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When I first started teaching high school, I looked for stories about ideas that I wanted my students to wrestle with. One of those stories – Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants – is an abortion story without using the word. Both points of view are considered. The man would obviously like the woman to have an abortion, relieving himself from the consequences of raising a child. The woman, carrying new life within her, wants to think about keeping the baby. There is much to take into consideration in the story from both points of view.
But what I remember most about that reading and the ensuing discussion was a letter I received in the mail the next year. One of the students from that class discussion about abortion had written a paper on the topic. Surprisingly, a literature professor in the first year of this young woman’s college experience had the class read the same Hemingway story. My former student was kind enough to send me a copy of the paper she had written in her first-year college lit class.
The introduction to the paper described a woman who had gone through the same experience as the woman in Hills Like White Elephants. It seems a senior in high school had been impregnated by her high school principal. The man in this real-life situation was trying to persuade the young woman to have an abortion. The majority of the paper then went on to interpret Hemingway’s short story. But the conclusion, oh, the conclusion of the paper, I will never forget. Returning to the introduction, the young woman in the story was my former student’s mom; and the pregnancy being considered for abortion was my student. I was flabbergasted. The student never mentioned the story in my class. But I retell her story here as a testimony to the celebration of human life. For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found. [First posted at MarkEckel.com]
AFTERWORD
Do notice the “Abortion health information” tag imposed on our video by YouTube. Both on the YouTube Comenius page and here on MarkEckel.com the powers that be want to make sure that their social commentary is heard. As the creator of the content for every Truth in Two, I wanted those who watch or read the material to be sure to know that tag is not my statement. Find other pro-life Truth in Two videos here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.
Discussion (9)
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That branding and editing by the “publisher” without your permission is telling and hideous. If this were a magazine seems they would want to put a plain brown wrapper on it and place it on the highest shelf along with the porn.
Otherwise - how much was that child loved and how much did she trust her mother that she came to know how she was born and celebrate it as a young adult. You made my day.
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Yes. We should all be posting to alternative platforms (e.g. Rumble) so that YTs market dominance can be eroded.
And thank you Mark for that story.
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I second that.
So far all I can manage is posting my philosophy stuff on YT and R both. I'm hoping to expand with a Rumble-only series--with all the time I don't have.
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As a young woman, I believed that “choice” was essential to women’s freedom. It was not until my late twenties, I think, that I heard the argument that the availability of abortion is so often used to justify men’s preferences. If a woman has a supportive man in her corner, she’s likely to want to choose life. Tragically, there are still situations when a woman wants an abortion against the father’s wishes. In either case, the parent who prefers to see the birth of the child is often fighting the overwhelming pressures of a culture that accepts abortion as a good, or at least neutral, outcome.
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We adopted our daughter as a 2-day old infant, and shall remain eternally grateful her then-16 year old birth mother had chosen life.
Thank you for a beautiful story.
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