Jan 24, 2003 :: 4:06 pm
(pro) life, or something like it ...
My mother left our family when I was very young--3 years old. I shared her name, and for a lot of reasons (including the fact that my father was very perverted), I became my daddy’s wife, sexually as well as emotionally.
I was a victim of incest for most of my child and young adulthood … it went on, even up into my late teens. By my senior year in high school, my father had so convinced me of my disgusting worthlessness, my utter ugliness, and my standing as a total wretch in the eyes of God, I believed that I was lucky to be where I was, to have the “family” that I did, and that I was completely doomed—I would never ever escape the tyranny of my father.
(there’s much more to this, including my father’s rabid public conservatism and evangelicalism which radically conflicted with who he was privately, but I won’t get into all of that now)
At the age of 17, I became pregnant. At the time, I blamed the guy I was sleeping with, because I didn’t understand fully the consequences of all of what the incest meant, (and I didn’t dare think of the other alternative). Through time I have come to accept that it was probably my father’s child. The timing wasn’t right the other way.
At the time I knew enough about my father to know that if he found out about the “problem,” he would abort it himself, he was just that way (and he was a frustrated doctor stuck in a lab).
I also knew that I believed in life, that I believed that the child in me was alive and a sacred creation, but I was absolutely terrified. I had no idea what to do or who to go to.
I went to an episcopal priest under the rite of “confession,” and he, being a staunch pro-life priest, told me that he didn’t care if he got fired—he believed that life was more important than anything, and he would tell my father if I pursued the abortion.
I was stuck. I felt like the baby would die if I did, die if I didn’t.
So I went to the east coast (and met my mother, coincidentally), had the abortion there, then spent the next several years wandering around the country, living with people I met, sleeping in bus stations, trying to find some sort of peace with what I had done and who I was.
There’s a lot more to this story, but what I want to tell you is this:
I don’t think that -anyone- really wants to abort their child. I don’t think that they have this murderous desire in them to take a life. It’s not like they wake up one day and decide to get pregnant just to have an abortion.
It’s that people don’t know any better. It’s that the people who can help often stand in judgement of them. It’s that sometimes conservatives are so busy trying to save babies, they forget about the women who also (even more desperately) need to be saved. The rallying and the vocalism isn’t where the change happens. The change happens in quietness--in love and in friendship and in trying to understand.
It’s so easy to be loud and male and defiant. Planned Parenthood and other organizations enforce that by their own loud rhetoric (and sometimes, frankly, they have to scream because the opposition doesn’t let them have a voice). But there are more lives involved in this then we often know (or want to accept). There are the lives of the women, the girls—the people struggling with life and death decisions and feeling isolated and alone at this very important moment in their lives.
And there is so much life—brilliant, fabulous life—all around us. there is so much more we can do for all of life...
I do not believe in the death penalty. I do not believe in war. I believe in the sanctity of life on all levels—from birth to death. I believe in a form of mercy. I believe in a form of grace ...
… and I’ve learned that deadness is more than just what happens to an aborted child. It happens to a woman who feels so wearied from her life that she just doesn’t care anymore.
I have been that woman. I have been dead and unable to care. And now—on the other side of apathy, on the other side of death—I have learned what it means to be truly alive.
posted by: renee
on Jan 24, 2003 :: 4:06 pm | comments
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Dear God....most of us would be in the grave...
Thank you...
I’m so glad you have a voice. Go under the mercy.
Posted by: Bene Diction on Jan 24, 03 | 6:48 pm
Thankyou so much for sharing this.
Posted by: Jordon on Jan 24, 03 | 8:45 pm
thank you. both.
you are ears that hear.
Posted by: iphigeneia on Jan 24, 03 | 11:10 pm
thank you
Posted by: bastard on Jan 25, 03 | 1:42 am
And another Thank You. Thanks for writing about life and reality.
Posted by: sakamuyo on Jan 25, 03 | 2:11 am
Thank you for sharing. I can only imagine… but at the same time, if “legal” abortion were to be removed from the table… would other options surface? I can see what you’ve shown of your own hurt, and I know it’s real. I want to tell you “i’m sorry” for your father and his warped sense of family. Thank you, again…
Posted by: rick on Jan 25, 03 | 5:03 am
Thank you for sharing.
Posted by: Mike on Jan 25, 03 | 6:02 am
I am grateful to have come by your writing. I will be returning. And unlike my usual pattern of checking out a site for a while before deciding to add them to my list of recommended views, yours goes on the roll immediately.
Thrive!
