Naw, you won't take flack from me, I really do understand what you're saying. Still, you read what I posted about being refused having my tubes tied. Is it acceptable that I only get the options of bearing children or being celibate? I HAVE been celibate for stretches of several years, several times. I feel I have a right to expect more of my life than being a breeding cow, it disgusts me. When I got pregnant at 41, having been told for years that the excessive doses of depo-provera that I had taken for years for another medical problem had probably left me sterile, having used condoms like a nazi- how do you think that made me feel? I sure as heck didn't feel "blessed by the Lord". I felt cursed with a demon.
My physical reaction was to hurt myself. I just wanted to carve it out of me with a kitchen knife, and I would have done ANYTHING POSSIBLE to get rid of it, legal or not, safe or not. I simply can't explain this feeling to someone who has not been pregnant with a child they don't want. I felt invaded at the core of my being. I would have gone completely mad, literally, had I been forced to carry that child. It was "it or me", I chose me. Why should an errant sperm have more rights in MY body than I do?
See, I had been pregnant by choice before, and I was overwhelmed with love for that fetus as soon as I learned that our efforts had produced fruits. I felt completely different about this one, and it horrified me to the point where I couldn't sleep, thinking about some horrible atrocity growing inside me that I couldn't escape from. It was a nightmare in every sense of the word. I doubt every woman feels this strongly, but I did, and I shouldn't be forced to live through something that horrific because somebody else's morals dictate that I should. I'm not religious anymore, and that is a big part of it. My religous beliefs had started to unravel a couple years earlier when I asked my pastor if people of other religions were going to hell. He said that he personally did not believe so, but the Bible made it clear that Jesus claimed that "No one gets to the Father but through me". He admitted that it was something he had not been able to resolve, which I appreciated. The second impasse was our church's stance on homsexuality, I stopped going over that.
The third was this unexpected pregnancy. I originally went to the doctor for a swollen leg- I thought nothing more than that, I was barely even late for my period at that point. I found out that I was pregnant, and had developed toxemia that fast. I would have to be bedridden and cared for throughout my pregnancy were I to carry the child. I had no such support system, and I was getting sicker. Yeah, the baby was a parasite to me, it was eating away at my health. I would have had to go to a women's shelter I guess- it gets absurd thinking about where my life would have gone had I kept that child, which I would have despised.
I got called "whore" and "baby killing bitch" by protesters outside the clinic where I went, and armed guards had to protect my safety. A couple women who offered me literature, which I refused, actually got in my face and called me names, as I had my head down just trying to walk the few step on to the private property where the guards could intervene for me.
So some sins are forgivable, and some are not. (S)Paul was allowed to murder many many born and grown Christians, and go on to be the most prolific writer of the NT, but little ol' me committed an unforgivable sin by aborting a fetus at five weeks- bullshit. I don't need a religion like that.
