Emma's_This_I_Believe

June of 2006 is the month that I will always remember as the time I thought my life had come to an end. I was 18 years old, a member of a very loving Catholic family, and a straight-a student at Central Michigan University pursuing my dream of becoming an elementary school teacher. That was until I found out that I was four weeks pregnant. In one moment, I was the girl that had everything, and the next, all of my dreams were crushed. After getting through having to break my parents’ hearts with this news, I decided to go back down to school and complete another semester of college rather than sit home and feel sorry for myself. Everyone around me knew that I was pregnant shortly after the semester started because I quickly began to show. I cannot tell you how many times I was pulled aside by teachers, friends, and colleagues and told of the option I had “forgotten” to consider...abortion. I was given so many reasons why this option would be okay for me like “you can’t afford a baby…there’s no way you can finish school…no man is going to want to marry you and your kid…this isn’t your fault…you are too young…you have so much more to experience before being tied down.” All of these reasons sounded legitimate and most of them were probably true, but they all led me to thinking only of myself and not of the life inside me. As I saw my stomach begin to grow and feel this tiny life moving inside of me, I could not help but think that I used to be a little life inside my mother’s stomach. I began to think of what was going through her head as she felt my tiny legs push up against her rib cage just like this life inside of me had begun to do. I’ve never asked my mom about this because I already knew exactly how she felt. It can be summed up with two words: unconditional love. I look at some of the people who told me about a choice I had called abortion. Some of these people are my closest friends and I cannot imagine my life without them, yet with this same logic, their mothers could have aborted them. Some of them come from broken families and horrible conditions, but that doesn’t change what they mean to me. In March of 2007, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. I gave him up in adoption to a family that I carefully selected who were unable to have children of their own. My son is the love of their lives and one of the greatest gifts that has ever been given to me. I BELIEVE that human success can only be measured in the love that you show to another regardless of how that person may enter your life, and above all, that ALL human life is sacred.