The first time I heard the word “abortion” I didn’t even know what the term meant, but it sure seemed that I wasn’t supposed to have ever heard it – or at least not yet. I had paused my episode of SpongeBob and ran upstairs to get snacks; I ran away from the comfort of my basement and my brightly colored handprints that adorned my walls. Suddenly I stopped, but not because I had finished climbing the stairs; I was too afraid of what was waiting at the top. Standing in the darkness, within an arm’s length of whatever lurked behind me, I heard my father say quietly to my mother, “Are they going to abort it?”
I was no longer afraid, I was perplexed. My basement became a vacuum of space – silent, empty, expanding. I stood lost in the darkness …show more content…
Even then, at such a young age, something about this “abortion” did not sit well with me.
I never found out what Sean decided to do. I didn’t want to hear that they had chosen to abort the child. The polaroid moment faded into the recesses of my memory as I grew older, so much so that I had lost the entire photo – I had forgotten Sean. Then, six years later, it came roaring back.
I was in the eighth grade. We had just been assigned the biggest paper of our middle school careers: The Human Rights Violations (HRV) paper. The HRV was a major written assignment in which each student was assigned a topic addressing a form of oppression or atrocity of innocent lives and was required to write a lengthy report regarding the subject. Coming from my small, private, conservative middle school, our opinions were already decided for us; we were, of course, expected to argue against our research topic.
I was assigned …show more content…
Everything came back to me: that mysterious and forbidden “A-word”, Barnum’s animal crackers, my parents hushed voices, sea bass and broccoli, the infinite darkness, SpongeBob’s laughter. I dove into my research, never before had I been so eager to write a paper. Quickly, my excitement turned sour with horror as I learned more and more about the subject. It was troubling to discover just how many abortions were being committed each year, but it was far more disturbing to learn just how an abortion works. There are a handful of ways it can be done, and each method seemed just as horrific as the next. I didn’t, and still don’t, understand how these doctors and nurses can sleep at night. I turned in a 15-page paper berating the abortion process. I knew that abortion was wrong and that I could not bring myself to support it.
Later that same year, my extended family from my mother’s side planned a family reunion out in San Diego, California. I was elated to reunite with so many old faces that I hadn’t seen in years. There were some faces I hadn’t ever actually seen, like my Aunt Lisa, her son (my cousin) Sean, and his son –
I was no longer afraid, I was perplexed. My basement became a vacuum of space – silent, empty, expanding. I stood lost in the darkness …show more content…
Even then, at such a young age, something about this “abortion” did not sit well with me.
I never found out what Sean decided to do. I didn’t want to hear that they had chosen to abort the child. The polaroid moment faded into the recesses of my memory as I grew older, so much so that I had lost the entire photo – I had forgotten Sean. Then, six years later, it came roaring back.
I was in the eighth grade. We had just been assigned the biggest paper of our middle school careers: The Human Rights Violations (HRV) paper. The HRV was a major written assignment in which each student was assigned a topic addressing a form of oppression or atrocity of innocent lives and was required to write a lengthy report regarding the subject. Coming from my small, private, conservative middle school, our opinions were already decided for us; we were, of course, expected to argue against our research topic.
I was assigned …show more content…
Everything came back to me: that mysterious and forbidden “A-word”, Barnum’s animal crackers, my parents hushed voices, sea bass and broccoli, the infinite darkness, SpongeBob’s laughter. I dove into my research, never before had I been so eager to write a paper. Quickly, my excitement turned sour with horror as I learned more and more about the subject. It was troubling to discover just how many abortions were being committed each year, but it was far more disturbing to learn just how an abortion works. There are a handful of ways it can be done, and each method seemed just as horrific as the next. I didn’t, and still don’t, understand how these doctors and nurses can sleep at night. I turned in a 15-page paper berating the abortion process. I knew that abortion was wrong and that I could not bring myself to support it.
Later that same year, my extended family from my mother’s side planned a family reunion out in San Diego, California. I was elated to reunite with so many old faces that I hadn’t seen in years. There were some faces I hadn’t ever actually seen, like my Aunt Lisa, her son (my cousin) Sean, and his son –