A while ago I was in a coffee shop trying to work. Two post-high schoolers were sitting across the table from me talking, (having bought nothing). They both were all about “goin’ home and cutting some beats.” One played a song on his cellphone so we all got to listen to it. It was some sick beats and I mean that in the same sense that Huey Lewis and the News meant “sometimes bad is bad.” “Ah, kids!” I thought to myself. What must I have sounded like to people 35 years older than me when I was their age? Probably similar.

One said he had to wait for his mom to pick him up. The other asked him why and explained that the first kid’s mom should buy him a car. And this is where my response as a 20 year-old would have differed greatly from theirs.

“Who created you?” kid A asked.
“I know. I don’t wanna make her buy me a ride.” answered kid B.
“She created you so she owe you!” opined kid A.

This made my blood run cold. Various lines of post-modern thought collided here:

• First, it highlights a horrible, unintended consequence of the pro-choice world we live in: post Roe v. Wade children see themselves as disposable.
• Second, since mothers have a choice to not give birth to them, these children are only there because of mom’s decision and therefore mom is somehow more responsible for them. “If you didn’t want to provide for me, you should have aborted me. Since you didn’t, you gotta provide!”
• Third, for all the talk about women’s “freedom to chose” and how abortion would liberate them sexually and socially, this places a gigantic burden on mothers; at least in eyes of their chosen children. Add to this the huge number of fathers who walk away since the woman chose not to abort and how is a single mother supposed to live with this kind of responsibility?

Abortion does not liberate women. It damages them and their children, both the victims and the survivors. I understand that sometimes women who become pregnant see a future that feels crushing. Any choice they make will have consequences for them and for their child. This coffeehouse conversation highlighted for me implications I hadn’t seen before.

Lord have mercy on us all.