WHEN DOES LIFE BEGIN?

 

When does Life begin? Perhaps the answer is in the question. Life begins at the beginning. A sperm enters an egg and becomes one cell. All the information for what comes next is included there in that cell. Amazing, isn't it? 

Somehow as that single cell divides, it takes with it the directions for becoming a nerve cell, a brain cell, a skin cell, and on and on and on until that simple single cell becomes the complex creature we know as a baby. From where does that direction come? 

I think of Mickey Mouse in Fantasia and imagine the grand orchestration from the Creator creating that marvelous creation of His. All of that begins with a beginning. 

 

But that was not what I was taught. I was taught that ontogeny recreates phylogeny. That an organism, in the course of its development, goes through all the stages of those forms of life from which it has evolved. In other words, humans go through the evolutionary process from fish to man in the womb. Therefore, they proclaim, that life really has no value, is not human, is merely little more than a parasite to get rid of. 

Really? Perhaps that was what they thought before ultrasound. Now you can measure the heartbeat at 8 weeks. So in 56 days after conception, God has orchestrated the symphony of that baby's life, directing one cell to be muscle, another to be a toenail, another to become a heart. You can see the embryo suck its thumb. Yet, it is the same single cell that we started with, only with directions to be something special. Incredible. 

The lips of that embryo will one day give the smile or sing the song that touches a heart. Somehow words will come from the movement of special organs. That voice will have a uniqueness to it. Why? How?

 

Are we to think that God's direction stops there? If God could do that with a single cell, what can He do with our lives? What could WE do with our lives if we would allow ourselves to be a part of His fantastic orchestra? Instead of marching to the beat of a different drummer.

But children are not taught this wonder. They are given lessons on sex directed by Planned Parenthood. They are taught the location of the closest abortion clinic. Planned Parenthood then sells those aborted baby parts. 

And yet, those who tell us they rely upon science for their climate change beliefs tell us that they do not know when life begins. They insist that whatever and whenever life begins, the mother has the right to dispose of whatever grows within her. Indeed, that belief has expanded to give the mother the right to kill a baby after birth. To what age would these people have the right to kill expanded? Susan Smith drowned her sons because they were an impediment to her date life. Did she have the right to do so according to those who disagree with the Supreme Court Decision? If so, her prison incarceration is wrong. Should we leave unwanted babies on the side of the road like the Chinese did for years with female infants? 

 

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill that codifies the right to an abortion in state law, according to The Associated Press. The Reproductive Health Equity Act, or House Bill 1279, guarantees access to reproductive care before and after pregnancy and bans local governments from imposing their own restrictions. We sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind. 

 

So, why do I have any right to comment upon this? I am a woman who has had an abortion and I regret it every day of my life. My newest novel, Choices and Secrets, was 50 years in the writing. Somewhere in that book the story of that abortion is told along with what life has taught me since. 

 

My husband, Dothan attorney, Joel Ramsey, passed away on November 20, 2020, of Alzheimer’s. I had prayed for his salvation since 1974, the year I, myself, was saved. On August 2nd, 2020, he rolled over and told me, “I need to make a public profession of my faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” The next morning, I sent out an email to those I knew had been praying for him that read, “Hallelujah! Did you hear the angels sing?” We went to our Sunday school class the next day and he made that public profession. He later called that his "Road to Damascus Experience." 

 

That night he rolled over once again and said, “I need to be Baptized. 

 

"Go to sleep," I said. "I will call and talk to the preacher tomorrow.” 

 

He persisted. "I need to be baptized," he said. “I need to be immersed.” 

 

“Get up,” I said. “Get in the bathtub. I will baptize you.” He got up and I did baptize him. I later spoke to our pastor. He said he knew many family members who baptized those in their family. 

 

We began praying together at night. One night I told him, “Joe, we both need to ask God’s forgiveness for killing our baby.” The abortion occurred on November 15, 1969, the Saturday after our wedding. I had already asked God’s forgiveness, but Joe had always justified what we had done. He didn't want to talk about it. I cried alone. Now, his heart was ready to ask forgiveness, which he did. 

 

We have a double urn that now holds his ashes. One day, I will join him in that beautiful wooden box. Our stone in the Ramsey plot at Dothan Cemetery reads: 

RAMSEY

Joel Wardlaw 

Beloved husband of Sharman

May 3, 1947-November 20, 2020

 

Sharman Jean Burson

May 15, 1950-

Beloved wife of Joel

 

FORGIVEN AND ALIVE IN CHRIST

 

I praise God for blessing us with His forgiveness. 

 

As long as my husband was alive, he thought we should keep our actions as a deep dark secret. But, when one has committed a grievous sin, repentance is necessary. I think God accepted Joe’s repentance. 

 

We were married for fifty-one years. Though we got engaged in June of 1969, we had planned to have a long engagement. I loved him so much I could barely stand watching him leave when he deposited me at the dormitory. He was in Law School. And I was studying to be a teacher. I soon found myself pregnant. 

 

Not wanting to shame our parents by having an early baby, and as I realized later, not having the courage to face public disgrace, Joe and I began frequenting bus stations, where he would query taxi drivers if they knew a doctor that would perform abortions. During that time, Time Magazine published an article on an Episcopal priest in Detroit or Chicago (I really cannot remember) who assisted in getting girls in trouble an abortion. The weekend after we got married Joe and I boarded a plane (my first) and flew to talk to that priest. We checked into the downtown hotel he recommended, got a taxi and got taken about a block away on the other side of a park to the Episcopal church where we sat in the priest’s office.  He had us tell our story. He then arranged for an appointment later that afternoon. All I remember about that day was a fog shrouded city and a vastness of grey. 

