The Call to Conversion, Take Three

I've had three conversions in my life: the first was my conversion from the Protestant religion of my youth to Judaism; next came my conversion to Catholicism; and along the way, something else happened. Little by little, I became pro-life.

After working in women's health for sixteen years, after counseling women who chose abortion, after preparing women for their abortions, after participating in the abortion procedure and after talking with many of these women after their abortions, I could no longer endorse pregnancy termination as the almost-casual method of birth control it had, for many, become. Just as my Catechism with Fr. B. opened my eyes to the world around me, to how we seem to have forgotten that our task in life is to become holy, to return to God, my work in women's health opened my eyes to the reality of what I was doing: I was destroying life. Over time, I had, in spite of the warning voice inside me, become more and more involved with abortions. God kept sending me warning messages, but I kept trying to rationalize them away. This little booklet, "Is It a Baby, or Just Some Cells," is the story of my journey from being unquestioningly pro-choice to being pro-life, a turn in the road that I never expected to take--just as I never expected to move from my Protestant beginnings to Judaism and finally to Catholicism.

Truth is, I'm a bit nervous about this publication. It is, in a way, a coming-out, a declaration of belief, a belief that is not shared by many. It seems, in our secular culture in which birth control and abortion are simply taken for granted, impossible to be a woman who supports women's rights and yet also supports life; to be a poet and a writer who appreciates the exploration of human feelings and actions and yet also believes that our task in life, no matter who we are or what we do, is to know, love and serve God. Sometimes that means going against popular belief, popular practice. It acknowledges that the gate to Heaven can be, indeed, a narrow one. So it is with a deep breath and a prayer for courage that I publish this post.

The booklet is available from Requiem Press: http://www.requiempress.com/