Saturday, June 22, 2013

Social Commentary Post #2: Where Have All the Mothers Gone? A Lament of Loss of Motherhood Through Abortion




(This is the second in a series on the fallen state of motherhood based on the book of Lamentations. For more information, see previous three posts.)

“A total of 784,507 abortions were reported to CDC for 2009. Of these abortions, 772,630 (98.5%) were from the 45 reporting areas that provided data every year during 2000-2009. Among these same 45 reporting areas, the abortion rate for 2009 was 15.1 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years, and the abortion ratio was 227 abortions per 1,000 live births.”

“Unintended pregnancy is the major contributor to abortion.” CDC

These statistics are from the Centers for Disease Control Website, www.cdc.gov and are the most current statistics on abortion I could find.

Another website that gives not only statistics, but the human side of abortion, especially for the mother, is www.abort73.com. On the front page of their website is a heartbreaking letter written by a young woman who felt she had no recourse but to abort her son. Read the letter and mourn for this young woman and the son she never had.

www.lifenews.com posts a January 22, 2013 article in which Norma McCorvey, the real person behind the name “Jane Roe” shares her story of how she got caught up in a diabolical piece of history and how she now fights against it. From the article:

“...most Americans don’t know that McCorvey, who was 'pro-choice' on abortion at the time, is now a pro-life advocate. She is now dedicated to reversing the Supreme Court case that bears her fictitious name, Jane Roe.”

The article continues:

“In a video, McCorvey explains her effort to obtain a legal abortion in the 1970s when facing an unplanned pregnancy. However, she has never had an abortion and now realizes that her court case was the biggest mistake of her life and currently fights to stop abortion.”

“’Back in 1973, I was a very confused twenty-one year old with one child and facing an unplanned pregnancy,” she says in the ad. 'At the time I fought to obtain a legal abortion, but truth be told, I have three daughters and never had an abortion.’"

"‘I think it’s safe to say that the entire abortion industry is based on a lie...I am dedicated to spending the rest of my life undoing the law that bears my name,' McCorvey says.’” 
End of lifenews article


Abortion doesn’t just affect the unborn. It affects their mothers. When a baby is aborted, motherhood dies along with that child. It doesn’t matter whether that mother even considers herself a mother, or potential mother, but her mothering to the aborted child never takes place. And many mothers live in excruciating guilt as they suffer in the sorrow and regret of their choice.

Imagine being told that what you are carrying in your womb is nothing but a blob of cells, and under what is perceived to be “sound medical counsel” you have an abortion. Then, as the years go by and you read news stories that reveal that babies, do, indeed feel pain, and you see ultrasounds of babies in their first weeks of life and hear their heartbeat, you come to realize that you were misinformed and most likely taken advantage of, if not downright lied to. Suddenly you realize that you were, indeed, at one time a mother, and that the baby you allowed to be killed was your very own child.



Lament of Motherhood Lost through Abortion

How the Lord has disapproved
of the killing of His own
and the hurling down of motherhood; His gift.
In ignorance mothers abandon their children.
Their maternal eyes fail from weeping
over what they have done.

They are in torment within.

Seeking relief yet finding none,
what can these shadows of mothers say to us, to you?
      “Arise, cry out in the night...(Lamentations 2:19)
       pour out your heart like water
       in the presence of the Lord
       Lift up your hands to him
       for the lives of your children.”
Let us grieve with the mothers of loss
whose children,
at their mother’s behest,
are no more,
leaving a stain of regret forever.
                                   Barb Harwood



“In the days of her affliction and wandering
Jerusalem remembers all the treasures
that were hers in days of old.” Lamentations 1:7a

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