 

A knock came at the door of the dingy hotel room. One double bed, a bathroom and a TV. Joe had the Alabama football game on. The young doctor stood at the door with his medical bag. “You’ll do it here?” Joe asked. The doctor nodded. Joe looked at me questioning.  So what happened next was all my fault. 

 

I was to be a mother, the greatest blessing of all. I was to be the “keeper of the home,” the guardian of the most sacred, safest entity of all, the family. But I was young and selfish. In truth, I was a coward. I did not want to shame my parents. I did not want my sister and brother labeled with my misbehavior. I did not want Joe’s brothers to think poorly of me. Nor did I want to be an embarrassment to my friends and sorority sisters. While the abortion had never been my idea, I hated to lay the onus on Joe. 

 

I nodded and with that I take responsibility for what happened next.

 

The young man (I assume he was a doctor. Probably a resident paying for his education doing abortions on the side). He and Joe struck up a conversation about the football game while I lay on the plastic sheet floating from the shot he gave me, watching from above feeling the scraping within me, then watching the doctor flush my baby down the toilet of an anonymous hotel in a strange city. A neon sign flashed red outside our window. Joe paid the man with money my parents had placed in an account for my college use. He went downstairs and got me a chicken salad sandwich. 

 

We flew home the next morning. Joe held my hand and said, “If you had died, I would have signed up to go to Vietnam.”

 

We had a wonderful life. But the gift God had meant for me, my baby, was never forgotten. I always think of the baby as a she, though the doctor never said. I heard a mother in the doctor’s office where I had signed in as “Mrs.” and took a pregnancy test, talk of her baby saying if she was a girl, they would name her Heather. I liked that name and thought if this baby was a little girl, I would like to name her Heather. I guess I had not really given up on Joe deciding we should have our child. She would have been born in June of 1970. I later had a friend whose daughter was born in June of that year and every time I saw her, I would think of the baby I “lost”. 

 

Late sixties and early seventies, pilots, soldiers and sailors were coming home from Vietnam with PTSD. I think that women who have had abortions also suffer PTSD. That is not something the feminists speak of when they say their body is their own to determine what to do with it. 

 

My high school biology teacher taught us “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” That means that during the development in the uterus, a fetus goes through evolutionary stages The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism—often expressed using Ernst Haeckel's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is a historical hypothesis that the development of the embryo of an animal, from fertilization to gestation or hatching (ontogeny), goes through stages resembling or representing successive adult stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors (phylogeny). It was formulated in the 1820s by Étienne Serres based on the work of Johann Friedrich Meckel, after whom it is also known as Meckel–Serres law. (Wikipedia)

 

So, if what was growing inside of me was just a fish or such, it wasn’t really human was my reasoning. And according to some church teachings, the soul didn’t enter the baby until the fourth month when the mother felt a “quickening”.  

 

That was science in the 1960s. And supposedly, we are to rely upon “science.” So now we know that Roe v Wade was based on a lie, a politically expedient application of fake science for a political purpose--the supposed “liberation” of women. 

 

Now 51 years later, ultrasound tells the truth. The picture of the tiny hand grasping that of a physician performing an in utero operation to save its life demonstrates the fact that as Albert Schweitzer once said, “I am life that wills to live, and I live amidst life that wills to live.” He had come upon a flock of birds that when disturbed by his presence flew en masse in a cloud of white to escape the danger. So too will a fetus attempt to avoid a probe during a medical procedure. Before birth we see in an ultrasound that little one cherishes life before ever taking a breath. Life that wants to live.

 

Am I comforted by the feminist dogma that a woman’s body is hers and hers alone to decide? Feminists say that it is about equality and giving women the right to choose and not making the choice for women.

 

I say it is not about equality because equality would not determine that government school sex education curricula be designed by Planned Parenthood, an organization that profits from selling baby body parts.  Equality would provide young women with facts, not propaganda by radical feminists and a several billion-dollar business.

 

God blessed us with three children and five grandchildren. 

 

I had an abortion. Been there. Done that. Wear the t-shirt.

 

I think now, after my husband’s salvation, he would be willing to share our story in the hope of helping others with their “Choice.” 

 

Let me say, I have friends who had "early" babies. I have only admiration for these courageous women. I do not sit in judgement of those, who like me, chose to have an abortion. 

 

I also lost a baby to an infection.  I will have my children remember those already in heaven on my husband's and my headstone already in City Cemetery. The one I lost to infection would have been a little boy the nurses said when he was delivered. 

 

I am so grateful for God's forgiveness. The lives of my unborn children should have meaning. I wish I had gotten to know my little angels.  Hopefully, the choices brought out in my novel will have meaning to some other woman. Choices and Secrets is dedicated to those babies.

 

To those of you who made the same "choice" that I did, just remember, "God is good. His mercy is everlasting.  His Truth endures to all generations." Lean on His promises. Ask His forgiveness and make your life have meaning to honor those lost to your "choice." 

 

P.S.

 

Apparently, the question of life has been in the forefront of my thinking ever since I started writing. In my collection of cozy mysteries, Mint Julep Trilogy, I pondered the idea of life as a commodity, children conceived and born for their body parts. 

"Life that wants to live."