This is not good. Last year I went to the pro-life march at the state capital. I protested in front of the abortion clinic in St. Paul. I attended the service at the Cathedral before the march. I helped Ken with his abortion installation at Solomon’s Porch. Abortion really is an abomination.
Yesterday I found out Jamie is pregnant. Jamie has two other children, aged five and four. Jamie is a prostitute, a drug addict, and an alcoholic. The father of the oldest boy is one of her tricks. The father of the younger girl is a street drug addict himself who just got out of jail — again. Throughout Steve’s life he’s pumped out several children by several different women and is not responsible for any of them. The state pays the bill for his children. The state also paid several thousand dollars for school for Steve. He kept enrolling in different programs at the AIOIC. Not only did the state pay his tuition but he got money for living expenses. The minute he finished school he was back on the streets hustling. Jamie is fetal alcohol plus she suffered a traumatic brain injury as a child rendering her incapable of taking care of herself responsibly. But she can have babies.
Two years ago Jamie found herself pregnant. She was, and is now, living on the streets. I had Kevin go and get her out of a shed in her mother’s backyard when the temperature dipped to -7 below zero. She was wrapped up in a sleeping bag she had stolen from our back porch and was curled up on the floor of the shed sound asleep. That pregnancy ended in a miscarriage because it was a tubal pregnancy.
Now she’s pregnant again. The baby’s father, her “new man,” has already dumped her. For a few months I’ve been bugging her to go in and get on birth control. But that would take effort. Finding a “new man” and satisfying her desires for drugs and sex far overshadows any desire to be responsible and get on birth control. And what difference does it make anyway? She doesn’t have to pay for the pregnancy, or the birth, or raising the child. She only has to endure the pregnancy and voila she has another child to enjoy — responsibility free. Even better — she gets lots of attention because she’s pregnant. I’m concerned that the extra attention will fuel her desire to continue to have babies. Plus I was frustrated with her last two pregnancies when dealing with her demands and attitude of entitlement with her medical care. She was not a pleasant patient to say the least.
Something else is bothering me too. I’m jealous that Jamie can so easily pump out babies and I lost the only child I’ll ever have. She will live to see her children and grandchildren and maybe great-grandchildren. She can call and visit her children whenever she wants. She buys them Christmas presents and birthday presents and brings them over to visit me. And just as easily she can leave them because her mother has custody of them. Off she goes to have fun on the streets. She gets to produce kids. Someone else gets the responsibility and financial obligation. And I’m ashamed of myself that part of my irritation with her is my jealousy that my only child is gone.
I’ll add one more confusing twist to this situation. Some of the people in my life that I love and adore the most are the grown children of women who are just like Jamie. Jamie told me she is thinking of having an abortion. I didn’t say anything. I don’t know what to say. But I do know this. If someone would have told that other mother long ago to abort her unwanted child, my life would be diminished. That unwanted child gives me so much joy.
