Thursday, May 15, 2003

If the pro-lifers want a television show to make their point, they couldn't do much better than Discover Health Channel's Adoption Stories, which I catch sometimes when I'm lulling Joseph to sleep in the afternoons. We all know what kind of nobility and courage is involved on both ends of an adoption - to see it captured on film brings that truth to life, powerfully.

A wonderful adoption story in the news this week involves New York Giants coach Jim Fassell and the baby boy he and his wife placed for adoption when they were young college students 34 years ago and recently found.

An unexpected pregnancy changes your life (as does an expected pregnancy,too, of course), and, despite our deepest wishes, we will never be the same again in its wake, and we will experience some sort of suffering, no matter what we do. Having the baby and keeping it will change your life. Having the baby and placing it for adoption will change you. And not having the baby will change you, too.

The question is - how do you want to be changed? What do you want to carry with you the rest of your life? The knowledge that you have given life or the knowledge that you have been complicit in a death? The situation, no matter how it is resolved will bring suffering and questions. There is no question about that. The question is - does the type of suffering you embrace lead to life or death?

It is a shame - no - more than a shame. It is a symptom of serious madness that our culture has come to see abortion as somehow more "compassionate" than adoption...