Life’s Rights

I’m a bastard. Literally.

In rural Indiana in the summer of 1946 a thirty-three year old married housewife and mother of two had an affair. Lonely and ignored for the prior 10 years she toiled daily to make a home for her two teenage children and have dinner on the table every night for a neglectful cheating husband. They had not been intimate for a decade. But then it was 1946. It was not a situation where a woman had many options.

In the fall of that year, the housewife had an affair. She soon found herself pregnant. She cried daily for a month. Told no one. The father of the unborn child was also married. A home delivery worker and the father of two girls. Good looking. Charismatic. 

The woman, all of 98 pounds, knew this ‘secret’ would not be a secret much longer. She had to tell someone soon. She cried.

Six weeks into her pregnancy she told the father. He was devastated.  He could not leave his wife and children. He thought he knew where she could get an abortion. He would help pay for it. 

The housewife, raised Catholic, had wandered from the church long ago. But some of those teachings remain like ghosts in your conscience.  She decided to tell her husband.

The husband went into a rage. He threw the woman out of his home. She barely had time to pack. She spent the night in a seedy motel.

A week passed then another. The father helped the woman with small amounts of money.  Her seventeen year old son brought groceries when he could sneak them out. She looked for a job. No one would hire a pregnant woman in her 30's. 

Several weeks had past when the husband came to her. The house was a mess. He had not had a good meal in weeks. The kids were solemn and distant. No one had clean clothes. He needed her back. All would be forgiven if she got an abortion. Although illegal in Indiana, they were not hard to come by. He would pay for it. Nobody had to know. She could come home.

The woman spent that night crying again; her biggest sorrow being her two children, now without a mother at home.  She went to a pay phone and called the husband. She would have the baby. It was up to him if she could come home. He said ‘never’ and hung up. They did not speak again for 12 years.

The father, to his credit, continued to assist with meager funds. But he was not going to acknowledge the child. The woman worked part time for a house cleaning service until she could not. She and the father drifted apart before she gave birth at 2:00am on May 24, 1947. The boy born that day is writing this post.

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I consider myself a progressive. Fiscally conservative. An atheist/humanist. In theory I support a woman’s right to choose. In practice, I may owe my life to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

I think about it often. I now have three children and a grandchild. Only one of which my mother ever met before her early death from lung cancer. I think about my mother’s choice and wonder if I support the fact that, under current law, she could have legally chose to abort.

I have come to peace with my support of a woman’s right to choose. While I reel at the thought of being ‘canceled’ before I was ever born, I must ask myself: Would I have wanted my mother to make her decision to have me based on her faith and convictions - her love for me – or would I rather the government tell her she must?

Does the fact that she did have a choice make my life any more valuable? No. Of course not. But it puts my life in context. In perspective. No one can argue the impact a loving mother has on her children. I experienced a love that came through sacrifice and pain that many women have had to cope with. Her love was unconditional.

I will never let anyone forget I was a choice.

JWB