Category Archives: Adoption

I Think I Can’t….I Think I Can’t

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

January 24, 2005

Her question stopped me in my tracks.  “So why can’t you have a baby and go to college?”

I opened my mouth to speak, “Because….”  I stopped.  “Well, it….”

The modern proscription for a successful life in America is rigid.  You graduate from high school, you go to college and graduate, you get a master’s degree, and you begin your career.  Only then are you given permission to settle down and consider having a family.

The promise of “success” hangs in front of our nose, like the hare racing in front of the greyhounds at the track.  We have our life mapped out, no time to waste, and no room for detours.  But why?

It wasn’t always this way.  There was a day not so long ago when diversity was more than a political slogan.  It formed the very fabric of life, a patchwork of possibilities, a life of beauty designed around the varied circumstances of men and women.

Once upon a time, we took life as it came.  We planned.  But we also made allowances for the turns in the road, the detours and side trips that inevitably occur.  They were not evidence that life was over.  They were moments of creativity, unbidden opportunities to incorporate the unexpected into life and call it success.

Love wasn’t rejected until we had our college diploma framed behind the leather chair.  It came in joyful moments of surprise, and it was received as a gift.  Students in love got married.  If children came along, life wasn’t over.  It was extended.

Married students moved into married housing.  And if they became pregnant, the children were welcome.  Life was big enough to have it all.

Not so today.  For all the pride we have in our ability to plan the perfect life, we have created the ultimate rigid path that rejects life’s diversity.  If success is only possible as single men and women without children, then our fate is sealed.  Sex is recreation, relationships are void of commitment, and babies are unwelcome.

Thus, it is quite an easy matter for clinics on college campuses to sell young women the solution to unplanned pregnancies.  Abortion in college is just one more part of the so-called prescription for success.

Abortion counselors don’t counsel.  They simply latch onto our fears and reinforce them.  “Oh, my dear,” they tell young women, “you don’t want to drop out of school.  You’ll never be able to do it.  Here let us fix it for you.”

Sealing their fate, reinforcing the promise of failure, we withdraw support from pregnant women.  If they want acceptance, love, careers, and a future…they have only one path, one narrow path, just big enough for one person to walk alone, no babies allowed.

As a nation we are all caught in the fear of failure.  Parents push their daughters to abortion.  Boyfriends expect abortions.  And women have bought the lie.  They can’t be a woman, a mother, a wife, and a student…because we tell them they can’t.

When did we decide that the best life to be had is the life of a sterile woman?  What justification do we have for preaching the Mother Goddess in feminism even as we demand that she sacrifice the joy of mothering in order to move ahead?

Do you plan joy?  Or does it flow from your ability to accept the unexpected treasures found along the way…love, commitment, marriage, and family?  If humans were created to be parents, what kind of happiness will we find by denying our creation?

Babies are not the enemy…but only if we are willing to believe in the value of life and all that it brings.  What joy have we lost today by pretending that the best of life can be planned?  When did we give up on ourselves?

 

June 5, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

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The Pregnant Elephant in the Room

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

January 17, 2005

It was a shocking statement to hear my friend Joan say, “I personally don’t think sex education is comprehensive enough.”  But she made perfect sense.

“Comprehensive” has come to mean “condoms and birth control” in debates about sex education.  Comprehensive sex educators insist on the necessity of demonstrating condoms and instructing students on birth control.  But condoms and birth control were the last thing on Joan’s mind.

She has spent years counseling women who sought her out to deal with the negative consequences of their abortions.  Their pain is easy for her to understand.  At the age of 19, over twenty years ago, Joan had an abortion, too.

“I was a college freshman when I got pregnant,” she recalls, “and my boyfriend insisted that I have an abortion.  He wanted to finish school and we would get married after that.  I gave in to his desires.”

