Giving up the gift
Gray, Madelein
GIVING UP THE GIFT ONE WOMAN'S ABORTION DECISION MADELEIN GRAY Until I crashed against my limitations, I seemed to be the perfect Catholic mother. I was known as an active parishioner and...
...The thought horrifies me, but I feel backed into a corner...
...It has taken me years of gradually increasing doses of this medicine to overcome an allergy to it, and, so far, it has saved me from major surgery...
...Back at home, I sleep well for the first time in several weeks...
...The greatest punishment I will receive is that which I am already suffering— the knowledge that I will never know this child...
...I see it flutter out of me and into the sky like a butterfly...
...But I do ask the church for a more open invitation to counseling and reconciliation, as well as reassurance to women that they will not be shamed or condemned...
...They are still so young—ages six, three, and one...
...15...
...We could so easily not be here, have never existed...
...I am run through a succession of steps in this efficient system: blood test, viewing of a video, a quick physical exam, a perfunctory chat with a counselor who sends us to the financial officer...
...In this pastoral setting, in this leave of absence from home and routine, strong bonds are forged among our group of new friends...
...Their mundane, matter-of-fact manner is comforting, and I am grateful to these nurses, who seem to know just what we need...
...Autumn 1992—My family and I spend this season living in a college community far from home, in the countryside...
...I cry in the parking lot, and then we go to lunch...
...It is horrifying to realize that a million-and-a-half uniquely painful stories are played out each year in the United States...
...At eight weeks' gestation we were amazed to see a lima bean-sized creature exuberantly flipping through the amniotic fluid, her little heart rapidly beating...
...My husband worries about my getting very sick and not being there for him or the children...
...I am in the most hellish situation I can imagine...
...I remember last night's dream, which was my true good-by...
...I need my church too much to risk being hurt more deeply than I already am...
...She is now a tall, talented, and especially kind nineyear-old...
...I am relieved to be back in the recovery room...
...I do not have the energy and spirit to raise four young children...
...One piece of the mind of God has evaporated and become lost in the universe...
...It is so hard to face reality that I literally spend days in bed under a heap of blankets, coming out from under them only when absolutely necessary...
...But I am informed that they will not do abortions before eight weeks of pregnancy...
...In the abortion debate, this public battle about the most personal of matters, the voices left unheard, the stories lost among the placards and drowned out by simplistic slogans are those of the very women who have felt desperate enough to seek abortion...
...ultrasound examination...
...Had I been Mary, Jesus would never have been born...
...But without God, without my community, I would die spiritually...
...I receive the answer that, having borne three children already, I know the gift of a baby...
...I have told none of them what I've done and now feel that I live in a different universe from those good mothers...
...If, indeed, there are Catholic clergy who are approachable, they are well hidden...
...I replay in my mind the sequence of events...
...From the day I brought home my third baby, my middle child had a rough time, obviously feeling displaced too early...
...But I suppress those voices...
...For nearly three years now I have lived with the ghost of a child...
...They need a mother who is fully present, happy, and relaxed...
...I still mourn my baby and my former idea of who I was...
...My husband and I could not bring ourselves to choose steriliza13 tion, so we were left with less reliable methods of contraception...
...A kind-sounding woman refers me to a diocesan office...
...Then I fall into a period of despair...
...Thinking over the state of my health, he feels sure that I need to end this pregnancy...
...They flit about taking orders for tea, coffee, and toast from each of us...
...My depression begins to lift...
...She happens to be an active Catholic, but she does not know of any priest in my city whom she would trust to listen to me with compassion...
...And I know that if I bolt, I'll be talked back into returning...
...I am not trying to justify my action or exonerate myself...
...Since I am obviously not happy to be pregnant, she concludes—too easily—that I must want an abortion...
...I am intensely aware of the precious gift a baby is...
...Under a lilac bush I bury the only concrete evidence that this being existed— the blue-tipped plastic stick, indicating a positive result, from my home pregnancy test...
...Over and over again I speculate how the story might have been written otherwise, about what might have brought this child to light...
...We could be waiting for teeth cleaning...
...Names are provided of three priests in my area with training in Project Rachel, the church's postabortion counseling program...
