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The Strangers Knocking at My Door

As they did last year, they’ve come twice in the last two days. They’re kids out running “a raise money for NARAL” scam. They get a cut of anything they pull in, and they sell any info they get to Planned Parenthood or other death mills.

They’re pleasant and they are enthusiastic (I love the painting! I really admire the tree!) and they hand you the clipboard expecting you to sign in your enthusiasm to support their “work.”

I listen and then I tell them, “No, I don’t support what you’re doing or the people and causes that you represent. I think it’s evil for you to do this, and worse still to do it for money.”

Here in Seattle’s Queen Anne, where smiles, nods, and signups for their scam are their usual rewards, they seem genuinely surprised and taken aback.

“You mean you’re not pro-choice?”

I assure them that I am not pro-choice even though, long ago, I was.

Yesterday evening, at night on the darkened porch, it was a young woman. She just shook her head and walked away to get on with her “mission” of going door to door bilking pro-choicers out of money. I guess she forgot to leave the chalk mark on my door that indicates “Satan!” because just now a boy old enough to be a man but forever avoiding it knocked with the same knock and announced himself as, “Hello, I’m your friendly neighborhood feminist.” He pointed towards the pink watch cap he wore.

He ran through the same spiel and handed me what could have been the same clipboard. I listened and handed it back to it saying, “I don’t support this.”

“You mean, you’re not pro-choice?”

“Do you have any children?”

“Ah… no.”

“Son, have you ever been through an abortion with, say, a woman you love in support of her right to choose?”

“Well, no.”

“I’ve been through two. The first was one that I supported. The second was one that I had deep misgivings about but failed to oppose.  Those two abortions were all long ago, but now I know that those were two children I didn’t have and will never know, and not a month goes by I don’t think about that and regret it.

“If it ever happens to you, you’ll agree to the abortion, to the killing of your child, at the time and then, years later, it will come back to you. It will come back to you that you are missing children in your life and it is partially your doing. And it will haunt you, the thought of the people they could have been.

“You’re young and deluded. You’re going to walk away and make this a story you’ll tell to the other kids out running your NARAL scam. Then you’ll forget all about what I am saying to you now for years, maybe decades, and you’ll go off and have some abortions of your own.

“And then one day, years after that, you’ll come to know what I know now. That’s when you’ll remember me; a man who through his own selfish vanity and foolishness, kept two children out of his life.

“That’s when you’ll remember this moment; the two of us here on this porch this evening. But like me, it will be too late for you. And you will know it and it will shatter your heart as it shatters mine even to this day late in my life.”

He walked away shaking his head, already moving into the long forgetting. Some day, it will come back to him. I’ll be remembered as a stranger, but suddenly not all that strange.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • CHris November 22, 2017, 10:18 AM

    I already know of what you speak. Two abortions both of which I opposed. With good reason my ex has that status of ex. I’m 48 now… dating a woman 15 years younger… her youth and desire to have children fills me with something I haven’t felt in many years….

    hope.

  • MMinLamesa November 22, 2017, 12:05 PM

    I know exactly the feelings you speak of Sir having been the participant in a sad number of abortions in my youth. Regret doesn’t begin to cover it. Couple that with the death of my only child last Dec, my beautiful 37 year old daughter who died unexpectedly and it’s enough for some serious despair.

  • Bill Jones November 22, 2017, 12:09 PM

    Chris, I was 47 when I had my son.
    Other than the instant utter devastation of every room the enters, I’ve never had any regrets.

  • JD November 22, 2017, 12:30 PM

    Chris: Get busy bro, you have time for at least three. Trust me, I know.
    MMin: Cherish what you had with your daughter. It is more than many will ever know.
    Gerard: Thanks for another amazing post. I check here three times a day for moments like that talk to the “neighborhood feminist”. It is better that morons like that don’t reproduce.

  • theduchessofkitty November 22, 2017, 12:47 PM

    An old friend of my husband discovered, many years ago, that the girlfriend he loved dearly was pregnant with his child… which then she aborted. He was so devastated and angry, he swore to never see her again. And he did not.

    I know for certain that he is happy with his child now, learning more about the life cut short. He committed suicide eight years ago.

  • Rob De Witt November 22, 2017, 1:02 PM

    Men support abortion because it handily lets them off the hook, although they have lots of rationalization to avoid recognizing that fact.

    Women support abortion because they are selfish, and have never even briefly considered the validity of someone else’s feelings.

    Do I seem bitter? If so, it’s because my children, living and unborn, have been taken from me without so much as a by-your-leave, and by people who then casually blame men for the existence of single mothers. I’m 72; it never stops hurting.

  • Vanderleun November 22, 2017, 2:11 PM

    Me neither.