Like so many young women today, Joan thought love was the focus of their relationship.  “I thought we were in love….I wasn’t disturbed by the pregnancy at all.  I was excited about it.  I really wanted the baby, but he put pressure on me….I didn’t want to lose him.”

Isolated at the time, relying on her boyfriend’s advice, Joan had the abortion.  Only later, after severe medical complications arose, did her parents find out.  But more important to Joan were the severe emotional consequences.

Her boyfriend was unable to handle her emotions and took Joan to see his family psychiatrist.  “His psychiatrist told me that he couldn’t see any reason for my depression and my grief and my regret…that I had done the right thing and I needed to get over it and get on with my life.”  Only two months after the abortion performed for his sake, her boyfriend left.

Not a religious person at the time, and unaware of fetal development, Joan still felt extreme shame and guilt.  “I knew that I was pregnant with a baby I wanted.  And immediately afterwards, I knew that that baby…I would never hold that baby.”

Eventually, Joan married and became the mother of two children.  Her life then was filled with “triggers,” moments when her abortion would come to life, and emotions would flood her.  “When our son was born, I just looked at him and thought, “He’s not your first child.  He’s your second.  And your first you gave back.  You don’t deserve this one.”

Striving to become the perfect, loving mother and to reclaim the pain of her abortion, she began working at a local crisis pregnancy center.  It was there where, working over eight years with pregnant moms and women who had had abortions, Joan found healing.  She learned she was not alone.  Her experiences of abandonment, shame and guilt were common among other post-abortive women.

Joan looks at sex education today and criticizes the failure to discuss the obvious…the pregnant elephant in the room.  “I don’t believe they talk about the consequences strongly enough.”  Condoms have a pregnancy failure rate for teens of approximately 22%.  “I believe,” Joan says, “that if abortion is talked about as a possible consequence to sexual activity. Kids might make a different choice about becoming sexually active.”

Even when abortion is discussed, Joan points out, “It’s been sugar-coated… ‘This is nothing more than a very simple, quick medical procedure, probably not as traumatic as having a tooth pulled.’”

While some educators have begun to change their rhetoric, Joan is quick to challenge their fence-sitting.  “Either it is a horrible heart-wrenching difficult decision with all of the implications of that, with the emotional damage and the reality of what it does to the child…or it is simpler than having a tooth pulled.  Which is it?”

Coupled with the lack of comprehensive discussions about abortions, sex educators offer almost no information on fetal development.  Over 138,000 abortions were performed in 2001 on women age 19 and under according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Often facing an abortion decision in isolation, teens may lack true knowledge about the stage of development of their baby.  Years later, when pregnant with a child they will keep and with intimate knowledge of fetal development, they often experience a delayed and traumatic reaction to their abortion.

Joan speaks openly about abortion these days.  And she calls others to do the same.  There is a pregnant elephant in the room, and we need to start talking openly about what to do with it.

The next time an educator promotes comprehensive sex education to you, ask them if they present the harmful consequences of abortion to young people.  Ask them if they teach young people about the development of a baby in the womb.  And if they don’t, ask them, “Why not?”

Joan is right.  If we’re going to be comprehensive, it’s time to start discussing the pregnant elephant.

 

 June 5, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

December 10, 2004:  The Best Part of Snuggling

 See Archives for past editorials.

 

The Peterson Verdict: Truth Reclaimed

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 20, 2004

Twelve people, ordinary citizens, accepted the ultimate challenge of a civilized society.  They sat through five months of grueling testimony in the Scott Peterson trial in order to defend truth.

There is something immediate and real about sitting in the jury box, examining bits of concrete, clothing, and recorded phone conversations, searching for truth.  When the prosecution passed the peasant maternity blouse thought to have been worn by Laci shortly before her murder, one juror burst into tears.  Literally touching the truth can be painful.

The Peterson verdict makes me think back to another trial I witnessed firsthand in 2001, where Dr. John Biskind was accused of letting his patient die.  Like Laci, his patient LouAnne was pregnant.

