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

:: Friday, October 08, 2004 ::

I keep harkening back to this post. The topic of being a "good mother" after abortion fascinates me. Typically abortion doesn't make you feel good about yourself as a person, a woman or especially a mother.

People who love and care for you, those who see the good in you, try to convince you that yes, you can compartmentalize abortion; you can abort and still be a "good" mother. Post-abortion groups try to do the same thing when you have expressed true sorrow (and therefore regret). They tell you the truth: Christ forgives you and you are made new; the crimson of your tremendous wrongdoing has been bleached white by the massive sacrifice of the Lord Whose mercy endures forever. This is good to know, and yet...

If Andrea Yates, Susan Smith and brain-bashing mama Dee Laney apologized, were set free, and had ten children each that they were "extra-specially" good to, do you think that you or anyone else would ever truly be able to think of them as good mothers?

When I don't feel like a good mother (because of the grisley heaping helping of death I offered to my second trimester first baby) it is seen as self-punative, as guilt-induced self-flagellation. I contend that it has less to do with a desire to "punish" myself and more to do with the nature of things. God says He forgives but He also says you reap what you sow... and no pun intended, but this SICLE mom has done some reaping.

I strive to be a mother of excellence and I always will. My children deserve it. But somewhere deep in my heart I know that I am not a "good mother", that I never really can be because of what I chose to do with one five-minute allotment of my life. Calling me a "good mother" because of my work with the children who survived my hand would be like calling O.J. Simpson a good husband in any subsequent marriage.

And this only serves as yet another illustration of why abortion is not an easy, ephemeral or escapable thing. Ultimately, abortion is very, very bad for us all.

:: ashli 8:52 AM # ::
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