  • Anon November 22, 2017, 4:14 PM

    My adult daughter is bi-polar and at the time of her pregnancy a user of hard drugs. She was advised to get an abortion but her catholic mother wouldn’t take but wanted me to take her (I get that, not criticizing). Excuse the comparison but I was reminded of the day I went home to visit my parents after some years of being away and they asked me if I could take the family dog to the vet to be euthanized. I found it surprisingly easy to do while may parents never wanted to talk about it again. So I did it, some 30 years ago now. My daughter is still very ill (bi-polar is very different for different people) some times when I visit her she barely can hold a conversation. But I have had regrets. I doubt that if she had birthed the child that she would have kept it or been able to raise it. I feel bad sometimes, I feel that perhaps it was better for all concerned sometimes, I feel like I should have copped out like her mother did and just let her fend for herself instead of taking her to the abortion clinic. I also feel angry when anyone states that drugs shouldn’t be illegal and it is right that people should be able to choose to do drugs. I suspect the drugs made her mental illness worse, much worse.

  • Julio November 22, 2017, 7:30 PM

    Twenty five years old when I made the most horrible and haunting decision that will always affect me. I’m 55 now. I was a gutless coward. Too timid and selfish to say no to my girlfriend. I wonder where my heart and soul went that day, when I was capable of being complicit of such a heinous act. I despise myself for my cowardice and feel I am not worthy of forgiveness. I know my Savior’s grace and mercy is more powerful than any sin I can commit but I’m having trouble…just having trouble. I am ashamed and have broken down many times in anguish at what I allowed to happen….

  • Groman November 23, 2017, 4:57 AM

    I was twenty years old and the girl I lived with became pregnant even though she was on the pill. She and her sister decided that she would have an abortion. I didn’t agree but was too much of a coward to put up much of a fight. I remember the day she came home after the procedure. She looked miserable. Her sister was very supportive and kept reassuring her that she had made the right decision. I knew that we had committed a grave sin. To this day, forty five years later, I regret my complicity. We separated a few years later. I eventually married and had children, she never married and ended up adopting a child from overseas. Even though it has been years, I still ask the Lord for forgiveness.

  • EndOfPatience November 23, 2017, 6:12 PM

    It’s been 45 years. After the first few, I’ve thought about it every day.

    Every single day.

  • Ron Robertson November 23, 2017, 10:03 PM

    Thank you.
    God bless your wonderful commentors.
    Love, Ron.

  • pst314 November 24, 2017, 12:43 PM

    running “a raise money for NARAL” scam. They get a cut of anything they pull in

    I have no idea how much of a cut they get, but they, like Human Rights Campaign, did not disclose data to the Better Business Bureau which is an excellent indication that they are a scam. I’d like to know how much the canvassers get and how much the executives earn. Nearly all, probably.

  • Chris November 24, 2017, 5:17 PM

    Looking at the comments from the men here who have had their children executed without their permission, I would think that we could put a stop to the murder if we organized and forcefully ended the operations of these fucking murder factories. It would be as if we destroyed the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

  • Robert Kendall March 3, 2021, 9:21 AM

    I know what it is you speak of. I have the shame and regret….if there was some way to over come the “young and dumb” phase of our lives that would be nice . I fear that is not the case going forward.

  • Robert Kendall March 3, 2021, 9:25 AM

    wow, Queen Anne! you are in the Heart of it. Used to live on Phinny Ridge, then moved to T-town. got out in 2010 and live in Ketchum now, it’s about as bad as QA but I can get out in the wilderness quicker here…..

  • PA Cat March 3, 2021, 10:43 AM

    A big thank-you to Gerard and his commenters– but I sometimes wonder how long we as individuals will be free to choose life. On the political level, many so-called pro-choice folks disapprove of allowing the “wrong people” to have that freedom. Mollie Hemingway wrote an article a few years back about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s enthusiasm for abortion as a form of eugenics. In the former Justice’s own words: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Hemingway’s take on progressives’ fondness for abortion as government policy is here:
    https://thefederalist.com/2014/09/24/ruth-bader-ginsburg-really-wants-poor-people-to-stop-having-babies/
    When Ginsburg died, the state-level branches of NARAL mourned her passing: here is just one example:
    https://prochoicemass.org/2020/09/19/statement-passing-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg/
    And then there’s China Joe, whose paymasters have no scruples about forcing the “wrong people” to undergo abortions:
    https://apnews.com/article/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c
    There are a lot of murder factories to put out of business.

  • Jack March 3, 2021, 11:08 AM

    “….Some day, it will come back to him.”

    I wouldn’t bet a single red bean on it.

  • Skorpion March 3, 2021, 11:51 AM

    Despite my many relationships and dalliances, I have never (knowingly) gotten a woman pregnant.

