I just watched MTV’s No Easy Decision. I would embed it here but I don’t see a link for doing that. I made the comments below as I watched. Might make more sense if you watch the video first or read along as you watch. If you’re a regular visitor to the blog, you already know how I feel about this. I am staunchly pro-life. I am pro-woman. And pro-man. And pro-child. Pro-human, in fact. And I am a devout and faithful Catholic. If any of that riles you or gets your goat, it won’t hurt my feelings if you surf away now. Because my comments are only going to rile you more and your goat is gonna get got. I guarantee it. Now on to my comments…

From the opening lines: “And as with any pregnancy, Markai had to confront three options yet again: parenting, adoption or abortion.”

Huh? The last “option” is so common and commonly accepted now that it is just one of the three typical and accepted options facing any pregnant mother? That is a lie!
The easy decision would have been to control their urges until they were ready to commit to each other and start a family. You know, get married? Get a job? Get out of high school, for crying out loud. This stupid video makes it sound like this is normal. It may be what happens a lot now, but it ain’t normal! It ain’t the way human persons were made to behave. But we are reaping the harvest now of seeds sown long ago when “experts” told us that man is really just an ape with less hair and that sexual inhibition is for the birds and uptight Apollonian Christians who just want to rain on everybody else’s Dionysian parade.

Oh, my goodness. She didn’t get her birth control shot (?!) and they didn’t use a condom and they couldn’t control themselves, so now she’s pregnant again. Oh, wow, man, like, um, didn’t see that comin’. Good grief.

Then we see on the screen the words “NO EASY DECISION”. Hey, Markai! Hey, MTV! I got yer easy decision right here! Don’t do the wild thing if you ain’t ready to do the right thing! There are other ways to show love. There are other ways to entertain yourself (and your BF or GF or mate or partner or whatever the heck you call your spousal substitute) if you’re feeling bored. There are other ways to live. Think about what you are doing!

This young woman actually thinks that she got pregnant because she missed her Depo shot. Hel-lo-o-o! You got pregnant because you had sexual intercourse when you were fertile and bingo, kiddo, you got the brass ring!

Okay, now she’s considering her options. She knows it’s going to be hard, it’s expensive, etc. Adoption is not an option because if she feels the baby kicking inside her, she knows she will fall in love with the baby. She’s already in love with the baby, she says. Yeah? She loves the baby so much that she is considering all the options, including abortion? Really?! Really?! And in the next sentence, the very next sentence, she says, “I’m really leaning toward having an abortion.”

WHAT?! Did she not just say that she is in love with this baby? Loves?! Geez, Louise, if she’s thinking about murdering the child she loves, what would she do to a child she hates?

Okay, now Markai and her friend Chambray are looking online for some info about abortion. They’re looking at the various types of abortions, the different methods used, different ways to murder the child she “loves”.

“How far along are you now?”

“I don’t even know how far along I am. The doctor told me… I was too early to detect.”
Too early to detect? What the heck is she talking about? (Check out her friend’s face when she tells her that.) Is she pregnant or not? Was it too early to detect when she went to the doctor or not? Huh? If he can’t tell if she’s pregnant or not, then why are they even having this conversation?

Now this paragon of pregnant virtue is calling the abortion clinic. She asks, “How many types of abortion is there?” (That is a grammatical error but not mine, it’s a quote.) And the woman on the phone starts telling her the various ways she can murder her baby. “Well, we offer medication abortion, you take pills and the pregnancy tissue is expelled because of the medicine that’s taken.”

Excuse me? Pregnancy tissue? Is that what she said?! Markai isn’t pregnant with tissue, it’s not a cyst they’re gonna remove. Argh!

“And there’s surgical abortion which uses gentle suction to remove [get ready for it] the pregnancy.”

Oh, they’re removing a pregnancy. Whew! For a moment there I thought they were talking about removing a baby! Thank goodness she cleared that up with her precise terminology. That’s not misleading at all!

The time to worry about a “mistake” is before you make it. She thinks her mistake was in not getting or using contraception or “protection” so now she’s pregnant and she doesn’t want her first child to pay for the “mistake” mommy made in getting pregnant and having a second child. So… Mommy is willing to sacrifice (literally) her second child, pretending that the child is the mistake, the not using contraception was a mistake and letting the child live and use up resources that could be used for the first child is the mistake. All the while refusing to see that her mistake was her selfishness in having sex when she wasn’t ready for the consequences, and the mistake she is contemplating is to make another “mistake” by murdering her unborn child.

Does she not see that she and her spousal substitute will suffer because of this? And the child who is aborted? And the child she wants to protect? Though what kind of life the child can expect with a mother who “loves” her unborn child so much that she is willing to murder him or her, I don’t know.

