The Transformative Power of “Choice”
Image by Gayatri Malhotra
(Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court this morning.)
I am the result of an unplanned pregnancy.
My mother was a poor, unwed teenager when she discovered she was pregnant. She decided to keep the pregnancy, against the wishes of everyone in her life.
I used to think the miracle of our story happened the moment she decided to keep the pregnancy. Ours is the sort of tale anti-abortionists love to use as an example of “…it all works out in the end.”
Now I understand the true blessing in our journey was that she had the choice at all.
Life is hard. It can be magnificent, yes—sometimes staggeringly so—but it is also hard, especially for a young single mother with no support or resources beyond her own dogged courage and lionhearted will.
My experience in this world would have been fundamentally different had I been forced to exist in it knowing my mother had not had the choice. Wondering if I had been an inescapable burden on an already struggling young woman, bearing down upon her fragile life like a weight on paper.
As it is, though, I will never have to wonder, because she had a choice. It was precisely my mother’s right to choose that transformed our story from one of powerlessness to empowerment. I may have been unplanned, but I was not unchosen.
She chose me.
This is the miracle, and it is a fundamental human right:
The choice.
And to know you were chosen.