UPDATE: Plan B, the Gloria Steinem Conference Room, and Making Pro-Life Decisions After Rape

Second Update:  I have closed comments on this post.  They were getting seriously evil.  No sense in giving that a platform.

Please note:  many of the comments posted by readers are quite graphic.  I decided to post them as is.  

A lot of blog posts are about cultural or news events.  A great many are about family life, education, and home improvement or craft projects.  Some are about saving money.  Many are about abstract theological points, or one's understanding of Scripture.

This one  is not about any of these.  This is about the intensely personal moment that being pro-life, and making an honest-to-God pro-life decision, reached and out grabbed me by the heart and clutched hard.

My Dark-Haired Daughter, who suffers from bipolar disorder and limited cognitive abilities, went missing last Monday.  For more than 48 hours, we had no idea where she was.  Without all the gruesome details, after she was found, it came to light that she'd been brutally and repeatedly sexually assaulted.  She'd been taken to the local women's shelter, where (at least in our area) they do the exams in such cases.

After the police called me to tell me she'd been found, the officer asked me to meet him at the clinic and be reunited with my daughter. When I arrived, I was led to the Gloria Steinem Conference Room.  I'm not kidding;  that alone almost made me pass out.

In this softly lit room, with plush furniture and antique reproduction prints of ladies in hoop skirts on the wall, the counselor and the police detective filled me in on what had occurred with my daughter.  I wasn't allowed to see her yet;  the nurse was still completing the exam.

I sat and waited with the officer, in this softly lit room, with old magazine and the smell of flop sweat, hoop-skirted ladies looking on. 

Finally, the nurse came out.  She briefly and clinically told me of the injuries my daughter had, what the nurse had done to collect evidence, and that my daughter was so severely injured, the nurse thought the best course of action was to go to the emergency room so my daughter - my lovely, incredible, sweet, mentally ill daughter - could get further medical attention.

The nurse told me the antibiotics she'd administered, that we'd need to wait some time for HIV testing, and then handed me a box - Plan B, and told me we had 24 hours to use it.

So there it was.  The whole moral conundrum of abortion in a little green box in my hand.

I am wholly sure I am capable of murder.  I know it to the very core of my being.  If the being that had done this to my daughter had been in front of me at that moment, I likely would have killed the bastard. 

But Plan B is a whole other thing, isn't it?  It's about taking the life of an innocent child.

Don't think I didn't think about it.  Don't think that I didn't want to grab a cup of cool water, hold it to my precious daughter's lips and say, "Here; take this."  Don't think I didn't want to never even think of the possibility that pregnancy would result (and still may).  Don't think I didn't want to spare my daughter the burdens of dealing with a pregnancy from these circumstances.

But I shoved that green box in my bag.  It's still there...unopened.

I know many, many people - some who call me friend - will think this is a monstrous decision.  I should have just had her swallow the pill and never looked back. There - done.  One less thing to worry about.

My daughter, though, you see, is adopted.  For all I know, she herself is the product of rape.  Her birth mom was known to prostitute herself, and for women in that life, rape is common. 

And even if this wasn't the case, what child deserves to die due to a parent's sins and brutality?  Taking an innocent life is wrong - I know it, and every genuinely honest person on the face of the earth knows it.

But I thought about it.  God help me, I thought about it.

Despite my desire to murder, despite my desire to never think about the possibility of pregnancy, despite the burden of this whole experience:  I am pro-life.

Gloria Steinem and her softly-lit room be damned.