Now Markai is talking it over with her man, James. He doesn’t want his family to struggle so he seems to be in favor of abortion. That’s what it sounds like. He thinks death is preferrable to struggle. He thinks he is being kind and considerate. Thoughtful. Respsonsible. Hey, James, the time to be thoughtful and responsible is before you inseminate your girlfriend! Now there is a baby in her womb. Now you have another child to consider. Now, not later. Now! The child exists now! You can’t see the child without using a machine that lets you peer in there, but the child is there when you look. There, now!

Why is she looking for all these people to tell her what to do? Is she hoping they will tell her to do what she already wants to do? If I want to do something, I don’t need anybody else to tell me what to do. If I know what I should do, I don’t need anybody else to tell me what that is. She doesn’t need to be told either. She just doesn’t want to admit it. She is looking for a way out. I hate to tell you this, Markai, but the way out of this is to not get into this. Now that you have, the way out is through.

Markai was in tears on the phone with the abortion clinic, talking about her “choices”. Markai’s mother was in tears when she told them she was considering abortion. That’s to her credit. What’s not to her credit is that she didn’t say more to dissuade her. But then I’ve watched women walk into abortion clinics and have not said anything to them myself. I’ve watched them, praying silently or in a whisper, begging them not to go in there, not to do it. Not to give in to pressures from family or friends pushing them to do this thing. Sometimes I have spoken up. Sometimes. Sometimes I have told them that they have other choices. That they are not alone. That there is help and free help, at that. Sometimes they listen. Sometimes.

Now Markai and James are discussing how the best decision (for their first child, Zakaria) is to abort the second one. They are sure they can’t afford to raise two children, it would be too hard and they would have to struggle and James doesn’t want to put anybody else through the struggles he had as a kid. (Gee, James, did anyone murder you when you were a kid? Was it really that bad, so awful you would rather murder a child rather than allow him to be born? Wow, what a good father you are!)
Nervous. Sad. Relieved. The clinic doesn’t allow children in the waiting room. Hmm…Interesting. Is it to protect innocent children from the horrors of abortion? Wait. No, that can’t be it. Is to protect people who are killing other innocent children from having to face what they are doing? Yeah, that’s probably more like it.

She doesn’t want to talk about it with anyone. She’s talking now, though, she’s talking about how it was just a bunch of cells, only now she’s crying and saying that bunch of cells, that thing, could turn out to be her (looks at Zakaria, her little daughter). She is beginning to wake up. She is beginning to realize what she has done. She is beginning to really think about someone else. Yes, she has been saying that she was thinking about Zakaria and not making her suffer for her mommy’s mistake. But she’s got a long way to go before she understands that choosing murder was not the answer to her troubles.

Now in the last few minutes of the show, two other women have joined Markai on the stage. I can’t help but notice how everybody keeps talking about how they feel, “I, I, I, I, I”, “I was sad”, “I was scared”, “I was alone”, “I had to go in front of a judge, a stranger, and tell him that I wanted the right to do what I wanted to do [abort my baby without telling my parents anything about it, not giving them the chance to offer or refuse to help me or my baby]”. Good Lord. I’m glad this show is almost over. Lord, Lord, Lord. Good, sweet Lord. Have mercy on us. And on the whole world. And on all these people when they finally realize what they have done.

Oh, she did not just say that! The doctor asked the one who didn’t tell her parents is she thought about adoption. She said it wasn’t an option for her. She said she thought it would take a strong person to go all the way through the pregnancy and then do what was right for the baby and give him up.

She knows that this would have been the right thing for her to do and she was not willing to do it! She admits it! I may be ill. You see, I am adopted. I am one of those babies that, for whatever reason, was given up and given a chance and was given to a husband and wife who very much wanted to have children but couldn’t. (Or couldn’t yet but they didn’t know that then.) Thank you, birth mother, wherever you are! And thank you, Mom, who raised me and loved me and could not have loved me more if I had been her very own flesh and bone. Thank you, Lord, and please help all young women who are struggling and don’t know where to turn.

The last one just made the statement that will haunt me for a long time. For her, choosing to murder her child “was a parenting decision.”

A parenting decision. Well, I have never heard it called that before. Oh, my sweet Lord. My sweet, sweet Lord.

Abortion is the un-choice, not a real choice, and not the answer. Being willing to struggle, to show how much you love the other person by letting them live, by doing whatever you can for them, her, him. Accepting hardship. Accepting pain. Preferring to suffer oneself rather than inflict it on another. Having the courage to be human! That is the answer.

Watch MTV’s No Easy Decision. If you decide you want to, leave a comment here.