In order to prove their case against Dr. Biskind, prosecutors needed to prove the age of LouAnne’s baby.  Twelve jurors focused on a description of the proper use of ultrasound to measure the widest part of the baby’s temple, slightly above the eyes.  The expert witness assured them further measurements of the baby’s waist and femur could be used to confirm an estimated age.

The jury listened intently.  The truth seemed to be that LouAnne’s baby had been 25 to 26 weeks old, at the age of viability, when, under ordinary circumstances the baby could have survived outside the mother’s womb.  But these were not ordinary circumstances.

Scott Peterson and Dr. Biskind were both convicted by juries.  Both prosecutors won their cases.  Two trials, two mothers, two babies, and four deaths.   But oh, the difference in truth.

You see, as tragic as his death was, at least Connor had a name.  He is remembered in the hearts of people who wanted him, and he is honored by a nation who grieved when his little body was found on the shore of San Francisco Bay.  Laci’s baby was a victim.  And Scott will pay the price for his murder.

LouAnne’s baby was measured and counted and aged.  But he…or she…was never named.  Prosecutors in the Biskind trial were under a strict order from the judge not to make the trial about the baby.  Just figure out how old “it” was…and then move on.

Later in the trial, when prosecutors described the death of “it”, they explained how the broken leg bone of the baby could have ripped a hole in LouAnne’s uterus as the doctor pulled it out.  And the metal tool that broke the leg bone…and crushed the skull of “it”…that sharp metal tool might have cut into LouAnne and caused the uterine wound that made her bleed to death.

The Peterson trial was about two people, Laci and Connor, who each died a brutal death.

The Biskind trial was about one person, LouAnne…and “It”.  LouAnne died a painful and undeserved death, and Dr. Biskind was convicted of this crime.  “It” never died, because “It” was supposed to die.

When “It” was measured at the trial…her little head, her tummy, her legs and arms…she was a fully-formed picture on an ultrasound with a beating heart.  But when time came to describe her death in the trial, she became a fetus…a linguistic charade that snuffed out her humanity, a life summed up by a medical examiner in three words of dispassionate science…a “Product of Conception”…or more simply said…“It.”

Is this the truth that we require of juries?  Is the truth a matter of declaring what you want, even if the evidence proves otherwise?  If you name him Conner, then he was killed.  If she was only an “It,” then she never was…and she never died.

This week, just as Americans work to make peace with the conclusion of the Peterson trial, the brutal truth we work so hard to avoid has been savagely resurrected on the front page of national newspapers.

Another mother, Bobby Jo Stinnett, was murdered.  Her fetus?  Her product of conception?  Her “It”?  It lived.

Bobby Jo died.   But because someone wanted her fetus enough to kill her for it, to take it by force from the womb, a grateful father has been reunited with his baby…Victoria Jo Stinnett.

In Kansas, another jury will eventually convene in another trial, with another long trail of evidence leading to the conviction of a murderer.  And as the jury weighs the evidence of this unspeakable crime, our nation will once again be faced with a serious truth that refuses to die.

The definition of life is not fluid…changeable from one trial to the next…based on whether we wanted to receive the life…or not.  Life, like truth, exists of its own volition…separate from our juries and verdicts…life is.  And truth is.

No amount of evidence and testimony will ever be enough to reach truth if we close our eyes and hearts.  The greatest challenge for a jury in a civilized society is not to determine truth, but to open its eyes to the truth in plain sight…and accept it.

 

See Archives for past editorials.

June 25, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

December 10, 2004:  The Best Part of Snuggling

 

The Best Part of Snuggling

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 10, 2004

It is black outside.  Soft pits and pats against the window…rain…and I pull the blanket closer, sinking back into the arm of the recliner.  A hot cup of tea rests at my elbow.  It is my favorite time of the day.

