What if?

 On this day when the unimaginable has happened, when the Supreme Court has struct down Roe v Wade, when the highest court in the land has seen as its duty the need to restrict rights rather than broaden them, I think back. I think back to a 17 year old girl living in rural Iowa. I feel that sinking feeling she experienced in her gut when she knew she was pregnant and had not an inkling of an idea of what to do next. She told her father because she knew he would somehow magically know what to do and wouldn't waste his time on the shame of it or the "you should have" lecture. There would be no loud voices and no punishment for this error in judgement. There wasn't a moment to lose. It was July and college and her future was on the horizon. There wasn't time for thoughts of keeping the baby or adopting out the baby; there was only the thought that this father would not sacrifice the future of his youngest daughter for a teenage love that had dissolved just weeks earlier. But what if? What if he and her mother hadn't already experienced the challenge of raising a baby as teenagers. What if he didn't have a Presbyterian minister who could access a safe abortion in New York City the year before Roe v Wade legalized abortion? What if he hadn't been willing to make the sacrifice of financing airfare and medical services in 1972 on a contractor's salary? What if? This girl would have become a legal adult in three weeks time. And within another several months, the baby would be born into a drafty farm house to an unemployed single mother. The anticipated empty nest of her parents would have been replenished with a second generation to raise. Her horizon would now hold only the option of a secretarial or a service industry job. The prospects for marriage would be far from the destined PhD educated man who would soon become a small business owner. And it would be ages before she could ever envision living comfortably in a 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house with 2 beautiful children. That dream of her college degree and teaching credential would be decades away from fruition, if ever. So when we speak of women's rights being cut off through the act of banning abortion, this is the life choice we are setting before our young female adults: single motherhood, minimum wage jobs and few prospects for a life partner that would help to lift them out of poverty and into home ownership. And yet, today in America, that is exactly what we have done.