9 year olds and abortion

I have a 9-year-old daughter. She is beautiful. She loves to sing and to dance. She loves to play with her friends riding bikes, building snow forts, riding her scooter, playing dolls. She loves to color and paint and do all kinds of arts and crafts. She sings like an angel; her smile lights up a room. She is looking forward to swimming lessons this summer and soccer this spring.

So I cannot imagine what it would be like for her, or any other little 9-year-old girl to become pregnant. This week in Brazil, we have read reports about a little 9-year-old Catholic girl who was impregnated by her stepfather.

Compounding this abomination, the little girl became pregnant with twins and has now received an abortion. I think everyone can guess the usual domino effect. The church has decried the abortion, and the slings and arrows are flying over the entire issue.

And the little girl is victimized yet again.

I’ve read a lot of the angry comments and fist shaking at the church for speaking out against the abortion and much of it has me thinking about how I would feel if this was my own daughter.

There is a lot of rightful emphasis on the danger to the life and the health of the little 80 pound girl with continuing the pregnancy. There is plenty of medical evidence to verify that teen pregnancy, (let alone pre-teen pregnancy) can be dangerous to mom and the babies. I do not think anyone is denying that. But what I fail to see in any of the comments is the acknowledgment that an invasive medical procedure, such as abortion can also have serious health effects and complications for the mother. An abortion will not take away the painful images of being abused by her stepfather. And while pregnancy and childbirth can certainly be traumatic, I haven’t seen any acknowledgment that invasive abortions can also be traumatizing. Lastly,  while everyone that I have read seems to want to talk about the risks of carrying twins to term, no one seems to be speaking more realistically of the improbability of this youngster’s chances of carrying her babies past 20 weeks.

So while I read a lot of anger towards the church’s unbending pro-life stance, I think it is misplaced. The real perpetrators are the parents that should have been protecting this young woman in the first place.

So what would I do if it were my daughter? Probably cry a lot, mostly out of concern and fear for her. But I think a more humane and gentle manner would be to take a day to day approach, and if and when the pregnancy started to endanger her life, deliver the babies in a humane manner, allowing everyone to deal with the situation in a more holistic approach. Then true healing, with confidence that everyone’s life was treated with dignity, could begin.

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