Creative Non-Fiction

Ten or so years ago, when I was a child, I helped my mother bury a box in the garden. I say ``helped``, but all I did was sit on the dirt with my sister, and watch our mother cry, clutching a tiny shoebox in her arms.

All I knew was that for five months my mother was pregnant, and then one day she came home delicately clutching something wrapped in a piece of dirty cloth, and she was pregnant no more.

In a world where you can write your way into a promising tomorrow based on an ethereal air of innocence from the past, I find my body as a forest cathedral; my womb is not someone else's battleground, but a playground. A playground of a memory that plays hide and seek that brings both sadness and a weightlessness of bright light and breeze, dancing in an aria of rustling trees.

He never wanted to have kids. He hated kids. And besides, any children I have will immediately be considered my legal husband's child.

Yes, it was my choice. The same choice I would make if I could do it all over. But, even now, I still wonder if I could have made a different one.

Ang aming kailangan
sana’y pagbigyan:
pagdamay at pagunawa
respeto at simpatiya

Kalusugan at kaligtasan
ay aming karapatan.
Pagpalaglag na pinagdaanan
sana inyong igalang.

Ngayon na may asawa na ako at mga anak, lagi kong binabalikan sa isip ko ang yugto na iyon sa aking buhay. Hinahanap ko sa dibdib ko ang pakiramdam na pagsisisi, pero wala akong maramdaman. Hanggang ngayon, naniniwala ako na iyon ang pinakatamang desisyon ko sa buhay. Kahit sabihin ng ibang tao na sugo ng demonyo ang mga taong tumulong sa akin na magpa-abort, hindi iyon ang turing ko sa kanila. Sila ang tumulong sa akin na ilagay sa sarili kong mga kamay ang kahihinatnan ng aking buhay.

What is honor if you bring a child into circumstances that virtually guarantee a life of suffering? Why is bringing another life into this world automatically regarded as a virtue? Why is it held higher than actually carefully considering if the existing conditions are healthy enough to support new life? And why does it seem like the owner of the womb is simply regarded as only slightly more valuable than an actual incubator?