MY ABORTION SONG

MY ABORTION SONG I shall never forget the shock and hurt expressed by my parents when I told them about an abortion that a former girlfriend had had in Washington , D.C., when I was an undergraduate at Howard and not yet ready for the burden of birth. We never discussed it again. But, in that one, unguarded instance, they both independently, simultaneously expressed bewilderment and pain, as though they had lost a loved one, themselves, rather than some fetus that I nor they had ever seen. Ideas and information can injure, that episode taught me, as easily as whips and chains can injure, although the former injuries are largely internal, unseen by others. That conversation with my parents began the process of orienting me away from that of being an abortion supporter. This abortion supporter status was one that I had attained in college, after previously viewing it, politically, as a black population reduction device of eugenicists, who were disguised as "liberals." Life is much more than politics or personal expediency, in the final analysis, I have come to see, since in another place and time, that tiny unseen, aborted fetus, might well have been me, but for my parents! I do not write these somber words, nor share this intensely private, family testimony, publicly, in order to condemn abortion even tacitly, nor to deride another's choices or experiences. Rather, I now sing my abortion song long after the fact to unburden myself. If it also burdens someone else, helps another, one way or the other, then glory to God!