Abortion—Knowledge Brings Responsibility
DO YOU always speak when you know something is right? It is good to do so, especially when the welfare of others is at stake. After reading an article on the subject of abortion in an earlier issue of this magazine, a mother in England wrote as follows:
“I have just read the ‘Letter From the Mother of an Unborn Child’ in the July 22 [1986] issue of Awake! and it broke my heart.
“I have never experienced an abortion, but when I was four months pregnant with my first child, my sister-in-law was two months pregnant with her third child. She had just got her two little girls off to school and had found herself a well-paying job. There were things she wanted: furnishings, videos, a new car, plants for the garden. But a baby would have put an end to the job and thus to the income to buy all these things. So she decided to have an abortion.
“As the day of the abortion closed in, she felt excitement. But I grew sicker and sicker at the thought of it. I was by this time just beginning to feel my baby kicking within me, and I used to think of the baby within my sister-in-law growing too.
“The eve of the abortion came, and I kept hoping my sister-in-law would change her mind. I could visualise her baby, snug and safe in her womb listening to the soft and relaxing beat of its mother’s heart. Then my mind would recoil at the thought of that little child torn away from its safe little world and destroyed. I would cry deeply at the thought. The abortion took place. My little daughter will never know the cousin she could have grown up with, their ages being so close.
“What of my sister-in-law? She lost her job but found another, and she has had several since. She got her videos, her new car, her plants, new clothes, etc., but she went through a stage of depression and left her husband and children, then returned home after a few days. But she isn’t happy. When she visits me, her two little girls play with my daughter and my son of 11 months, and they say of my daughter: ‘Isn’t she lovely, Mummy? I wish we had a little sister or brother.’ It’s at these words that I steal a glance at her expression. I feel I want to comfort her because at the time of her abortion she didn’t really realize what she was doing. But my sister-in-law chose money above the life of her child, and it is for this reason I feel she now regrets it.
“However, this leads to my asking myself a very serious question. I might think of myself as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, although not yet baptized. But I can see I yet have a long way to go, for true Witnesses are like Jesus, feeling love and compassion toward all, no matter what others have been or done. I long for the day when I can truly say I feel as they do toward others and carry Jehovah’s name proudly. Perhaps if I hadn’t sat on the fence so long, I could have had the courage to witness to my sister-in-law, and the baby might have been saved.”
It is the sincere hope of the publishers of Awake! that this present series of articles may serve that very purpose.