triggering for us. We didn’t have an abortion in the strictest sense, we had a miscarriage. We lost one of our children. The doctors recommended at that stage we have a D&C, which by all my understanding is the same thing. We didn’t kill our child, he died on his own. However, we had to have him removed. We were promised he would be buried with respect and dignity. We spent days agonizing over it, going to a priest to talk to him about it. In the end, with all the doctors pushing for it, we decided to go through this. She had to go in alone, while I sat outside waiting. Fear of losing her as well, guilt for what felt wrong to me, while at the same time feeling the doctors knew best. All of it was overwhelming and still today I want to break down when I think of it.
So here I am reading this article and wondering: is my child out there somewhere? Did they really bury him? Is there another collection somewhere with my son’s body being floated in a solution like a freak show? Not everyone chooses abortion, but I imagine every single person affected by one is wondering the same thing, while at the same time being confronted with the reality that it was a child, not a clump of cells. Compassion. Love. Forgiveness. Healing. Knowing that there are real mothers who are just now realizing their children may be in a jar somewhere and weren’t just a cup of cells should inspire us to mourn with them, not criticize and condemn them for something they did in the past, while still encouraging them to move forward to a world in which abortion is not only rare but unthinkable.