325 - Cry With the Mother

Cry With the Mother
By Mary Studer Shea

I am at this moment, above all, a tired mother as I write in response to the letters concerning abortions…. I am tired. I can simply hear no more right thinking on either side of the abortion issue. I find both sides, and particularly those of the pro-life stance, to be stalwart, morally indignant, singularly without compassion, and therefore, totally uncompelling as persuasive forces to change any behavior whatsoever.

As a mother, I have learned principally one thing, humility as a healthy lack of surprise at all the vagaries of human behavior, my own above all. I am constantly aware of my limitations, follies, my meanness, and yet, my ability to transcend. It seems to me parenting encapsulates the total human dimension from suffering to glory. And, as a mother, I write and say I am not surprised that women seek abortions.

Giving life is a terrible, terrible gift. It is the most awesome thing that has ever happened to me, and I am not speaking of the mere act of delivery. But it appears we have made pregnancy and motherhood a sacred cow, a false idol. We have simplified and glorified the mothering role with beautiful, meaningless clichés. The reality is much more magnificent and simultaneously much less wonderful.

Pregnant women are simply no better or worse than any other segment of humanity and are certainly not privy to any superior code of behavior than any other person. Pregnancy is a time of great stress, of biological upheaval, and add to that often the threat of abandonment or the withdrawal of affection by family or the biological consort. How can we fail to understand the pain?

With all the emphasis on the abortion, we seem to have forgotten this happens to real suffering women, not just to aborted babies. The issue violates the intrinsic unity between mother and in-utero child. The abortionists concentrate on the woman; the pro-lifers on the child. And both are wrong. The abortionists have depersonalized the process by calling the baby fetal tissue, and the pro-lifers have done just as badly by making the woman merely a recipient or host womb to be as conveniently

Certainly one of the most divisive issues of our time relates to the problem of abortion. Men and women, Catholics and Protestants, square off against each other, usually With much heat and little light. We take pleasure in reprinting with the permission of the editor and the writer a perceptive and compassionate comment that appeared as a "Letter to the Editor" in Commonweal. April 6. 1984. When asked for an author identification, Mary Studer Shea of Sonoma, California. replied: "I am a wife (eleven years), mother of two preschoolers, and a peripatetic teacher of Spanish.

326 - Cry With the Mother

unburdened as the abortionists want to do, only they want to do it a mere nine months later down the road.

Everyone is trying to do the pregnant woman a favor, and none of us needs such friends. I am always intrigued by the tales of various acts of charity being foisted upon the poor by well-meaning do-gooders, and the resultant shock and dismay when the poor turn and spit in their benefactors' eyes with great contempt and walk off with the goodies. I have seen patronizing, ignorant, morally superior Birthright people, and, believe me, I'd never turn to them for help or send them a friend of mine.

And so I'd like to say, yes, care about the unborn child, but cry, with the mother, suffer with her. I find we need to celebrate life ritually and symbolically, but we must include both the pain and the promise. I sometimes wish my mothering role would disappear, but those moments are fleeting, but they, need to be recognized and aired, for there can be no resurrection without the accompanying Calvary. Let us not deprive pregnant women of their suffering with easy solutions on both sides. Let us not deprive them of the integrity of their suffering and its mystery. and above all, let us not deprive them of their faces and names. They are not shameful women, and they, are certainly not statistics….

And, finally, we must realize we are all capable of doing evil. Killing is part of the human malaise, only now we seem to be surprised and horrified that women are doing the killing. We all kill and are capable of killing whether it be legalized or not, whether it be through abortion, capital punishment, war, felony, drunk driving, concentration camps, indifference to famine, etc. None of us is blameless. The only thing I can do is recognize my own impoverishment of spirit, my own ability to commit the same acts, and be grateful I have not been driven to do the same.

I always remember the image of the woman about to be stoned for adultery, and Jesus in a most compassionate act saving her. Where was her coadulterer and where are these new fathers of these aborted babies? They, are strangely silent. And are we able to truly understand and forgive a woman who has had an abortion?

There is a new phenomenon in America aptly called the feminization of poverty. Women and children are the new poor in this land and are condemned to misery and degradation in substandard jobs and conditions. Please take a look at that woman pregnant, alone, and facing such a life. I can understand and taste her fear. I wish I could paint her face. Perhaps a pregnant woman alone, abandoned by all those who profess to love her can be the new symbol of the suffering Christ present in the world today. We need such images to call forth our own ability to give life on ail levels, for it has certainly, called forth our disgust and loathing on a national level. I wish I could paint her face.