anonymous #fundie

anonymous #fundie lifesitenews.com

[letter to aborted half-sibling]

She was 15 when your life started, 16 when your life ended. She said no one told her you were more than a lump of tissue. I’m sorry for ignorance.

Your father would be 57 now. She said he doesn’t know. I wish she told him. I wish he fought for you. I wish somebody fought. I’m sorry for secrets.

You would have been my half sibling. 14 years older than me. She took you from me before I even existed—before I could do anything. I’m sorry for unfairness.

You would have been 34 years old. You would have more than likely been married and have your own children. I would have nieces and nephews, you would have a family. But you weren’t even given a name. I’m sorry for abandonment.

Maybe when my other siblings were telling me lies and devaluing me, you would have spoken truth. Maybe you would have stood up for me when no one did. I’m sorry for life being devalued.

Is it possible to miss someone you’ve never even met?—because my heart longs for you. It longs for you to have life. I’m sorry for death.

I wish you could have come to my graduation, I wish I could have gone to yours. I wish we were friends. I wish I could call you right now. I wish we could share all of our joys and griefs. I wish we were at least given a chance.

I’m sorry for selfishness.

It’s just so unfair for you—for us. How could she have killed you? How could our grandmother drive our mother to the clinic so that they could murder you? I’m sorry for silence.

I miss you. I love you.

I’m so sorry no one loved you.

59 comments

old comment by Doubting Thomas

You ever think that if your mother had a baby at age 16 then chances are you might not have even been born? Because some times it's hard for a single teenage mother to get by, and realizing how hard it was then she may be less inclined to have other children later when she's actually ready. Or she might have had her hands full taking care of a teenager at age 30 that she wouldn't have had time or wanted to conceive you.

BTW, anyone else think it's creepy that someone's writing a letter to a long-ago removed clump of cells? This is even creepier than a Catholic group I heard of who took women who felt guilty over having abortions and magnifying that guilt by having them give names to their aborted fetuses and then having funeral services for them.

old comment by

...This is so saccharine I think I'm going to puke.

These anti-abortionists (I refuse to call a**holes like this "pro-life") really love to shove their self-righteousness in everybody's face.

And saying that nobody loved her and that the abortion is selfish is just mean and low. Have you ever stopped to think that sometimes a mother loved her unborn child very much, but complications forced an abortion!? Perhaps if your young mother didn't have an abortion she would have died. And then you would never have been born, jackass!

Besides, you were born more than a decade later! You don't know her! You haven't even come close to meeting her! She wasn't even a person during the short time she existed! Stop pretending you're so devestated by the loss of someone you probably never even heard of until now! Someone who might have bullied you just as much as she might have loved you! Don't act like you miss something you never even had to begin with!

And above all, stop pretending your mother and grandmother were evil monsters for getting rid of a bunch of non-developed cells more than a decade before you were born, you selfish, self-righteousness asshole! Or are you trying to make them wish they had aborted you as well?

Dear god this person's saccharine, self-righteousness and holier-than-thou attitude is sickening me more than I could have imagined!

old comment by Warren McIntosh

Pretty straightforward stuff. If you can't understand that a baby has all of this potential regardless of whether its 1 month old or -3 months old or -6 months old, then you need to have a think.

The death of a 1 month old fetus is, in terms of the ending of future potential experience, exactly the same as killing you or I. Granted, your or my death would affect many many more people because we know many more people, and we might more accuratley judge your or my worth because of our actions. But from a personal perspective, if I was killed tomorrow in an instant, painless way i was not aware of (hit by a bus while crossing the street, killed instantly) there is no reason to 'value' my death in ant different way to the death of a child through abortion.

One day, probably not that far into the future, abortion will be viewed in a similar way to how we now view the killing of slaves. People back then thought they were morally justified in doing whatever they wanted too, and for a similar reason - a slave is not human. Neither, apparently, is a baby at a certain stage of its development. However, that will probably only come after technology is created to allow fetuses to be transplanted and/or reared artificially, so as to avoid the parctical need for abortion.

Dont get me wrong, of course the mother has rights too - not only does she have control over her own body, but abortion and birth control are absolutley central to the single greatest achivement of the 20th century - the emancipation of women. The rights of the child to life, and the right of the woman to self-determination, are compeating rights that need to be balanced, and a term limit on abortions is generally what results. In my view its the right result.