In the darkness, I think back to other special mornings, twenty years ago.  Wrapped in my green plush robe, rocking back and forth, it was many a quiet dark morning when I would slowly sense the presence of another person.  My son, a toddler of three, had padded into the living room, up next to my chair, with his small eyes fixed on me.

Wordlessly, in agreement that the peace of the morning was large enough for both of us, I would open my robe.  Knowing what to do, he climbed onto my lap, and I pulled the robe around us, a snuggling of two.  In many a dark early morning, so many years ago, we kept the peace together.

Snuggling…it’s hard to know the best part.  Is it the dark, the quiet, the soft touch of a hand on the shoulder?  Is it protection, comfort, acknowledgement, relationship?  Safety?  Is it the promised assurance between human beings that what happens to you will happen to me because I share your heartbeat?

I was jarred to attention last week.  I was asked to consider the first time I ever snuggled, my earliest snuggle of life, and the question brought me up short.

Was it inside the warm white blanket wrapped around me as I was laid into the arms of my mother in the hospital?  Or was it later…close against her as she nursed me, her firstborn?  Maybe my father was the first to snuggle me, peering intently, measuring the smallest eyes and lips of a baby…his…held in the crook of his arm.

Maybe…but the magic of science has opened the window on snuggling, and I think it must surely have been weeks, even months before my birth, when I knew I was safe, a knowing of safety available to all living beings even before they can explain it in words.

Surely, weeks before birth, wrapped into a bundle of baby, between my bursts of pushing and kicking against the walls of the womb…surely there were quiet moments shared with my mother where we snuggled and dreamt.  Already at this stage I had fine hair, teeth, and eyelash fringes around eyelids that opened and closed…and opened again…for infant eyes that looked around.  When she spoke, I knew my mother’s voice…outside…serenading me as I waited my time.

Certainly, even weeks earlier, when the womb was large enough for me to swim and stretch and turn somersaults, I took time to rest and sleep and snuggle.  Inside my mother’s quiet belly, worn out from my infant gymnastics, curling my toes, I would have stuck my thumb into my mouth and felt the safety of darkness…protected and safe.

One thing is certain.  I know I snuggled long before I made my first appearance under bright hospital lights.  No matter what some want to claim I was back then…a blob, a mass of cells, an embryo, a fetus…a product of conception…I was, without a doubt, a flourishing child of my parents, thriving and growing.

Today, cloaked in a battle of terminology, creating labels devoid of humanity, there are those who wish us to forget that we once snuggled in the womb.  They will not have their way with me.

I claim my existence, refusing to be dehumanized at any stage of development.  Supported by the miraculous development of four-dimensional ultrasound, doctors and parents can follow the development of babies like me.  At eight weeks, I was fully formed, a human of one inch in length, every organ present, with a strong beating heart.

At nine weeks, my fingerprints were already engraved, and my fingers were ready to grasp an object placed in my palm.

At ten weeks, my body was sensitive to touch. I squinted and swallowed. I puckered my brow and frowned.

And then I smiled…at eleven weeks.  And if I could smile, it is certain that I smiled because I felt safe, snuggled inside, nurtured and protected…my life ahead to be enjoyed and cherished.

So many years later, watching the dawn break on the mountains outside the window, I follow the beads of rain that trickle down the glass.  Another beautiful day outside, crisp and damp.  The garden will sparkle when the sun breaks through the clouds.  I take a sip of tea and pull the blanket up under my chin.

My son is grown now, and I must snuggle alone.  It’s enough, but it’s not the best there is.

If there really is a best thing to snuggling, this would have to be it…revived by thoughts of long ago…a bundle wrapped together, two of us sharing the morning…the best thing of all surely being the promised assurance between human beings that what happens to you will happen to me…because I share your heartbeat.

 *************************************

DEDICATION 

This column is dedicated to the many committed educators who are not afraid to teach our children about their earliest days of life inside the womb.  May these faithful teachers be encouraged in their work.

 

See Archives for past editorials.

 June 25, 2004:  Unplanned Joy