I Wish My Mother Had Aborted Me

How awful and sad.  And this sort of abuse does run in families.  However, despite all he/she has been through, the writer can still know and love and be loved by Christ.

This article made me cry. Not kidding.  I don’t understand how this horrific act of self-revelation can be used as a pro- abortion argument.  I also don’t understand how people can congratulate her and call her brave in the comments section.

This is utilitarianism laid bare, in all its ugliness.

May the Lord touch her soul and heal her wounds.

RE:  “It is true that in the past 12 years, I have been able to rise above the circumstances of my birth and build a life that I truly love. But no one should have to make such a Herculean struggle for simple normalcy. Even given the happiness and success I now enjoy, if I could go back in time and make the choice for my mother, it would be abortion.”

An eloquent argument that warrants thought, authorship, and readership, if ever there was one.  Ironically it would not be expressed if the author had their wish.  Dang.

At any rate, I am glad that the author’s mother opted against abortion, “even if,” Beisner has been placed in that special hell of not being able to have her cake, and eat it too.  And “even if,” there is one more person in this world whose regard for life falls far short of the Author thereof.

I’m struck by the author’s vocabulary and literary style. Despite her childhood horrors, she has a powerful testimony of overcoming adversity.  The past can’t be changed, and I pray she will use her experience to help girls and women who struggle with similar experiences.

#4: that’s part of what saddens me- unless I’m misunderstanding her article, her message to children in situations similar to hers is, “You shouldn’t exist” or even “You are better off dead.”

“It is not easy to say, “I wish my mother had aborted me.” The right would have us see abortion as women acting out of cowardice, selfishness, or convenience. But for many women, like my mother, abortion would be an inconvenient act of courage and selflessness.”

Sorry, but I don’t buy that.  The author’s argument is essentially that, because of her mother’s traumatic upbringing it was highly statistically likely that she would end up being an abusive parent.  Let’s assume that is correct - why does it lead to abortion as the only option?  It simply does not follow.

If the mother turned out to be abusive, the more obvious solution is intervention and removal of the child - how is that any more intrusive than killing the child?

And now, because of her own trauma, Lynn Beisner wants to see other unborn children killed.

In fact it goes further than that even - her comments about her mother being unwilling to give her up for an adoption leaves a very real prospect that her mother would not have chosen abortion either.  Which means that Lynn Beisner is advocating abortion being forced on a woman who does not want it.  So, the mother is not being asked, the child is not being asked, but its going to happen in order to make Ms Beisner feel better, and all on the basis of doubtful statistical assumptions.

I think this writer raises some very valid points that Christians need to be capable of addressing—though I’m not certain that we’ve confronted the question of the intrinsic value of human life with quite the same intensity as she has. 

It is ironic that the Bible study on abortion that I attended in my 20s, led by a devout and wonderful Episcopal priest [now one of the dearly departed to ACNA], was what got me thinking most seriously about the value of *my* life—since I could certainly see that abortion was wrong in large part because of the value of *other people’s* [namely the unborns’] lives. So in a way, I came at it from the reverse angle of this woman’s.

In my 20s—and perhaps in childhood as well—I came to very similar conclusions as Lynn Beisner did.  They are, in my opinion, very realistic and self-assessing positions.  I know exactly how it feels to recognize that one is a “net loss” in earth’s economy. I’ve often used the same words about me—and I also know how it feels to recognize that, if one calculates the amount of happiness and joy that one has felt [up to that point] and then the amount of pain, misery, sleepless anxiety, guilt, terror, and horror—there also, the math often does not add up!  The happiness quotient is, for many, a “net loss” even as the “contributive quotient” is as well. At the end of the day, it was clear to me that it would have been better for me not to have existed, though as it was, I was required to drag the weary chain after me until I kicked the bucket—which filled me with frustration and anger.

Since I was deeply depressed—and I am willing to grant that the author above is not—I also was very clear in my mind that it would be better for others had I not existed as well.

I think Christians need to be able to respond with fewer pats on the heads and chucks under the chin—and euphemisms and positive aphorisms—to people who have serious, analytical objections to Life On Earth—“mathematical” objections. If someone objectively analyzes herself as a startling and horrific failure [“horror” was a word that described my emotions in response to those beliefs very precisely]—if one is horrified by oneself—that is a very hard place to be for an extended length of time.  Those two reasons above are very good reasons—in a material sense—for death and certainly abortion.

If I had the ability to talk to my younger self, believing what I believe, I would “confess” a few things to her:

—

“Yes, you’re probably right, we can’t all be Louis Pasteur, Mother Teresa, John Donne, Madame Curie, Alexander Fleming, Mozart, or a few others [in light of the billions before and after us] who, in the course of history, have achieved a “net positive” on earth. The cost to humanity of their existence, their own sinful behavior, the pain they wreak on others, and their general incompetence, poor character, laziness, and corruption probably might be outweighed by their contribution to human health and wellbeing.