But that doesnt mean I make it easy for myself by creating little fictions so I can ignore the obvious price that has to be paid - 1 innocent human life. You think there's a real relevant difference between a 3 month fetus (which can be aborted at will) and a 7 month fetus (which can't be aborted at will)? If you think one is human and the other is not, then you're only kidding yourself.

old comment by toast

(letter to aborted fetus that potentially could have been a half sibling)
She was 15 when she became pregnant, 16 when she terminated the pregnancy. You were a clump of cells. I'm sorry she had to face such a difficult choice at 16, but I'm glad she had a choice.
Your father would be 57 now, which means at 23 he impregnated a 15 year old girl. I wish she hadn't been a case of statutory rape. Age of consent laws exist for a reason, mostly to protect teens from being taken advantage of and becoming parents at 16.
You could have been my half sibling. She decided that 16 was not an age at which she wanted to begin a family, which is absolutely her right. I'm sorry there are people, up to and including her own later children who judge her for this.
You could have been 34 years old. no one has any way of knowing if you would have survived to birth, much less to adulthood, or remotely what kind of adult you would have been, but being born to a 16 year old girl, the odds of miscarriage, birth problems, difficult pregnancy, child neglect, abuse and social stigma, I'm going to have to say it doesn't look good.
Maybe if you had been allowed to grow into a person, myself and my other siblings wouldn't exist. Our lives probably would have been harder though, having a mother who was barely out of childhood forced to be a parent, rather than having a family when she was physically and emotionally more mature. It's rough that she had to make such a difficult decision at 16, but it seems like it made her, my siblings, and my future much better.
I'm sorry for the selfishness of people who dream you into a living person, make up rosy improbable futures for you to use as an appeal to emotion to shame people like my mother.
It's just so unfair that so many people work so hard to keep birth control and comprehensive sex education away from people like her, thus ensuring that more unplanned, unwelcome, teen pregnancies occur, thus making abortion a necessary procedure. I wish abortion was a very rare procedure, because most pregnancies were started by people when they wanted to be pregnant. Until that is reality, abortion must remain safe and legal.
I do not believe she "killed" you. You were no more alive than a tumor, or an appendix.
I'm grateful my grandmother was supportive of my mother's choice, and there for her during such a traumatic event. Some parents of pregnant teens beat them, shame them, force them to carry to term and give birth, throw them out on the street, lock them away, everything BUT support them and stay with them.
I'm grateful that my mother was able to decide for herself when to have a baby. I support her right to make that choice.

Ok! Now I feel better. That tripe really pissed me off.

old comment by

@Warren McIntosh

Sorry, but there is a difference. If the offspring is still a shapeless mass of cells, devoid of organs, senses and even a brain and consciousness, it is not a independent living organism. It's not a person yet, it does not even have an identity. Very crudely said, it is for all intents and purposes a parasite to its mother. If its life endangers that of it's mother, and it cannot yet live independently, then I see the logical choice being an abortion.

A 7-month fetus is different, as there is a chance it can already live independently; ergo is is a sentient being, a person.

Now, if you're saying that aborting a 1-month old fetus is bad as it prevents a future life, a future person, from existing, then let me ask you this: why not forbid condoms or other contraceptives as well? After all, by letting the sperm cells carrying the genetic material die out without impregnating someone is also preventing a future person from existing. Multiple even, as each sperm cell could form into it's own, unique being.

So, IMHO, the place where I draw the line makes more sense than where you draw the line.

old comment by Liz_7

My origin story, in a nutshell, was that my mom gave birth to me when she was 16. Am I glad I wasn't aborted? Yes. Did I have a good upbringing? Yes. Is that the norm for teen moms across the board? Hell no!

I was incredibly lucky in that my grandparents did not slut shame and I had an entire extended family ready to welcome me with open arms. They helped her finish high school and college, she got on her feet, and when I was about middle school age, she married a good man and we settled into a "normal" family life.

Teen moms are at risk for miscarriage because they are still too underdeveloped and usually lack prenatal care. They face judgement no matter what they ultimately decide, and the children are more at risk of neglect and abuse and substance abuse.

Maybe your mom could have handled it. Maybe not. But you can speculate in one hand and shit in the other and only one hand will have something to show for it. You don't know what would have happened and you have no right judging your mother and grandmother for their decision. Build a bridge and get over it.

old comment by

@ Warren Mcintosh

Slaves didn't have to invade the bodies and feed on the blood supplies of their owners to survive, posing life-threatening health risks in the process.

Equating a non-sentient parasitic mass to a fully developed entity that can survive independently isn't a rejection of "little fictions", it's stupidity. As another poster said, by your logic, there's no difference between a person and the "potential" of your sperm, even before it reaches an egg, so you'd better outlaw birth control, and masturbation too, for that matter. After all, your sperm is one half of a potential human, so if you're going to rub one out, you'd better first find an egg donor and get busy with the incubators. Then there are the billions of fertilized "babies" that women pass naturally every month for one reason or another; you'll need a system to catch and incubate them, and a list of draconian punishments to force women to comply.

The only "slavery" involved in your personal fiction would be requiring women to account for and incubate or hand over every joining of microscopic cells.