One day outside Dr. Emily's, a man walked out the back entrance of the clinic down the sidewalk alone. This is very common, where the men leave to go buy something to eat or have a smoke once the woman goes back into the operating room.
"Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?"I said and started to walk next to him. I asked if he had a girlfriend inside, and if he knew what abortion was. "Not really." I started to describe the procedure of abortion to him, what it would do to his baby and his girlfriend. He finally stopped walking to talk to me. He said that she couldn't have a baby, she was young and needed to finish college.
"It's her choice," he said. "Yes, legally," I said, "but your job as a man is to be a protector. Do you really want her to go through all that?" He said that we all had to live with the consequences of our decisions and some people are stronger than others. Then he made a comment about how his wife had a couple of abortions earlier in life and she'd been fine. I agreed with him that we have to live with our choices, but that's why we choose carefully.
"How old is your wife?" "Thirty-one."I told him that many women don't feel the pain of their abortion- or realize where that pain comes from- until many years later. She could be forty, fifty, sixty, and experiencing emotional trauma. And she might be holding many things inside right now that she's not telling him.
At this point, I was thinking, "Did I hear heard right? He said it's his girlfriend inside while meanwhile he had a 31-year-old wife and two kids??" But I decided not to question him on it because that's exactly what I heard; no doubt he was having an affair and was here to get rid of the evidence. At this point I just didn't want him to walk away from me.
After seeming to accept what I was telling him about abortion, he said, "Anyway, it's legal." He was African American and this opened up an opportunity for me. "Just because something is legal, that makes it OK? So if you're not allowed to sit on the bus with me or drink from the same water fountain as me, that's OK because it's the law? Back in the time of slavery in America, some people said 'If you don't want a slave, don't own one.' That's like saying 'If you don't want an abortion, don't have one.' So do you think that just because something is legal, that makes it right?"
At this he laughed nervously and shook his head, saying that I had a good analogy.
It's not usually easy to change somebody's mind about abortion in a ten-minute conversation on the sidewalk. But even if you make any progress, the people who are using abortion to get out of responsibility- or escape the sticky mess they've gotten themselves into- are usually still going to go through with it. This man honestly seemed to re-think some things while I was talking with him. But bottom line, if he was there to cover up an affair with a younger woman, then it was well worth it to him.
Such is the culture of abortion.
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