One year ago TODAY (at 9:26 am to be exact) Sophie’s dermatologist called her with the news: your pregnancy test came back positive. (I mean, isn’t that how everyone finds out?)
Every moment of the next couple weeks were difficult on many levels. We couldn’t think about anything else but what this meant for Sophie.
She’d had a trip to Nashville planned for months and was determined not cancel it. I’d say she looked forward to being away in order to clear her mind and think. She told us she would be visiting Planned Parenthood when she got there. We begged her not to—but seriously? She was a 20 year old adult and had to make the choice of bringing a child into this world on her own, no matter how much we wanted to make the decision for her.
Here’s what Planned Parenthood told her.
They laid out her choices, making sure to cover all the bases. Keep, adopt or terminate. They weren’t mean or nasty, but did their job like they do for countless others who walk through their doors.
She paid them four hundred dollars on the spot. That covered her blood test, a group consult with a nurse and the other girls in the room, an ultrasound, and a 20 minute private consult with another woman she assumed was the director of that PP.
Then, on that warm spring Wednesday morning, they told Sophie she was a good candidate for the abortion pill since she was only six or seven weeks along. Mifepristone, which along with a second pill called misoprostol, would induce a medication abortion. “It’s best to be close to home when you take it,†they said. If she went with that option, she could return in 48 hours and for another $200 get the pills in a brown paper bag and be on her way.
She asked, “I’m driving to Wyoming on the same day I’d need to come back and get the pills. Is that ok?â€
They thought about it. “We wouldn’t typically advise taking them when you’re so far from home but it should be ok. Be aware that you’ll be in a lot of pain on the drive home.â€
Somewhere along the way, our prayers interrupted every other plan and she called to tell us she couldn’t go through with having an abortion.
In case you’re wondering, here’s what Planned Parenthood DIDN’T tell her (and what they won’t tell you either):
He will have big blue eyes that’ll light up like saucers when he sees you walk into a room. His fluffy cheeks, like sugar spun marshmallows, will be kissed by you no less than a hundred times a day. When you hold him, you’ll find yourself completely taken by his newborn smell. There’s nothing like it! He will have a little button nose, perfectly round, that looks just like yours. There will be nights when you can’t keep your eyes open during another midnight feeding, but he will look straight at you and smile. And when he does, you’ll fall in love with that little dimple on his left cheek every-single-time. Because everything about this little guy matters—from his peach fuzz head to his ten chunky toes.
Sure he was unplanned, completely unexpected, but his life is no accident. It will hit you one day that he knows, understands in an unexplained miraculous way, what you went through, that it wasn’t an easy decision, that you had a choice. You opted for the difficult path, believed you could do what many thought you couldn’t and chose to give him life. And you’d choose him all over again.
So yes, we are celebrating because last year on this very day we thought life was over. And now we won’t stop, we literally can’t stop, talking about life.
#NotTodayPP #chooselife #chooselove #celebrate #grateful #blessed
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