My Mommy Heartbreak

Warning!!! This is NOT an upbeat, happy post. Do not proceed if you do not wish to read my aggravations, and potentially become aggravated yourself.

So, most of you know I'm a writer.
Of sorts.
I write for an online marketing company and basically get a random slew of topics to write articles and blog posts about. Anything and everything from campgrounds and wholesale flower markets to marine refrigeration and industrial grinding mediums. Usually not terribly fascinating stuff, but bearable.

Today I had to write an article for an abortion clinic. Promoting the abortion pill.

I didn't want to. Despite my feminist leanings, I am passionately anti-abortion. The only reason I keep this job at all is because it allows me to maintain a (very) modest income while staying at home with my baby. So I can be a mom.

I started doing a little research and checking out the website for this abortion clinic to find something I could write about without making myself literally ill, and it had the opposite effect.

There was a happy, smiley paragraph about terminating "problem" pregnancies in which the baby has some disorder or is imperfect. It talked about all the expense and heartbreak they could spare you by terminating pregnancies of babies that were less than perfect.

That was when I started to cry.

Six days ago my beautiful baby started crossing her eyes. Not constantly, but every now and then, and it would take me a while to get her to snap out of it. It became more frequent every day until I called the doctor. My doctor told me this is not normal for a child her age, and referred me to a local pediatric ophthalmologist. I'll take her in tomorrow for two hours of testing, with the possibility that she may need surgery, special glasses, or other measures to straighten out her eyes that were perfectly normal a week ago.

I know this connection is tenuous, if that, but it broke my heart to think of someone being encouraged to terminate a baby that was going to be less than perfect.

And I had to write for them.

I hope I don't go to hell. Or that anyone actually reads the article I wrote. I promise it was lame and completely neutral.