Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 5:28pm

Abortion as Attempted Art

How Long Does An Abortion Last

 

An astounding piece by Lisa Davis at the resolutely pro-abort New York Times.  A young artist becomes pregnant and decides to film her abortion.  Her plans suddenly begin to unravel due to a cab driver and his reaction to the news that she is on her way to have an abortion:

 

 

I stuffed my Ricoh Hi8 video camera in my backpack, and I went alone.

The driver was Middle Eastern, from some hot and weather-less country, but he did a fair job of steering into the skids. He kept asking me why I was going out in such weather.

“I have to go to the doctor,” I kept telling him.

“Why? You don’t look sick.”

“I have to have a procedure.”

“What? What procedure?”

Finally, I told him. Why not? I was proud and un-conflicted. I was exercising my right. I was making a video.

He pulled over to the side of the road, right there on the Brooklyn Bridge — not only illegal but dangerous. “Please don’t kill the baby,” he said. “Please don’t kill the baby.”

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t kill the baby.” He wouldn’t move the car, though horns blared all around us.

“Keep driving! I have an appointment!” I shook his headrest. This was not part of the script.

“Please don’t kill the baby,” he said again, turning around to face me. He had beautiful big brown eyes — almost black. “I will take care of you and the baby. I work two jobs.”

Heartbreakingly she has her abortion:

The first thing I thought when I awoke from the anesthesia was that I’d never be pregnant again, that I had just squandered my only chance at motherhood. I was sobbing — I had arisen from the depths of the medication this way — as they rolled me into the recovery room where the other women were lying, almost all of them with a friend or partner or relative to brush their hair back or offer them ice chips. I could not stop crying, big heaves and gulps of it. The nurse came over at first to soothe me and then to quiet me.

“You’re upsetting the other girls,” she said.

“It hurts.”

She sent the doctor over. “Sometimes we have to massage the womb,” he said, inserting his hand inside me and pressing. This did not stop the crying, but eventually it stopped the pain.

Or, at least, it stopped the physical pain. The begging cabdriver and the woman on her ninth abortion and the shocking suction in my womb: It was too traumatic for me to make art of. Or maybe it was just that I wasn’t a good enough artist to transform that level of trauma into something that others could learn from and use. I had been taught that a woman’s right to choose was the most important thing to fight for, but I hadn’t known what a brutal choice it was.

I took a car service home, too, where my brother and his girlfriend met me and we ordered in. “We would have gone with you,” they said, “if you’d asked.”

“I was going to make a video,” I said. Reacting to the way my hands still shook, they tended to me as if I’d just walked miles in that blizzard. I knew then I’d never be a filmmaker.

About motherhood, though, I was wrong. Fifteen years later, happily coupled with a wonderful man, I gave birth to my first daughter; I now have two. I don’t wish I had a 20-year-old. I didn’t want that baby, with that man. Abortion rights, yes, I’ll always support them, but even all these years later, I wish the motto wasn’t “Never again,” but “Avoid this if there’s any way you possibly can, even if it’s legal, because it’s awful.”

I wish that someone had alerted me to the harshness of the experience, acknowledged the layers of regret that built and fell away as the months and years passed. I want my daughters to have the option of safe and legal abortion, of course. I just don’t want them to have to use it.

Go here to read the rest.  Plato has Socrates observe that an unexamined life is a tragedy.  Ms. Davis is to be saluted for realizing how terrible abortion is for the mother and writing about it.  Now, if only she could accept how terrible abortion is for the child being killed at the dawn of life.  Art, at least the best of Art, teaches us lessons about life.  The abortion of Ms.  Davis has taught her half a lesson.

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bill bannon
bill bannon
Thursday, July 3, AD 2014 3:01pm

Excellent post. Confused even now…woman. We can only go back to God in Jonah 4:11 as He notes that confusion is rampant: ” And shall not I spare Ninive, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons that know not how to distinguish between their right hand and their left, and many beasts?”
He has time. Perhaps He saves many in their latter days after much more trouble.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Thursday, July 3, AD 2014 3:51pm

Despite her regrets, she strikes me as a selfish idiot. I’m not so sure she learned anything. Ms. Davis killed an innocent life because she didn’t want it. Even after how terrible she says she feels, I sense little to no regard for the life she and the quack “doctor” snuffed out. It’s all about her.

I was briefly engaged to a woman who admitted to me that she had an abortion before I met her. It constantly tormented her. She could not forgive herself, evn after having confessed to the sin multiple times. Abortion leaves three victims – the baby who never had a chance at life, the mother who makes a terrible decision and the father – often times who has no input at all and never has any legal standing.

