Thoughts Along the Road

SPOTLIGHT: Incredible Graphite Illustrations by Monica Lee

Malaysian artist Monica Lee draws amazingly photo-realistic images with graphite pencils.

When I first read this post, I thought I would just delete it like the rest. I know your intentions were to cause me suffering, and if causing me suffering means you win, then I guess you have. To be honest, lying in this hospital bed, it is young women like you that I think about the most.

I was once like you. I was once told that aborting my children was the answer to my life. I was once told that my boyfriend too would have to drop out of the University he attended, and I wouldn’t be able to attend the following year after I graduated from High School. The funny thing was, because of my son, my ex-boyfriend and I qualified for several grants and scholarships. In fact, I’m one of the few people I know that was able to go to school without taking out student loans. Which is probably why I’m a home owner at 26.

I was once like you. “Its a clump of cells,” they told me. “Its a parasite,” they said. When scientifically speaking, that’s inaccurate. It is a fetus, or an unborn human being. I know a human becomes easier to kill once you label it something else. This is called dehumanization. You don’t need to dehumanize the unborn human being, you can just call it what it is; you aborted an underdeveloped human being.

As I look into my sons eyes, I don’t see a parasite, or a clump of cells. I see a brown haired, fair skin, goofy 8 year old human being. I see a human being with the exact same body as the one they called a parasite when it was in my womb. His body grows a little more every year, and every year he gets stronger. “Mom, let me help you with that.” he says, as I struggle to carry bags into the house. “Mom, wait, I’ll get it for you,” he says, as he jumps in front of me to reach for the door to open it. His body is more developed, that’s for sure, but it it the same as it was when it was tiny and growing inside me.

I was once like you. “It will ruin your life,” they said. “You’re a child yourself”, they said. That’s the strangest. As I lie in this hospital bed, at risk of death, I have no fear. I am 26 years old, and have absolutely nothing more that I could ask for to make me happier. If keeping my son ruined my life, then why do I have everything I want? Why am I so content with my short life, if it was ruined the day he was born? The love and happiness I have experienced in my short life, is enough to feel fulfilled, complete. My life is beautiful, and my children were the ones that made it that way.

When I cry, my children burry their heads on my chest, wipe my tears with their tiny fingers. When I smile, they run to me, wrap their arms around me, lean back and giggle. What have they destroyed in my life besides all that was bitter, hateful and selfish? Besides all those awful parts of me they peeled away with their tenderness, and gentleness.

I’m sorry that when you terminated your pregnancy, you felt nothing, and I’m afraid that is where we are different. I couldn’t bring myself to dehumanize the tiny human being inside my body, even though it was under developed, dependent and inconvenient. I felt. And I’m the one who feels for you now. I can feel the loss for your unborn human being.

I know you assume I think I’m “better then you”. But it’s exactly the opposite. As I lay here in this bed, ready to give my life for the child inside of me right now, it isn’t just because its my child. It’s because it is a human being. I am willing to die for an underdeveloped, dependent and inconvenient human being, because that human is my equal. You are my equal, your child is my equal, and I don’t have it in me to view my life as more valuable then anyone else’s. I can’t use any reason to take an innocent human being, dehumanize it, and place it under me. And I don’t want to.

I’m sorry that people like me make you sick, but I think if you really new me, you wouldn’t feel that way. Maybe if you knew me, you could see that my life is beautiful and wonderful just like yours, and just like every human being. I believe that your life is precious, and you were made for more love then you comprehend, and I’m so sorry you can’t see the value of life.

Life is precious. It is a divine right, it is so precious that I would be willing to die if that is the cost for another to live.

Months from now, I hope that you read this and I’m living with my new beautiful child, in my modest house, with the rest of my family, but if I’m not, I want you to remember that it made me happy to risk my life for another human being, and I would gladly do it even for someone who was sickened by me; I would even do it for you.