Muslim mom and Jewish dad

Often the biggest difficulty in getting over the abortion mindset is fear. It isn't to say that these fears aren't usually quite justified on the basis that a baby will complicate things, but in these situations I believe it is one of the roles of the counselor to show that this fear does not justify the taking of an innocent human life.

I encountered a very difficult circumstance recently when a woman and her boyfriend walked into our Queens office interested in our free services. For the woman especially, but also the boyfriend to an extent, an abortion seemed like a very bad option, but perhaps the best. First of all, she was Muslim and he was Jewish, and they were afraid of what the families would think and how the baby would be raised. Next, her parents were very devout and she was basically living a secret life - her parents didn't even know she had kissed a boy, much less been sexually active for some time.

So she was afraid of their reaction, naturally. But after we discussed what abortion actually was, the spiritual, physical, and emotional ramifications of having one, and the help we could provide - slowly, the fear of an abortion (including going against their own religious beliefs) outweighed the fear of having a child. More positively though, a seed of hope was planted and the hope that accompanies new life and the hope of 'coming clean' and not living a lie from her parents anymore put positive emphasis on keeping her baby.

I have been in contact with this woman since she came in that day and she seems to be in very good spirits. While she hasn't told her parents yet we have constructed 'worse case scenario' plans and she seems excited that even in the worst case scenario she will still have housing and access to medical care.

Of course, many difficulties remain, but the fact is that children aren't the enemy of their parents, and it is one of the great lies of our time that an abortion remedies any of our real underlying problems.