...The nurse periodically walks out of one of them with the glass receptacles used in the procedure...
...I take my plight directly to God through prayer...
...How were the roads...
...I have a few really bad nights where I consider, with enough vividness to frighten me, the idea of jumping off a bridge into the river...
...April 1992—I see an article in our diocesan newspaper about postabortion counseling...
...I see them as hard lifeless wombs into which we have delivered our children...
...otherwise it cannot be done properly...
...When I am not in despair, I feel nothing...
...January 8,1991—It's a cold, dark, two-hour ride before dawn to the clinic...
...I cry lots, telling her that I don't know how I'll get beyond the pain...
...The nurse finally calls for me...
...But I can give back the gift if the burden is too great, and it will be taken back into the universe...
...I realize I am smiling and laughing more than I have in years...
...I tell the counselor there that I will only terminate this pregnancy if I can do it very early, before the baby takes form, before there is a heartbeat...
...Though I am grateful for this accepting woman, this minister who shares coffee and Kleenex, I remain troubled by the fact that I am actually excommunicated from the church...
...I carry the pregnancy for three weeks more so the embryo can grow large enough to be destroyed...
...A ugust 19,1991—My due date...
...But the counseling seems superficial...
...I cherished them as signs of grace and kept these lively children at the center of my life...
...But I crave the kind of reconciliation that we as flesh and blood creatures most understand, to be touched and forgiven by another human being...
...Two months later, at the end of my last day at that place, as the red sun touches the winter landscape like an eye shutting peacefully on a season of grace, I feel God's hand touch the top of my head...
...I watch one woman after another come out of the procedure rooms in street clothes, shoes in hand...
...I remain depressed through autumn and winter...
...I think of the many Catholic women like me who must be suffering alone and cannot summon the courage to reconcile within the church...
...My husband makes an appointment for me at a "women's clinic" in a large city a hundred miles away...
...I cannot get through this with doubts...
...No butterflies and meadows now...
...I chatter my way through the fourminute procedure, blabbering frantically about the weather and the condition of the interstate, as I try to ward off the intense sensations...
...My physician tells me that if I carry on with the pregnancy I will have to discontinue one of my medications...
...I know that I will forever see the pained faces of that quiet circle of women...
...I began to feel buried under the chaos of our lives, as well as financial hardship and the precarious state of my health...
...No one loved that incipient child more than I did...
...Since I cannot summon the confidence to phone them, I write a letter asking who in my city could help me...
...I'm amazed at how full the waiting room is...
...It all looks reassuringly routine...
...I have begun talking to a counselor...
...I was known as an active parishioner and eucharistic minister who had borne three children despite a serious chronic illness...
...I fall into a deep depression...
...I immediately receive a reply, a wonderfully warm letter from a nun, along with some brochures written by someone who obviously understands exactly how I feel...
...I am even more shocked by my reaction...
...The easy eradication of an incipient person makes my own life, as well as my children's, seem fragile and meaningless...
...I lay a withered carnation on the ground...
...I know that I have passed by any greatness of spirit...
...Nearly three years later, I am still appalled by what I have done...
...Even though an abortion is scheduled, I cannot imagine drinking alcohol during Christmas and New Year's festivities while I am pregnant...
...My choice was not simple: it was not made out of disregard for life but because of the desire to protect my family...
...Despite the promise of reconciliation which is offered in the brochure, I feel too fragile to contact any of these priests...
...The recovery room is lined with recliner chairs all around the walls...
...I begin to forgive myself...
...I stop seeing friends...
...There, over coffee at her dining room table, she listens to my story...
...If we are Catholic, we are afraid of being shamed and hurt even more than we already are...
...I am surprised at how casual it all is...
...That is what I need to be set free...
...This child, already built to outlast me, will never see the light of day, never be loved by its sisters and brother, will never learn or marry or have children, never grow old...
...I do not wish to grieve silently any longer, partly because I realize that I have many co-mourners...
...It would only be worse...
...With the help of a women's health center, I find a counselor who will express no point of view...
...This being will be vacuumed through a tube and put out with the trash...
...I walk miles each day...
