As one of the Marines sent to fight your daddy’s bullshit war I just need you to know active duty and veterans say this about you and those like you all the time. We are not petty, vindictive, cruel or unstable. We’re amputated, mangled, stressed and fed up.
When I was a young woman with an unplanned pregnancy, an older woman who was motherly toward me took me out for coffee. She spent the better part of an hour explaining why I should have an abortion.
Multiple times she told me, “you really can’t have this baby.”
Perhaps she thought I was too young (I was 22), too foolish (I was college educated), or too single and it would be too much of a challenge to raise a child alone.
People who encourage women to abort their children don’t believe the women they know (and claim to love) are capable of doing the thing they were made to do: bear and raise children with strength and grace.
And they don’t offer support.
Just destruction.
I had to go looking for people who believed I could do what needed to be done.
I found them in my church, in my local pro life pregnancy resource center, and in a local maternity home for unwed moms. It was pro life people who were willing and able to support a woman with an unplanned pregnancy.
When I told a church friend that I was pregnant and scared, he said, “Yeah, but you’re going to be a great mom.”
I carried those words with me through my entire pregnancy and long after my daughter’s birth.
Every time I felt my baby move and I wondered what she would be like or if I would be able to care for her, I remembered my friend believed in me and I believed in me, too.
The women at the pregnancy resource center had the same kind of belief in my ability to love and care for my baby. And they proved it by providing resources, encouragement, and baby items. Between my church, Christian friends, and the PRC, I had all the baby items I needed long before my daughter was born.
My friend was very wrong. I really could have that baby. And I really did. I’ve been caring well for her since before she was born. I don’t know why my friend didn’t think I could do it, why she felt I wasn’t capable, but I did.