a child outside, a child within

Where is your compassion?

I see none in your reaction.

The name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

Have no place in your hateful boast.

You ignorantly celebrate a decision made

For it is not your neck that feels the blade.

You say it is for the children,

But do nothing to protect them should you want them hidden.

If they are not who you want them to be,

You cast them out into a world, into a system

That only benefits its creators

And those made in their fallen image.

You carry signs and shout abuse

To people simply walking into a clinic.

You have no clue what drives them there,

And you do not care to learn it.

What happened to loving your enemies?

What happened to taking the log out of your own eye

Before removing the speck in someone else’s?

Christ sat with sinners, rebuked the Pharisees.

You speak in generalizations

While you praise a holy exception

Mary, mother of Jesus, gave birth at, likely, thirteen.

Which was commonplace then, but that’s no longer the case.

So now, I will give you an individual.

Not holy, not immaculate, but human

With no memory of how she came to be in this state

Because, no other word for it, she was raped

Her twelve-year-old mind hid the memory

Because she was a mere child

Now growing another within

And, four months later, her body destroyed the evidence

But what if it had not?

What if she had not miscarried?

What if she had carried to term?

Or at least carried long enough to show?

She would have been expelled,

Because her school would not have her.

She would have been ostracized,

Because she must be a whore.

Even if she had been taken advantage of,

It would have somehow been her fault.

It would have had to have been

Because survivors’ words are always taken with a grain of salt.

What if it had been ectopic?

She and the baby would likely both die.

What if, what if, what if?

Possibilities are endless, because this should be decided on a case-to-case basis.

My body made the decision for me all those years ago.

Because if I had been forced, at the tender age of twelve,

To become a mother, tied forever to my violators,

I would not have survived it.

Hell, I might have ended it myself.

Because no matter what I do,

No matter how that situation could have gone (or did indeed go)

I would have always done something wrong

I would have always been the subject of scorn

I will be now, just sharing my story.

Because no matter how many times you say it is for the One Up Above

I promise you, there is no hate like Christian love.