The compassion missing from the abortion debate

I live in Tillamook County, a rural dairy-farming community where faith runs deep, and this fall, campaign signs line our roads. Abortion is part of the argument those signs are making. I am writing especially to those of who oppose abortion rights, in the hope that my story reminds you of the compassion Jesus taught.

I was 14 when I made the hardest decision of my life. Fifty-five years later, with the Nov. 3 election nearly here, I’m still asking the people who debate that decision to remember there is a person behind it.

The abortion debate has become a shouting match. I believe it needs more compassion, and that’s why I’m sharing my story.

I turn 70 four days after Election Day. I have advanced mitochondrial myopathy, and I no longer care what others think of me. I have made my peace with the only one whose love really matters. I know without a shadow of a doubt where my soul belongs and to whom.

I was a wounded young woman with a deep need to feel loved, and I had come to believe that love came only from the value of my body and not my soul.

My father nearly disowned me when I chose to terminate rather than place my baby for adoption. He had been adopted in Missouri in 1921, when the law treated adoption as a complete legal break from his birth family, and he carried a deep hurt of rejection all his life.

I need you to know that my choice came from deep compassion and concern for the life my child would lead. I did not want her to spend her life hurting because she felt I had rejected her very existence. In heaven, she would not have to know that pain. That was the logic of my 14-year-old brain.

The father of my baby was a violent teenager who died young. He once picked me up over his head while I was pregnant and threw me to the ground. I truly feared that I would give birth to a child who could never be loved, because she would be born malformed and broken. And I grieved for her.

But I did what I felt was right. I chose to protect the soul of my unborn child rather than bring her into a world that would only offer hate. That terrified me so much that I felt the kindest, most loving thing I could do was let her soul stay where she was and one day come into a loving family. That was, and is, the power of my faith.

My favorite Jesus story is in the Gospel of John, chapter 8. A crowd wanted to stone a woman to death. Jesus told them that anyone without sin should throw the first stone, and no one could. I try to remember that whenever I hear this debate.

I grew up in the social revolution of the sixties, when women’s power over our own lives was finally growing. I hate to think of that power shrinking now.

So whoever you vote for on Nov. 3, I’m asking you to remember the women behind this debate: Women who have survived abuse, who have felt denied their own worth, and who deserve a voice in decisions about their own lives. And I’m asking men to stand beside women, not above them.

And yes, I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am deeply loved and never condemned by the God who created my soul, even though I made a very painful choice in my youth. I had little supportive guidance.

I support a woman’s right to choose either option. In today’s more tolerant climate, I encourage adoption. But in certain circumstances, and after much prayer, I believe women and their families can find a peaceful, healing solution to a truly difficult moment in life.

I pray all options will be available to them without misplaced judgment or harsh consequences.

Between now and Nov. 3, I am praying for more compassion in this debate. Whatever your faith, or no faith at all, I hope we can find common ground.