Abortion is evil. Abortion is murder – the absolute worst, the murder of a baby. Abortion is the ultimate act of selfishness. Abortion supporters – including so called Catholic politicians in this country and others – will completely deserve the judgment that is coming to them in the next world.

I’m going to make a generalization. Single young women today and for the previous two decades – tend to be selfish and spoiled. My 16 year old niece is spoiled rotten. They want their birth control for free. Men are all idiots. Rethuglians only want to suppress them. The “glass ceiling” keeps them down. Too many believe this garbage.

If I became supreme dictator, I would use every abortion clinic as target practice for the Abrams tank.

RodneyHood1314
RodneyHood1314
Thursday, July 3, AD 2014 6:08pm

@Penguins Fan Abortion is horrible. But is it necessary to call a sinner you don’t even know an idiot on a Catholic blog? Not trying to offend you at all and I agree with what you’re saying. We have to remember she was around 20 when she made the choice; the fact this still haunts her indicates a level of guilt that cannot be ignored.

Mary De Voe
Thursday, July 3, AD 2014 6:10pm

“I didn’t want that baby, with that man.” Punishing the child for the crimes, sins and ugliness of the parent, either one of them, is unconstitutional, like executing an innocent person to punish a capital one murderer, denying that sovereign person, newly conceived, due process of law.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Thursday, July 3, AD 2014 6:21pm

RodneyHood, the woman feels sorrow but still supports “a right” to an abortion. Her sorrow comes across as self pity to me and shows no remorse for the life she took.

You can differ with me about the term I used. People like this woman elected Barack Obama. Twice. I have no nicer term for them.

RodneyHood1314
RodneyHood1314
Thursday, July 3, AD 2014 6:40pm

Fair enough.

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Thursday, July 3, AD 2014 9:12pm

Lisa Davis is like all the other liberals: self-absorbed about how terrible the consequences of her decision makes her feel. It’s all about me – me -me. Selfish, self-absorbed. No regrets for the murdered baby, and yes, she had her baby murdered. She has regret at how she feels, but it is not enough to bring her to repentance. It never is for a liberal. The people of Nineveh were nowhere near as self-absorbed. So God spared them. Will He spare people like this? Like us?

DJ Hesselius
DJ Hesselius
Thursday, July 3, AD 2014 9:14pm

“Avoid this if there’s any way you possibly can. . .”
.
Yes, there IS a way to avoid this. If you don’t want a baby 9 months from today, don’t have sex today. Pretty sure that would never occur to her. The even bigger problem, as I see it, is that it does not occur to many Christians either.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Friday, July 4, AD 2014 6:01am

Paul W Primavera,
Paul says he was the chief of sinners in I Tim.1 yet obtained mercy because he acted in unbelief and that in him Christ “might show forth all patience”. So he was the worst or Christ could not have shown forth all patience until Christ found someone else. But Christ already showed forth all patience with the worst person…Paul. Worst because inter alia he knew the scriptures inside out and sinned afterwards…” from those to whom much is given, much will be required”…and ” the mighty will be mightily judged”. So Paul was worse than all the “liberals” you can imagine. He was supposed to be destroyed by God according to 1 Cor.3:17 ” But if any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which you are.”
I am having trouble praying for ISIL terrorists due to I Cor.3:17 but I Tim.1:13-16 seems to say to pray anyway since Paul was worse than them given his background in the Word.
In short, do not let anger against liberals convince you they were worse than Paul …because that means that Christ did not show forth all patience yet…and I Timothy says Christ did that in Paul’s case for all time. The devil wants us to believe that Christ showed forth limited patience. No…Christ showed forth all patience in Paul’s case and I Tim.1 is there for that purpose. The Ninevites were to be destroyed in forty days. They also then like Paul were in mortal sin not anything less.

karen
karen
Friday, July 4, AD 2014 11:36am

The true “war on women”. Create a pill that will allow them to be sexually promiscuous, telling them that this is the way to equality. When they grasp their equality and their chosen method of birth control fails no worries, just back it up with an abortion and leave the woman more broken than when she first grasped that fruit.

Botolph
Botolph
Friday, July 4, AD 2014 11:53am

A very moving as well as true narrative, but as said by many-only half of the full narrative

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Friday, July 4, AD 2014 11:55pm

I wonder how her daughters feel when they read this story about their sibling and their mother.

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