Dear Eppy,
I am now 24 years old and have a girlfriend. The two of us love each other and have regular sex. We have known each other for five months now. I know I love her and I know she loves me. But now, she is pregnant. What can I do to stop it?
Scared Boyfriend
Dear Scared Boyfriend,
Without judging you, I don’t favor abortion. I don’t like judging people. However, my response to you comes from the experiences I have talking to women who had gone through abortion. Of course, in the beginning, the women and men who decide to have an abortion will think that they are okay after the abortion. But what they don’t realize is that they are born with the gift of memory. Memory is the very thing that makes us remember people, things we had done, and things we were not able to do. Remembering makes us experience sadness, fear, anger, happiness, and guilt. Regret is also one of the experiences we go through because we remember something.
Our capacity to forget is the very thing that keeps us from experiencing sadness, happiness, anger, fear, regret, guilt, and so on. Some people try to forget through alcohol and drugs. But these substances temporarily drown the memory and the feelings. But once its effects stop, the memory lives on and so do the feelings. Therefore, those who take drugs and alcohol will have to continue taking these substances to continue forgetting.
I know of one such mother who decided to abort her child. She couldn’t stop herself from remembering what she had done. She took a lot of alcohol, only to remember the same thing each day when she wakes up. She was haunted by the memory and could not stop it from intruding into her mind no matter what she did. Seeking help, she was advised to confront her memories instead of avoiding them. With someone’s help she was able to do so.
Whether the choice of abortion is made by the mother or both the mother and father, the mother will remember this event for the rest of her life. She will always remember the day she made her baby stop living. Notice that my response doesn’t mention any wrong that you might do against God or the judgment by others against you. I am just informing you of the consequences of that choice.
Life is about choices and their consequences. If you choose to study and take your master’s and Ph.D., then expect people from the business world, the academe, and everyone else, to seek you out, hire you, and praise you. If you choose to race cars, expect to encounter painful accidents. If you choose to consistently drink at night and take drugs, then expect to be dead at the age of 40 to 50 years old. If you choose to stay home and do nothing, then expect to be poor. If you choose to plant vegetables, expect to have food on your table.
If you choose to have sex with your girlfriend, expect to have a baby. Don’t sound surprised, as if a pimple grew on your face, and you’re wondering where it came from and you want it out of your face. Pimples are not within your control. Having a cold, fever, or cancer is not your choice. But impregnating someone or getting pregnant is a choice that you have control over. You chose to indiscriminately indulge in pleasure that involved having sex. Therefore, expect a tiny creature to grow inside the stomach of your girlfriend. Impregnating someone and making someone experience pain for the rest of her life is something you need to be aware of because it is a responsibility you will have to face.
As for your partner, her responsibility is to make the choice of telling you to “go to hell and burn,” or say, “Yes, I will follow you and suffer the consequence of guilt for the rest of my life.”
As for me, my responsibility is not to give you any advice on how “to kill” your baby because I don’t want to deal with the guilt that I was part of something that I may feel guilty about one day.
Eppy
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Email eppygochangco@gmail.com.