Owen
Posted by: owen on Jan 25, 03 | 6:55 am
Oh God I feel for you...what a fucking tar pit trap, I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black...
Your father needs to be gang-raped in prison.
Posted by: Kurt on Jan 25, 03 | 7:14 am
hey all,
it was (good) overwhelming to wake up to this, this morning. thank you.
Posted by: iphy on Jan 25, 03 | 7:27 am
Thanks for accomplishing what every blogger strives for—authenticity of story—with needs of community in mind. You have helped me understand better my thoughts about this issue.
grace & peace…
Posted by: Pen on Jan 25, 03 | 8:01 am
It’s sadly ironic how this issue is so often de-humanized. Thanks for being honest and letting me see not just one life but two.
Posted by: ron on Jan 25, 03 | 10:17 am
And a thank you from me too. He stole a lot from you, but not your voice, not your bravery.
Posted by: jeneane on Jan 25, 03 | 10:40 am
I don’t know that I’ve ever read anything more moving on a website. Thank you.
Posted by: Richard Hall on Jan 25, 03 | 2:17 pm
You so hit home to me with this post. And most especially “… and I’ve learned that deadness is more than just what happens to an aborted child. It happens to a woman who feels so wearied from her life that she just doesn’t care anymore.”
Yes
Posted by: blu on Jan 26, 03 | 12:16 pm
A (very) late thank you from me, too. You are so, so special. xo
Posted by: Janet on Jan 26, 03 | 2:28 pm
Thank you very much for expressing what I am afraid to express. I didn’t go through the incest, but did go through an abortion. I still think about that child. She would be about 22 years old now.
Posted by: Debi on Jan 27, 03 | 3:14 am
There is little or nothing I can say about the hardships that you have endured. I am an incest survivor myself, so I thoroughly sympathize with your perspective.
That said, can you make that decision for someone else? Can you say what the implications of carrying a pregnancy to term might be for someone in an equally horrible, but different, situation? Can you point to the situation of a woman that you don’t know and say whether even SHE will live or die if she continues the pregnancy, much less her fetus?
As survivors of abuse, we have had decisions stripped from us. We have already been in the position of being denied choice over what happens to our own bodies by someone with greater power than ourselves. While I respect and agree with your opinion that no one wants an abortion, I must disagree with the implication that the opportunity to choose should therefore be denied. No one deserves that kind of power over us. Not perpetrators. Not the government. No one.
Posted by: revolution9 on Jan 30, 03 | 2:44 pm
have you read this series of books?
http://www.davepelzer.com/
Posted by: tammy on Feb 07, 03 | 6:29 am
This reflection upsets me in two ways. First of all I am entirely enraged by your father’s actions. May God provide you healing and peace. I cannot even imagine. I am so sorry.
Secondly, I’m upset by what I sense as the pro-choice caricature of pro-lifers. I have been involved in the pro-life movement for awhile and I have NEVER met anyone who was not also extremely concerned for the girls and women. I’ve never heard them scream or be ugly. However, I have seen the abortion advocates cuss us out, spit on us, and yell all manner of cruelty at us. But I have never seen anyone on the pro-life side lash out or ignore the hurting women. Never. If anything they are giving their own time and money to help counsel and support those women who are considering abortion or have already committed one.
Nevertheless, I sense your pain and I will pray for you. God loves you (and me) deeply despite the past and is full of forgiveness. He is the true and perfect Father that we all need.
May God bless you in a special way,
Marshall
Posted by: Taylor on Feb 12, 03 | 1:11 pm
marshall - you may not have personally heard them scream or be ugly --- but some of them have bombed the clinics and killed people. we have to be fair and acknowledge that.
Posted by: tammy on Feb 14, 03 | 7:34 am
David, you are a gem, thank god you stuck to your guns and wrote the books, god love to you and your family that you deserve, stay happy.
Posted by: Teresa Witt on Jan 30, 04 | 3:56 am
I am driven to tears reading this. Abuse is a horrible thing. I am sorry you had and have to deal with this. My prayers are with you because there is nothing I can say that will make this pain go away.
God bless you.
Posted by: Mykel on Feb 10, 04 | 12:08 pm
Dear Dave, I enjoyed reading your books they help me thought what you went through when you were young. my courlser told me to read the books because she said that i went though the same thing and i asked her about the book and she said to read them. so i did and they help me get though my promblems so thank you very much and some day i would like to meet you. I live in Clarion country so i hope to see you some day. thank you connie l mealy
Posted by: connie l mealy on May 21, 04 | 5:37 pm
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