Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 24, 1995 TAG: 9503240082
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LIBBIE McCUTCHEON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
What the newspaper article and television interview told was my abortion story. I had gone to the Speak Outs to tell everyone how I had become pregnant at the age of 15. It told how I considered marrying the 17-year-old high-school dropout father and keeping the baby. I shared how my boyfriend and I ran away from home because my mother did not find our scenario very joyous. As most mothers in this situation, my mom's behavior was a little irrational.
My story took a different turn the day my mother and the county sheriff found where we had been staying and she came to take me home to talk about my life.
She helped me picture what my life was going to be like if I married this guy and became a mom at 15. She reminded me that I would have to drop out of school and not fulfill my goals of college and career. I would have to go on welfare. My only alternative, she said, was to have an abortion.
Her reasoning made sense. I was smart. I did have high expectations for myself and my future. An abortion was a quick fix to a big problem.
At the Silent No More demonstrations, I shared how glad I was that abortion had been available for me. I stated that it was important to keep abortions legal for my children and my children's children.
Now it is 1995. Since the newspaper clipping appeared, I have had a computer-programming career at IBM, married a college graduate, had two sons, and became a born-again Christian.
Growing spiritually as a born-again Christian, I learned how precious the Bible says even the unborn babies in the womb are to God. And I became convicted for what I had done to an innocent little life that was cut and suctioned out of me. I now know that ``two wrongs don't make a right,'' as the saying goes.
The first wrong was the first problem. If we as a nation can fix the first wrong, we won't have to battle over the second wrong so violently.
As a 15-year-old, I was wrong to think that having sex was an OK lifestyle. I see now how important it is to teach our kids that abstinence is the only choice. As parents, we need to tell our children that sex was designed to be a very special union between man and wife, not a Friday Night Extra in the back seat of a car.
We need to try to turn this country around and instill the moral values of previous generations to our children. If we could do this, unwanted pregnancies, and the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, would be reduced dramatically.
What else causes 15-year-olds to be sexually active? What else has changed in the families of today that may have been different in families of the past?
Both mother and father spend so much time pursuing their careers, working long and hard hours, that the level of importance of being a family has declined to an all-time low. We need to make our families our first priority and spend more quality time together. If we could give our children more of our love and affection, they would not have the need to seek love and affection in a back seat.
We could learn from the marital skills of the past. We need to work as a family unit, forsaking ourselves in order to meet each other's needs as husband and wife. We need to be committed to the vows we took at the altar. By learning to be selfless instead of selfish, we could quit meeting in divorce court and give our kids a stable home with a mother and a father.
We need to pay attention to the music and shows our children like. Help them learn to discern the good and bad in music and television. TV and movie producers need to quit going for erotic effects and get back to real entertainment. They need to realize that sex isn't the only thing TV viewers will watch. Advertisers should do their part to clean up the smut by refusing to buy time on sexually explicit programs.
In reality, even if we had perfect family units, there still would be unwanted pregnancies. Fortunately, today most every community has a pregnancy crisis-intervention center. A young girl no longer has to feel that an abortion is the only way out. A pregnant girl today can continue going to school during her pregnancy. She can be provided with free medical care and maternity needs. She can put her child in the loving arms of a childless couple and know that the life she brought into the world will be blessed in an adopted family.
The adoption process needs to be changed to make it more well-known and accepted, and giving up the rights to an unwanted child should be made easier. Why is it that a woman can terminate her pregnancy by having an abortion without the father's consent or notification, but she cannot give life to her baby and provide him with a family through adoption without the father signing adoption papers? Unless a man is married to a woman wanting to place a child for adoption, I don't see how he can have any legal rights to the child in an adoption procedure.
Maybe we should require the father to prove paternity and sign for the killing of his child, as well. After all, it's only fair.
Libbie McCutcheon, of Roanoke, is a free-lance writer and homemaker with two children.
by CNB