A Daughter's Gratitude

 

Some years ago, my daughter drew a card for her Mom on Mother’s Day. It was brilliantly done, and I shared it on Facebook. She has immense artistic talent.

But it drew two disturbed comments from female friends. Posted publicly, apparently with no thought that my daughter would see them. One wrote “Uh-oh. There’s something wrong here.” The other accused my wife of abusing her.

For she had written on the card, “thank you for not aborting me.”

I explained to the friend who saw this as proof of child abuse that, so long as abortion was legal, it was simply a fact that every Canadian woman made a conscious decision whether to abort a child or not. Our daughter, being an intelligent child, surely just realized this.

“But,” my friend countered, “she should have been reassured that she was loved, and would never have been aborted.”

But abortion happens before the mother meets the child, and knows anything of their personality. If her life was spared, it was only by either her mother’s good morals or by her good luck.

In the Philippines, where abortion is illegal, nobody was troubled by the card.

My friend concluded by declaring me “delusional,” unfriending me, and never speaking to me since.

I think the experience shows that Canadian women often have a guilty conscience over abortion. And that the human tendency, when made aware of a wrong or injustice, is most often not to right the wrong, but to object to its being mentioned in polite company.