It is probable that you will not be among these stellar lights—you will be one who is a “net loss” as a whole.

The fact is—by *material* and rational standards, most people are “net losses.” They are indeed, and I can come along beside you and grant that reality.

Is this the standard that you wish to apply to yourself?

If so—do you intend to apply it to others as well?

No?

If not, why not?

Honesty forced me to say that I could not apply the standard of “objective net loss” to others—for some strange reason, though again, objectively, it seemed pretty true.

Nevertheless—I did not live as if others were objective net losses.

And that’s what I’ve found has often been true for the rationalist, materialist, despairer.

That contradiction—for someone who can be honest with themselves—is a real irritant to the mind, believe me.

—Another thing I would say, of course, if I could get to my younger self is what was said to me, by so many and so helpfully:

“God loves you and values you so much. It is unreasonable on His part in many ways, but He has declared you to be intrinsically valuable, because you are made in His image and He is worth all things and more.  You may think it would have been better not to have existed—but He thought differently and He has declared differently than you and He is pursuing you and will pursue you to the end of your life.”

—Beyond all of that, as I discovered some very unique gifts that allowed me to—again, looking at myself objectively and rationally—recognize that I was being Quite Valuable to a few people, that allowed me to “develop a role” in the lives of a few other human beings, such that I could recognize that, were I to have never existed at all, those human beings would have “missed out” on something that they would never have received.

Since then I’ve developed a clearer sense of my own uniqueness—not particularly “grand” uniqueness—just uniqueness.  And that’s what I think about the woman writing under the pseudonym of Lynn Beisner.

Despite the fact that I will probably never agree with Lynn Beisner’s politics or foundational worldview, and in another venue we would probably be fierce combatants, the truth is that there will never—not in a thousand thousand years—be another Lynn Beisner and there has never been one prior to her unique and painful and fighting and dirty and majestic and impoverished and indecently glorious life. She is utterly original, and God has placed her in a unique period in history and among a set of other unique players on the stage, and she has lines to say [as she has just demonstrated], and characters to meet and influence, and an Author to meet and love someday too.  This is her shot—and her only shot—on earth’s stage and, though her work and life may not meet her exacting standards of “net positive,” nobody will ever parent, love, teach, research or anything else, as she has done and will do.

For Lynn Beisner’s life not to have occurred may not mean that the world is a darker poorer place—but since human beings are individuals and highly unique—the world *for certain individuals* would be a darker poorer place without Lynn Beisner in it.

Now that may seem a trivial thing to Lynn Beisner—but it’s not to these others who have had her in it!

And the world as a whole would have had a “hole” in it, without her, too.

Finally, I think that Lynn Beisner is too idealistic [heh] about her Mother.  I suspect that had she not had Lynn, she would have turned out little better, and she may have turned out even worse, since choosing to end the life of a helpless creature dependent on you—even if that life is that of a kitten’s or a little bird’s, much less a human child—does affect even the most hardened and wounded person, whether they are conscious of it or not.

The fact is, Lynn Beisner’s Mother had choices—and the commitment of those choices—abusing her child, submitting herself to abusers, and creating another god in that pastor—were taken, just as her choice not to abort was taken.

It is highly likely that Lynn Beisner would not have “found feminism or psychology” even without the baggage of her child, but if she had, she might still have turned out richer and a child-abuser, or perhaps even taken worse actions than she did with a child and in poverty.

One just never knows.

Given that there is an unreasonable willingness to have her Mother turn out better than she did, it is possible that the writer continues to idealize—in an odd way—her Mother and her choices, which of course were “constrained,” over herself.  But killing the child off—killing off Lynn Beisner—in order to make the Mother behave more honorably and more decently and have a far-fetchedly “better life”—while granting that it would also have been a “net loss” life by Lynn Beisner’s standards—is merely denigrating one fellow sufferer, one fellow “net loss”—the child—over another, the Mother.

Even if I try to set aside my Christian worldview and speak as a pagan, I cannot rationally grant the justice of that, or even the probabilities of that. It is just as likely that, having killed off one “net loss”—the first child—the Mother might have conceived another net loss and treated it precisely in the same way, and made the same choices, with the result that the death of Lynn Beisner meant the “net loss” proceeded to the next human being in line.

I wish she had aborted me because I love her and want what is best for her.

Ms. Beisner is assuming that her young, depressed, suicidal mother with a poor support network, probably already suffering from some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder due to her abusive childhood, would not have suffered debilitating psychological sequelae from the trauma of abortion.  I find that unlikely. 
If I were her mother, I would be very proud of Ms. Beisner’s accomplishments.  It would not surprise me in the least if one of Ms. Beisner’s descendants made an important contribution not only in the lives of a few people, but for all of humankind.

There is a time for chin-clucking and a time not for it.  Things which are associated with suicide automatically rule out chin-clucking. 

