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Why I Apologized to Planned Parenthood
My difficult unplanned pregnancy impelled me to show a little more grace.

My junior year of college, I got pregnant. I was married, but the top layer of my wedding cake had barely frozen and unwritten thank you cards lay strewn on my living room carpet. I wasn't ready to get married; I certainly wasn't prepared for pregnancy and parenthood. But I was the personification of readiness compared with the man who was then my husband, whose troubled past was wreaking havoc on our relationship, even without a baby to break the camel's back.

I never once seriously considered abortion, but more than once wished I could. As a Christian ministry major, I'd spent the last two years watching midnight turn into dawn discussing ethics and forming my embryonic ideas into convictions ready to stand the light of day. From the moment I saw the second pink line faintly glimmering on my pregnancy test, certainty gripped me that abortion was not an option. I simply could not lose my baby without losing myself. And on the deepest level, I think this truth holds for every woman. But not every woman facing a crisis pregnancy has a Christian education, parents who are willing to help out financially, and girlfriends who pick up where an absent partner or a terrified, emotionally crippled one leaves off.

As my pregnancy progressed, I watched my smooth, flat tummy turn into a bulging basketball and then into a giant globe with roads and rivers of stretch marks crisscrossing everywhere. Knowing the pregnancy was unexpected, my friends weren't sure whether to congratulate me or mourn with me. Whenever I swiped my card in the cafeteria or hauled my huge self to class at my evangelical college, I got raised-eyebrow glances from students who assumed I got into my interesting condition via some premarital tryst in the bushes. My professors learned to expect my midclass dashes to the bathroom. Sometimes the trips were just bladder appeasement, but usually I threw up so hard I was afraid the tiny child might come up through my mouth.

When I returned to my bioethics class after one such interruption, the topic was abortion. A class member was playing devil's advocate. "What if it's a 12-year-old girl who didn't know what she was doing? Can you make her carry her pregnancy to term when she's literally a child?" From across the room I heard a girl mutter angrily, "Abortion is murder." Several heads nodded righteously, with no compassion in their eyes. I shivered in the blustery wind on my way home from class....

...Despite such profound and plentiful blessings, I noticed an attitude among some staff members that disturbed me. One coworker frequently commented about how pro-abortion people hold and promote their view only because they feel guilty about something in their past and are trying to defend it. I believe this is often true. But I have friends and relatives who support abortion rights and are thoughtful, caring, down-to-earth people without any more complexes than the average American. They are not promoting an idea to appease a guilty conscience. They believe they are helping women and sparing what they view as merely potential children from real suffering....

...As we approached the woman in scrubs by Planned Parenthood's doorway, Ron and I nodded and said "Hello." She acknowledged us by saying "Hi" and holding the door for us to enter the clinic. We tentatively tiptoed inside. I was half expecting to see blood dripping down the walls or hear babies screaming from the ceiling. Instead I found a coolly lit, comfortable waiting area with neatly stacked brochures. I was pleasantly surprised to see glossy brochures about adoption and clothing programs for new mothers. What a contradiction: a place where they both welcome and kill little ones. Snapping me out of my thoughts, the receptionist asked, "Can I help you?"

Stuttering only a little, and shuddering inside as I glimpsed the woman in scrubs disappear down a narrow, fluorescently lit hallway, I explained, "Actually, we're Christian and very pro-life. We're here to say we're sorry for all the people who are mean to you guys. This is not how Christians should behave, and we feel deeply sad about it."

Ron chimed in, "It's not right for believers in Jesus to judge or despise you. It's just awful, and we wanted you to know that we don't hate you or believe you are terrible people."

The receptionist took a moment to collect herself, then responded with a quivering sigh, "I can't tell you how much that means. My uncle won't talk to me because I work here. You have no idea how many hateful, awful things Christians say and do to me. I don't hope people get an abortion; I hope we can help them to use birth control. We're just trying to avoid having babies thrown in trash heaps."

We briefly exchanged our different views of when life begins and then thanked the receptionist for letting us stop by. She thanked us profusely for coming, with a happy look of disbelief on her face. She smiled and gave a grandmotherly wave "bye bye" to Nika, and told us we were welcome to visit anytime....