Surviving Choice

I read this on Pastor Che blog and wanted to share it.

Surviving Choice

“I’d known ever since I can remember that I was adopted, and was born about 
four months premature. I knew that I was very sick and tiny, and the doctors 
didn’t have a very good prognosis for my life. I didn’t have a lot of questions 
about that growing up, because I was in a great home. I was loved, and life 
was good.”

The speaker is an attractive young woman, with short brown hair and 
sparkling blue eyes, doing an interview on a television talk show.  As she 
speaks, a series of photos of her as an infant, child and young adult are 
flashed across the screen.  Looking at the smiling images displaying 
obvious robust health, it is hard to believe she began life as such a 
premature, high-risk infant.  The photo montage ends with more recent 
wedding pictures to husband Ryan in 2005, and the birth of their first 
child, a daughter Olivia, in 2008. 

She speaks of the joys of motherhood, after working for several years 
as a social worker with a masters degree in substance abuse, and 
assault and sexual abuse counseling.  As I listen I think, “Here is an 
accomplished, young mother who undoubtedly brings great joy to her 
adoptive parents, who probably can’t imagine what their lives would 
have been like without her.  Another heartwarming human interest story.” 

As I start to change channels, her next words stop me cold, and rivet 
my attention.  “I was 14 years old when my Mom decided to tell me 
the circumstances surrounding my birth.  She said, ’There’s no easy 
way to tell you this.’ Then she just kind of blurted it out. She said, 
‘Melissa, your mother had an abortion during her fifth month of 
pregnancy with you and you survived it.’”

She goes on to describe how her 19 year-old mother chose to have 
a saline abortion, subjecting Melissa to 5 days of toxic salt 
poisoning in the womb.  Supposed to be dead at delivery, she was 
discarded as medical waste, but rescued by a nurse who heard her 
feeble grunts.  She spent the next 2 months in a NICU, on IV 
feeding, not expected to survive.  She was adopted by her parents, 
who made their choice in the face of medical warnings that Melissa 
would probably have multiple impairments and never be normal. 

Despite the happiness she enjoyed with her adoptive parents, 
Melissa Ohden shares the deep pain this revelation brought. 
“My biggest question was, ‘Why? Why could you make that 
decision to end my life?  Could I have been so unwanted and 
so unloved?”  It took a decade of soul searching, but Melissa 
relates that she came to understand that her life, indeed 
everyone’s life, has tremendous significance that needs to be 
respected.

Consider for a moment, what if your mother had chosen to 
abort you?  Your spouse, if you are married, would not know 
you and your children would never have been born.  
Your parents would never have watched either you or your 
children grow up.  Your siblings and friends would never have 
had all those wonderful childhood adventures with you, and 
your work associates would never experience your 
contributions to the group effort.  The ripple effects of a single 
human life go on and on, bridging generations.

Psalm 139, verses 13 and 16 tell us: “For You created my 
inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.  
Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for 
me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.”  
If God values the significance of our life so much, can we value 
our life or the life of anyone else, less?

Please come and join us this Sunday at 10:30 AM to continue 
this discussion.  My sermon, “Creating a Culture of Life,” is 
Part 4 in our current series, “Reformer’s Pledge.”