Beisner’s problem is either a suicide problem or a space-time problem.  But suicide victims don’t reason like this.  They reason, “I can’t take the pain,” and then they fulfill their own prophecy.  But Beisner isn’t making that kind of prophecy. 

As a matter of fact, not only is this not a prophecy, it isn’t even autobiographical.  If it were autobiographical, it would require action.  So, she has resisted her own reasoning with every fiber of her be-ing.  She has not owned it, truly owned it, in her present life.  She hasn’t lived like a suicide victim.  And she isn’t living like a suicide victim.  There must therefore be an ultimate truth that has won out time and again, over and against her pain.  There must be an ultimate truth that has cried out, time and again, “yes you can take it, and you must.” 

Whether she is aware of it or not;  or admits it or not, she doesn’t fully believe what she is writing.  The only statement more ironic would be, “I am a liar.”  But not by much.

Ms. Beisner, if you are reading this, know these things: 
—You are not responsible for your mother’s decisions.  Though, no doubt, you were a caregiver to her on many occasions, and a good caregiver, you are not responsible for the consequences of her decisions.  You can love her without being responsible for the consequences of her decisions. 
—Though your maternal grandmother committed suicide and your mother considered it, you do not have to toy with death.  You do not have to say you wish you were aborted.  You can embrace your life.
—You were never alone.  Read this passage from Psalm 139: 

1 You have searched me, Lord,
  and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
  you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
  you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
  you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
  and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
  too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
  Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
  if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
  if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
  your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
  and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
  the night will shine like the day,
  for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being;
  you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
  your works are wonderful,
  I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
  when I was made in the secret place,
  when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
  all the days ordained for me were written in your book
  before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
  How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
  they would outnumber the grains of sand —
  when I awake, I am still with you.

 
Give Jesus the memories that haunt you.  When a memory oppresses you, ask Him to show you where He was in that memory.  He does not change the memory, but knowing He was present removes the sting.
Just as He can take the sting out of the past, He can be in the present.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  Invite Him in and let Him love you. 
He will bless your future, and He will bless the future generations.

Jesus - it make us sad to know that someone has suffered so much.  Yet you knew her before you formed her in the womb.  Lord, we pray for Ms. Beisner, that you will wrap her in Your loving arms; that You will take away her pain; that she will turn her face towards You Lord for her comfort and for your peace that passes understanding.

Lord, in our finiteness we do not understand this suffering.  Help us Lord to be compassionate and loving to all our neighbors, as You Lord have commanded us to do.

We pray this in the Holy and Precious name of Jesus.  Amen.

And yet this woman today is being published (actually is being republished) in The Guardian. 

So she has made/found some value in her own life. 

Does she really believe that, in spite of her clear ability to write and make herself understood and cared for (even readers unknown to her feel compassion for her), she would have been better off never existing?

Is she really trying to convince us to wish that she never existed? 

Which is it, read my writing and be moved by my words, or agree with my argument that it would be better for people not to live than to feel pain?

In the comments, she is quoted as saying that her husband does not agree with her that she should not have existed because he can’t imagine his life without her, and when he does it is as a hermit in a house full of cats! 

Her husband’s love should be enough for her to know that she ought to be here, even if she sadly cannot believe in God’s particular love for her. 

Less significant, but bothering, is the supposedly awful list of things she had not done by the time she was 14 “been on a sleepover” (either had I)  worn jeans (either had I), watched a television show, ( I had, but some of my children had not, and they were the better, not the worst for it!).  None of these things strike me as particularly terrible deprivations.  I do get the point that her mother lived in a cult like situation to which she was drawn because she was so in need of support.  So in that way, it was far from ideal.  But why does she think a less than ideal life has no value?  Also, why does she think life at the social standing of professor is so much more worth living than life in a lower social stratum? 

I also wonder about her statement that she loves her mother-but has nothing to do with her because her mother is too ‘toxic.’  I imagine her mother is difficult, and I understand that sometimes it is necessary for some separation to be made for one’s emotional health, but at the same time, if she is the only child of a mother in difficulty, she owes the mother more than wishes from a distance that she might have lived a better life…as she conceives it. 

I agree with Julia Marks’ comment above.  This writer is assigning far too small a value to her own life and to the goodness of life, and far too high a negative value to the pain of life.  She also seems to lack in gratitude.  What about the joy of loving her husband and being loved by him?  What about the great joy of the birth of a child,  of the joy we take in the child’s exuberance for life, in his first words and first steps?  She has had all that, and she can’t be grateful for having been born?  (leaving aside clinical depression, in which one’s ability to be happy on the most beautiful of days is part of the pain.) 

Somehow I don’t really believe her.

Susan Peterson

Somehow, this just doesn’t “ring true”!  It sound too much like the manufacutred tale of an angry adolescent.

I bet $10 that the whole story is a bogus fraud. Fake narratives are a common part of the abortion-on-demand-so-we-can-fund-Planned-Parenthood propaganda machine.