A Spark of Light(105)

“You didn’t answer mine,” Allen countered. “And even if it’s one of those rare circumstances, that doesn’t mean you’re not committing homicide.”

Louie thought of the sac he removed during an early abortion. It was tissue that didn’t feel pain or have thought or sensation. To him it was potential. To Allen, it was a person. And yet who would argue that there was no difference in the moral implication of chopping down a hundred-year-old oak tree versus stepping on an acorn?

Allen took a mouthful of eggs. Yet another life potential squandered, Louie thought. “You know, I consider myself pro-life. I just happen to be pro-the-life-of-the-woman. I’d call you pro-birth.”

“I could call you pro-abortion,” Allen said.

“No one is forcing women to have abortions if they don’t ask for them. It’s the difference between supporting free will and negating free will.”

Allen leaned back in his chair. “I don’t think you and I are ever going to be on the same page on that.”

“Probably not. But maybe we can agree to neutralize the public space around policy making. We’re all entitled to our religious beliefs, right?”

Warily, Allen nodded.

“But we can’t make policies based on religion when religion means different things to different people. Which leaves science. The science of reproduction is what it is. Conception is conception. You can decide the ethical value that has for you, based on your own relationship with God … but the policies around basic human rights with regard to reproduction shouldn’t be up for interpretation.”

Louie watched Allen’s eyes glaze with confusion. “Do you have a daughter, Allen?”

“I do.”

“How old?”

“Twelve.”

“What would you do if she got pregnant now?”

Allen’s face flushed. “Your side always tries to do that—”

“I’m not trying to do anything. I’m asking you to apply your dogma personally.”

“I would counsel her. I would take her to our pastor. And I would be confident,” Allen said, “that she would make the right choice.”

“I don’t disagree with you,” Louie said.

Allen blinked. “You don’t?”

“No. Your religion should help you make the decision if you find yourself in that situation. But the policy should exist for you to have the right to make it in the first place. When you say you can’t do something because your religion forbids it, that’s a good thing. When you say I can’t don’t something because your religion forbids it, that’s a problem.” Louie glanced at his watch. “Duty calls.”

“You know, it’s always funny to me how pro-choice folks were all actually born,” Allen said.

Louie grinned, gathering their trash. “Thank you for the company. And the dialogue.”

Allen picked up his sign. “You make it very hard to hate you, Dr. Ward.”

“That’s the point, brother,” Louie said. “That’s the point.”

—


BETH HAD TRIED TO DO it the right way. She had gone to the Center, which might as well have been Mars given the distance and the cost of the bus ticket. She had filled out the parental consent waiver and had it filed back in her own county. It wasn’t her fault that the judge whiffed out on her to go on a vacation with his wife. Judges shouldn’t be allowed to take them, not when other people’s lives were hanging on their verdicts.

In the end, she had run out of time. The pills had come from overseas, and the instructions were in Chinese, but she still had the paperwork from the counseling session she had attended at the Center, including the instructions for those getting a medication abortion. She remembered the lady at the clinic who’d talked to the group, saying that there was a cutoff for the people who took the abortion pill. She couldn’t remember what that magic number of weeks was, but Beth was sure she was beyond it now.

She was in the bathroom, doubled over with cramps. At first she was sure she had done something wrong, because there hadn’t been any blood at all. Now, it wouldn’t stop. And it wasn’t just blood, it was clots, great dark, thick masses that terrified her. That was why she had come to sit on the toilet. She could reach behind her and flush. She was terrified of looking down between her legs and seeing tiny arms and legs; a sad, minuscule face.

She felt her insides twist again, as if someone had attached a thousand strings to the inside of her belly and groin and yanked them. Beth drew her knees up even higher to her chin, the only thing that brought relief, but to do that she couldn’t sit. She got off the toilet and rolled to her side, sweating, groaning. Her breath shortened, stuttered links on a chain.

The thing that slipped between her legs was the size of a clenched fist. Beth cried out, seeing it on the linoleum, pink and unfinished, its translucent skin showing dark patches of future eyes and organs. Between its legs was a question mark of umbilical cord.

Shaking, she grabbed a hand towel and wrapped the thing up (it wasn’t a baby, it wasn’t a baby, it wasn’t a baby) and stuffed it into the bottom of the trash, arranging tissues and makeup wipes and wrappers on top of it, as if out of sight would be out of mind.

She was starting to see stars, and she thought maybe she was dying, but that didn’t make sense because there was no way she was going to Heaven anymore. Maybe she could just close her eyes for a minute, and when she woke up, this would never have happened.