:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 ::

Saw a CD reference on Emily's blog. Has anyone heard of The Choice? It's supposed to be an "abortion recovery tool", but if you've been reading me for any length of time you know how I feel about that. However, the site provides clips, and they didn't sound half bad. Not like that old It's Gotta Stop! anti-abortion tape. My GOODNESS that thing is AWFUL! The songs are hokey and horrible. I think Pat Boone is on the thing talking like a child during one song, babbling on and on about his prenatal development. Something like:

"Today I am 3 weeks old. My heart is beating just for my Mommy whom I love and can't wait to put my arms around." At the end of the song, of course, his mother kills him in an abortion. It's a stupid, low quality musical compilation, but it does a good job of ripping a SICLE mom's heart out.

Lots of people (see: "people who identify themselves as Christians") think that if a song like that causes you to cry it's a big success because the tears are somehow "healing". Anything that breaks your heart and makes you focus on the FACT (and sadly, it is a fact) that you killed your child brings you closer to that ever elusive "healing". I'm not sure I agree, and so I am leery of pretty much anything "post-abortion", especially musical endeavors, because music has an eerie way of unlocking internal doors that speech just can't for some.

However, I do feel there's a place for music about the SICLE. I heard Steven Curtis Chapman's With Hope on the radio the other day, and as we say in the South: I like to have fell out. Translation: I nearly lost all composure. It was so much about what my husband and I went through losing our first child. But there were things that didn't fit. It is evident that the song's parents are blameless, and this is not the death of an unborn child whose face they have never really seen. Yet in this song, for me at least, is a child that two parents welcomed into the world. There is absolutely no controversy or debate over the "wantedness" of the child. This is a normal, healthy relationship, a dearly loved child, and the terrible loss of a family's hopes and dreams for their child. This comes closer to our situation than anything on the horrible "It's Gotta Stop" recording.

I don't know about these new SICLE CD's. I haven't purchased them, so I haven't been able to really give them a fair review. Part of me is really unmotivated to do so, because they seem to deal with all the typical controversy surrounding abortion.

This type of effort, like the others, I imagine is a schooling on unplanned pregnancies where the child is not wanted or acknowledged as real or important by at least some parties involved. It's an investigation of guilt and not really of the grief related to a married couple losing the child they wanted so much to raise. It says nothing of maternal illness and how to survive physical torture and horrible, neglectful physicians. It only talks of social choices, having a heart, of being forgiven and set free from guilt.

It's all rather impersonal to me. Aside from killing my child, I have very little in common with the vast majority of other SICLE moms, and these are the moms these CD's are produced for. This isn't commentary on class, because that is a fallacy. No one is "better" than anyone else on the playing field of moms with SICLES. Good reasons don't kill children any less. No, it is only to say, I can't relate to much of the post-abortion "healing" efforts. It alienates and isolates me further and that is all.

Maybe I will break down one day and give some of these new SICLE CD's a listen. Still, I imagine that, as with the Steven Curtis Chapman song, while I can feel it on some important levels, it won't really be a good fit for me, a mom with a maternal health SICLE.

And as I sit typing this, a small bird flies into the picture window 3 feet from my face and breaks his delicate, little neck. Life is very fragile indeed. Just one more reminder, one more way to start the day.

SICLECell@hotmail.com

:: ashli 9:23 AM # ::
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