This on going struggle we face in the name of keeping abortion legal might seem like it has been going on for centuries, but in fact, it is right now when 'abortion' has taken the nation by storm.
It's in our families, it's in our schools, it's in our govt, it's in our pop culture.
In the past 4 days I have read two recently printed (within the last year) books in which abortion was an issue (if small) in the stories.
The first one is by the author Patricia Briggs; Blood bound.
This is a paranormal/fantasy type book.
Quote:
"I violated your trust, and my father's too. I couldn't live with it: I had to leave. I traveled to the far corner of the country and became someone else: Samuel Cornick, college freshmen, fresh off the farm with a newly minted high school diploma. Only on the night of the full moon did I allow myself to remember what I was."
The muscles under my hands convulsed trice. "In med school, I met a girl. She reminded me of you: quiet with a sneaky sense of humor. She looked a little like you, too. it felt like a second chance to me-- a chance to do it right. Or maybe I just forgot. We were friends at first, in the same programs at school. Then it became something more. We moved in together."
I knew what was coming, because it was the worst thing I could think of that could happened to Samuel. I could smell his tears. though his voice was carefully even.
"We took precautions, but we weren't careful enough. She got pregnant." His voice was stark. "We were doing internships. We were so busy we hardly had time to say 'hello' to each other. She didn't notice until she was nearly three months pregnant because she assumed that the symptoms were from stress. I was so happy."
Samuel loved children. Somewhere I had a picture of hims wearing a baseball cap with Elise Smithers, age five, riding him as if he had been a pony. He'd thrown away everything he believed in because he though I, unlike a human or werewolf, could give him children who would live.
I tried not to let him know I was crying, too.
"We were doing internships," He was speaking quietly now.
"It's time consuming and stressful. Long irregular hours. I was working with an orthopedic surgeon, nearly a two hour drive from our apartment. I came home one night and found a note."
I hugged him harder, as if I could have stopped what had happened.
"A baby would have interfered with her schooling," he said. "We could try again, later. After... after she was established. After there was money. After..." He kept talking but he'd dropped into a foreign tongue, its liquid tone conveying his anguish better than the english words had.
The cure of a long life is that everyone around you dies.
You had to be strong to survive, and stronger to want to do so. Bran had told me once that Samuel had seen too many of his children die.
"That infant tonight...."
"He'll live," I said. "because of you. He'll grown up strong and healthy.
"I lived like a student should, Mercy," he told me. "Pretending to be poor like all the other students. I wonder if she knew I had the money, would she still have killed my baby? I would have quit school to take care of the child. Was it my fault?"
Samuel circled his whole body around my arms as if someone had punches him in the stomach. I just held him.
There was nothing I could say to make it better. He knew better than I what the chances of his baby being born healthy had been. It didn't matter, his child never gotten any chance at all.
I held samuel while the sun set, comforting him as best I could.
The muscles under my hands convulsed trice. "In med school, I met a girl. She reminded me of you: quiet with a sneaky sense of humor. She looked a little like you, too. it felt like a second chance to me-- a chance to do it right. Or maybe I just forgot. We were friends at first, in the same programs at school. Then it became something more. We moved in together."
I knew what was coming, because it was the worst thing I could think of that could happened to Samuel. I could smell his tears. though his voice was carefully even.
"We took precautions, but we weren't careful enough. She got pregnant." His voice was stark. "We were doing internships. We were so busy we hardly had time to say 'hello' to each other. She didn't notice until she was nearly three months pregnant because she assumed that the symptoms were from stress. I was so happy."
Samuel loved children. Somewhere I had a picture of hims wearing a baseball cap with Elise Smithers, age five, riding him as if he had been a pony. He'd thrown away everything he believed in because he though I, unlike a human or werewolf, could give him children who would live.
I tried not to let him know I was crying, too.
"We were doing internships," He was speaking quietly now.
"It's time consuming and stressful. Long irregular hours. I was working with an orthopedic surgeon, nearly a two hour drive from our apartment. I came home one night and found a note."
I hugged him harder, as if I could have stopped what had happened.
"A baby would have interfered with her schooling," he said. "We could try again, later. After... after she was established. After there was money. After..." He kept talking but he'd dropped into a foreign tongue, its liquid tone conveying his anguish better than the english words had.
The cure of a long life is that everyone around you dies.
You had to be strong to survive, and stronger to want to do so. Bran had told me once that Samuel had seen too many of his children die.
"That infant tonight...."
"He'll live," I said. "because of you. He'll grown up strong and healthy.
"I lived like a student should, Mercy," he told me. "Pretending to be poor like all the other students. I wonder if she knew I had the money, would she still have killed my baby? I would have quit school to take care of the child. Was it my fault?"
Samuel circled his whole body around my arms as if someone had punches him in the stomach. I just held him.
There was nothing I could say to make it better. He knew better than I what the chances of his baby being born healthy had been. It didn't matter, his child never gotten any chance at all.
I held samuel while the sun set, comforting him as best I could.
[WARNING story spoiler:] In this story, the main character, Mercy, is a 'skinwalker'. In other words, she can take the shape of a coyote, though she is not phased by the moon like a werewolf.
Her father, who was the one to pass on the skinwalker genes died before she was born, and when her mother found a coyote pup in her crib, she gave her to a werewolf pack. The werewolf pack ended up being the 'Marrok's' pack, and the alpha of alpha's, Bran. Raised her.
Samuel is Bran's son.
Werewolves in this book are created by being attacked and nearly surviving. But once you are a werewolf, you stop aging and live for centuries. Samuel is already centuries old, and has had many wives and children, all whom have grown old and died while he lived on, or have attempted to become werewolves themselves only to die in the process.
He had ideas that Mercy, being different might be able to give him children that would live through the process of becoming a werewolf, so he seduces the then 16 year old Mercy, into thinking that he is head over heels in love with her. When she finally realizes what he is doing (bran tells her) she leaves the pack to live on her own. When she leaves, so does Samuel, and in those paragraphs we learn what he has done in the 16 years he was gone from his pack. At the end, when it says "the infant.."
Samuel is still working as a doctor, something rare around werewolves since they tend to want to eat/attack anything that smells of fear, pain, or blood. At the time he was in the ER and an infant came in that he saved that made all these bad memories come to the surface.
Okay that's enough of me spoiling the book. go read it yourself.
Now that I've given up my secret of having a penchant for werewolf books, and now you all think I'm a freak of nature talk2hand
Discuss/interpret the reading material I've given you at hand and tell of how you've noticed abortion in everyday life.
I'll post the second book's abortion episode later. because I'm too lazy to do it now.
