Maria-Jose had been on the Pill for three years, and couldn’t understand why she was suddenly having symptoms of pregnancy.
‘I’m not pregnant, really I’m not, and it’s just a phase that my body’s going through’ Maria-Jose said to Angie. But after two months of morning sickness, back pain and tiredness, Maria-Jose went to the university doctor who verified her pregnancy. Maria-Jose said, ‘please help me find a way out of this.’ and he referred her to a abortuary. Maria-Jose didn’t tell Angie that she was pregnant, she just said, ‘I’m going to a clinic. I want to get out of this stage. I’m going to get rid of the symptoms.’ Angie was flabbergasted, here was Maria-Jose, who didn’t fully realise or accept that she was pregnant, but was going to a 'clinic' for an abortion. Maria-Jose was determined to look at the whole thing as if she was ‘just getting some antibiotics’ for an illness.
‘I didn’t have a clue what to say to her...all I could think of saying was:
‘This is the biggest decision of your life. Have you thought about keeping the baby?’Angie told me later. ‘And it was all so quick, before either of us had time to think, she was getting the tube to the clinic. My mind was in a whirr; what did her kid look like at nine weeks? Was it anything at all? And I felt guilty when I tried to talk to her, was I nagging her? My words suddenly felt like they had no meaning.’
And yes, sometimes words frankly are not adequate. We live in a visual age and a multi-cultural one where many of our friends are raised with different mother tongue(s) to us, and so the consequences of miscommunications when we only rely on words are grave.
Maria-Jose later said to Angie, ‘I didn’t understand what you were saying.’
Later Maria-Jose looked up the facts about what the baby had looked like at that stage in pregnancy. She started having a re-occurring dream; she would go to the door of the clinic, the picture of the baby would be on the 'clinic' door, she would get a shock and think, ‘That’s my baby, that’s what it looks like. Why am I here?’ In the dream she would turn away and go home. On waking she would have this empty, aching feeling and realise as she said to Angie, ‘I didn’t accept that I had a baby when I had one, and now I can’t really believe what I did.’
Angie and Maria-Jose have drifted apart as friends, Maria-Jose blames Angie for not telling her more about the baby; Angie wishes she had known about pro-life You-Tube videos and pictures to show Maria-Jose.
‘It’s all about being ready. And let’s face it, there are so many abortions everyday that the likelihood is that our friends will be having them too’ said Angie.
I gave Angie a baby model of a ten week old baby, and we looked up appropriate You-Tube videos. Angie said that she hadn’t wanted to pester Maria-Jose by giving her too much information before, but that unexpectedly Maria-Jose was upset with her for not doing so. Angie has done her own research on Pill failure, because she had formerly thought that it could never fail.
The following links are helpful for informing friends about the humanity of the unborn child:
Video of ultrasound for 1st Trimester
Video of ultrasound for 22 weeks
PS – Here in The Good Counsel Centre, we have seen the powerful influence of pro-life friends guiding pregnant friends with visual resources. One lady who was 22 weeks pregnant turned around at the abortuary. After her appointment with us, she was wondering why it was only us who were telling her about her baby’s development, and ‘the scary truth’ that her baby could live outside her womb at 22 weeks old. A friend of hers (who was a bit pro-abortion until she saw a graphic You-Tube video...) showed her a video of what a twenty-two week old baby is like in the womb. The mother decided to keep the baby, not because she understood or accepted any complex arguments, but because she had seen the activity of a baby in the womb.
Mary O'Regan
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