...It takes me a week to work up the nerve to call...
...December 25, 1990—At Midnight Mass I pray as fervently as I can...
...Run for it...
...The illness flares without pattern or warning, sometimes leaving me gravely ill, feverish, and weak...
...I cry as I try to drift off to sleep...
...She instructs me to talk so that it won't hurt so much...
...She tells me I am not alone, that she had counseled a militant prolifer who, when her own teen-age daughter became pregnant, obtained an abortion for her...
...Now I steel myself for hard reality...
...I also ask for understanding...
...December 1990—I am shocked to find out I am pregnant for the fourth time...
...He has visions of himself as a single father of four children...
...I have Crohn's disease, which causes chronic inflammation and ulceration of the digestive tract...
...Because of the medications I take for my illness, I am given a cortisone shot and told to wait in the recovery room for a half hour while it takes effect...
...Life was such a precarious balance already...
...I dream that I go out to a field and release the being...
...The option of abortion enters my mind...
...With three children I was at my limit, but, because of my health problems, birth control pills were not an option for me...
...They want payment in advance, which we pay with Mastercard, which seems obscene...
...During those weeks I develop an odd relationship with this incipient baby...
...At a time when I am very vulnerable, I cannot take the risk of seeking help from anyone who would condemn me simply for considering abortion or who might not keep my experience confidential...
...In a romantic moment during a "safe" time of the month we had let our better judgment lapse...
...One sunny afternoon on a country walk under the wide October sky, I can palpably feel redemption...
...According to church law, I am digging myself in a continually deeper hole toward hell by continuing to participate in the Eucharist...
...Though I often felt drained, I welcomed the possibility of a fourth child some day...
...It was human failure, pure and simple...
...My chair happens to face the hall by the procedure rooms...
...Women and their companions are reading magazines...
...How can we handle a fourth child...
...Being Catholic, I feel alienated from my church when I most need it...
...I have a private burial ceremony in the back yard for the child whose name is known by no one but me...
...A toll-free number is listed for those in need of help...
...So I avoid any counselor with a prolife bias...
...Unlike the waiting room, this one is silent...
...Wounded as we are, we remain silent, alone, unreconciled...
...When I actually became pregnant again, an astonishingly intense depression, along with further deterioration of my health, led to an abortion...
...Had I not feared harsh judgment, I might have sought a counselor who might have helped me to see how I could bear this baby...
...I am offered and gratefully accept a Valium...
...I do not ask the church to change its position on abortion...
...But the real women behind the statistics rarely tell their stories...
...But even in my relaxed Valium-induced state unbid thoughts pop into my head, voices which shout, "You can still change your mind...
...After my half-hour of recovery, I gratefully escape...
...They chat with one of the women, 14 who says she'll be right back at work tonight on the graveyard shift...
...She brings me a box of Kleenex and recounts the story of Jacob, how he wrestled with the angel and received his new name, Israel, but walked with a limp the rest of his life...
...I bled early during my first pregnancy, and my doctor dimly hinted that the fetus might no longer be alive and ordered an MADELEIN GRAY is the pseudonym of a free-lance writer who lives in Wisconsin...
...My grief is compounded by my estrangement from my church...
...I know that if anything can convert me, this magical liturgy, the celebration of the unlikely infant, should do it...
...Could we make room in our crowded lives, could I make room in my diseased and aging body for this infant...
...January 7,1991—My child's last night...
...We fear we would be accused of being selfish and thoughtless...
...I say good-by to the little creature and tell the child I love it...
...I ask for the type of compassion and friendship that Jesus offered Mary Magdalene...
...During each of my pregnancies I had to take potent steroid medications to restore my health and prayed that my baby would be all right...
...She invites me to her home on a sunny summer afternoon...
...And it's like this every day...
...a couple of teen-age girls smirk and kid around...
...I return home knowing that God forgave me long ago...
...July 1992—I contact a minister of the United Church of Christ, whose name was also given me by Project Rachel...
...The nurses are very kind...
...She asks about our two-hour drive there...
...I have the awful feeling that I am losing my three children...
Vol. 121 • February 1994 • No. 4
