Appalling

Via Michelle Malkin comes this horrific story of a woman who aborted two of her three babies so that she wouldn't experience a crimp in her lifestyle. It's people like her who give people like me a reason to wish abortion were illegal. I find it particularly appalling that she cut her boyfriend, the babies' father, entirely out of the decision. She talks about getting these babies in the same way one might talk about going to the store and getting a puppy. It was her puppy, and if she wanted the bichon frise, there was nothing he could do about it.

When I got pregnant with Tiny Princess I thought I couldn't get pregnant. I cried when I saw the "+" on the pregnancy test, because we were not financially ready for a baby. I had to quit my job because I couldn't stand the smell of the rubberized fabric I had to work with. We had to go on public assistance because we couldn't afford the pregnancy. But things got better. Favorite Husband got a job. We found a house we could afford. It's not the world's largest house or the world's best house, but it's ours. To hear this woman talk about how she wouldn't want to live in a house in Staten Island galls me. I'd love to have a house like that.

When I got pregnant with Sonshine it was really bad timing. We were going to try to get pregnant a few months later so that he'd be born in the summer time after I finished my Master's degree, but instead he was born smack in the middle of spring semester. I had to defend my paper during the summer when half the people I'd wanted to be there couldn't attend. I missed the spring graduation ceremony. I had to go back to work teaching two classes one week after I gave birth. It was extraordinarily hard. I nearly buckled under the strain. But things got better. I still got to walk in the next year's ceremony, and it wasn't too difficult to get the tassel with my correct graduation year. To hear this woman talk about how she couldn't possibly be inconvenienced in March and April because she lectures at colleges particularly boils my blood, since Sonshine was born in March.

When I got pregnant with Bagel I was overwhelmed. I was working two jobs to try to make ends meet and pay down the student loans. I was home with my kids during the day and worked evenings or while they were at school. Like this woman, I knew there was no way I could handle three kids and still keep working. But unlike this woman, I have my priorities straight. It makes no difference in the cosmic scheme whether or not I have a wonderful job that I like. It does, however, make a difference how I treat the gift of life in whatever form I find it. It makes a difference to my children and to my husband and, to a lesser extent, to all I interact with. So I quit my jobs. I don't know where we're going to find enough money to pay the bills, but it will work out. Things will get better.

Now I know some of you out there have your mouse on the "Comments" button and are about to say something to the effect of, "That's all well and good for you, but what about for HER? Shouldn't she be entitled to make her own choice?" Of course she makes her own choice. Everyone has free will. But we don't have to respect the choices everyone else would make, just because they are capable of making choices. Believe me, if I could find a way to make this woman's selective abortion illegal without jeopardizing the ability to perform selective abortion to save a mother's life, I would do it in a heartbeat. Choice is all well and good if you're picking out a color of paint for the bathroom, where certain colors would be tasteless but not evil; but some choices are between right and wrong. And the choice to end two beating hearts, over the objections of the babies' father, just because you can and because you imagine your life with them will be unfulfilling, is deeply, heinously wrong.