One of the questions Chris Slattery asked me when I applied for the EMC internship was, “What are your expectations for the general experience you will be gaining here in New York City?” This was an easy question for me to answer as I’ve always tried to live without any expectations no matter how big or small my endeavor might be. As an adult, I’ve learned that expecting too much leaves you feeling let down while not expecting enough leaves you feeling overwhelmed. Living and working in the Bronx has placed me a little out of my element but having lived and worked in the Washington, D.C. area for my whole life, I wasn’t completely naïve to what the city was like either. Today in our South Bronx Pregnancy Center I met a girl, 16 years old and 8 weeks pregnant, who had her heart set on an abortion. After sitting in on a counseling session with her and one of our counselors I learned two things: the brutality of an abortion and that in our line of work nothing is for certain. Together, these two things hammered the importance of prayer even further into my heart.
This girl walked into our center today for the first time. She’d never been pregnant or had an abortion before and told us, “At first I was going to keep it.” She told us about her hopes and dreams of finishing school and going to college and med school. Eventually, she wanted to be a doctor who, “delivered babies or transplanted kidneys or something.” I found it ironic how a young girl who wanted to bring life into the world or keep people from dying thought it was ok to allow someone to kill her baby because she felt it would, “get in the way.” Her counselor asked her if she knew how the abortion worked and she said kind of so we showed her a computer animation DVD of how the abortion works and the instruments used. Most of the information in this video was not news to me but for this young girl is was. Even so, she remained unaffected and even said, “look at how easily the tools just glide in.” Then they showed her a movie titled, Choice Blues. This film was just as much a rude awakening for her as it had been for me only a few hours prior. Watching this video of an abortionist using a tenaculum to puncture the cervix on either side and pull it outside of the woman only to then watch the abortionist use gauged dilators to stretch the cervix wide enough to suck pieces of a fully formed fetus out of her. The girl being counseled sat there in silence for a few minutes taking in the brutal homicide she had just witnessed and then turned to us and said, “I can’t do that to my baby.” I turned to her counselor and smiled because we had just saved a life. However, later on her cousin came in and said that our girl was, “dumb for keeping it.” Our girl walked out of the clinic undecided as to what she was going to do even after acknowledging she couldn’t hurt her baby they way the abortionist had hurt the other baby. The bright light of hope that had come over us left just as quickly as it came.
On the subway ride back to the Lifehouse I didn’t want to think about what could become of this precious and very innocent life growing inside our girl. It was then that I realized, while it’s out of my control, I can still ask the intercession of Our Lady for these valuable little ones.
2 comments:
keep up the good work Rose, your faith is strong and will guide you! Mrs. Vallone
Congratulations Tulip! Please continue to keep us informed back in Gaithersburg so that we can continue to pray for the unborn that you come across both saved and not saved. Rest in knowing that the Lord has compassion for the innocent. It is young adults like you that gives me comfort that our nation still has hope.
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