    But I’ve been with several women who’ve had abortions. Without an exception, every single one of them was deeply scarred by the experience, and lived with the gnawing suspicion that they would have been happier, better-adjusted, and given more of a sense of purpose had they birthed the child.

  • roger March 3, 2021, 11:53 AM

    History will look back on these decades and wonder how we allowed such bloodshed.

  • james wilson March 3, 2021, 11:55 AM

    I can trace my degrees of enlightenment to conversations I had with people who commanded my respect but with which I disagreed completely. The process took years in every case, but that which is heard shapes what can be heard.

  • Donald Sensing March 3, 2021, 12:16 PM

    Damn, I broke down in tears by the time I got to the end.

    This weekend is my grandson’s first birthday. He is simply fabulous and my wife and I are enamored of him. He is our only grandchild. His older sibling did not survive. No abortion in the picture, my son and his wife wanted children. But it was a tubal pregnancy, and as a physician said, if it is not surgically terminated, neither mother nor child will live.

    And to this day I miss that little baby who was never born, whom I never held, and whose birthdays I will never celebrate. Dear God, I cannot type another word…

  • EX-Californian Pete March 3, 2021, 12:53 PM

    First of all, if I was ever stupid or careless enough to get a woman pregnant, I would never, ever agree to terminating that human life. I would also never do what has become the ‘norm” in the “ghetto” community- 74% of those “fathers” abandon their newborn offspring. (“B.L.M.”, right?)

    Second, on my 100+ year old mahogany front door there’s a sign on the stained glass panel that reads
    “No Liberals
    No heathens
    No Solicitors
    YOU WILL BE CHARGED WITH CRIMINAL TRESPASSING”
    And below that is my OFFICIAL NRA RECRUITER sign.

    However, the few times a Liberal has discussed abortion with me, I’ll lie to them and say that “I’m 100% FOR all Liberals aborting their offspring- so as to make the world a better and safer place.”

    I’m sure you can imagine their reactions.

  • Stargazer March 3, 2021, 12:56 PM

    Their spirits rest in peace with the Lord. Here on earth they are missed.

  • Joe Krill March 3, 2021, 1:44 PM

    Gerard, Thank you. “Rubber meets the road” moral truth is hard to come by (which you are giving these lost people) and when a person is fortunate enough to be enlightened by it–and they do not heed it, instead laughing at it, then they will be judged accordingly. There is no getting around that Karma can be good, and it can be bad, real bad.

  • Glenn Gallup March 3, 2021, 3:13 PM

    “ just now a boy old enough to be a man but forever avoiding it”

    Priceless.

  • hooodathunkit March 3, 2021, 4:07 PM

    Abortion is always a bad thing. Always. Occasionally it’s less bad than something else, but
    abortion is always bad.

    Bill Clinton’s mantra of ‘safe, legal, and rare’ has never existed because the rare part gets ignored once the progressives get their wish of legal. Despite 40 years of empty rhetoric against on-demand abortion, the Republican Party has never acted against it. Interestingly Donald Trump –a populist– was the first President to cut PP’s funds even somewhat. But never forget that
    an abortion is always bad.

  • rabbit tobacco March 3, 2021, 4:27 PM

    “Any country that accepts abortion, is not teaching its people to love, but to use any
    violence to get what it wants.”
    mother teresa

  • Jane Whitson March 3, 2021, 5:55 PM

    Women have never wanted the right to choose on the front end. Rather we insist on not choosing at all, THEN if nature does its unthinkable pregnancy thing, we want, DEMAND the right to choose, wink, wink, nod, nod. What a joke that infantalizes the female. And we all buy into it.

  • Derak March 3, 2021, 9:22 PM

    Four decades ago I chose to terminate. Unstable relationship mired with social shaming and related issues. Pure misery.

    Three decades ago, married and stable. Bore a beautiful child, taken from me three months later, SIDS.

    My heart was dug out of my chest with a spoon. The depth of the hurt, anguish, unbearable. Broke me.

    God made me understand how he feels when we kill his children, his wealth, our hope.

    He is pissed, and coming for us. Prepare. Repent. Oh my.

  • anonymous March 3, 2021, 10:38 PM

    I miss them. My two boys.

  • Kevin in PA March 4, 2021, 5:41 AM

    So true, Gerard.

    One of the things that really bothers me about the entire issue is how it is framed as “A woman’s right to choose”.
    For a very long time I have pondered that phrase and it raises questions, like; Doesn’t every woman make a choice whether or not to engage in sexual intercourse? Barring an act of rape, the woman and her chosen mate make a choice to have sex.
    Having made the decision to have sex, don’t all women have another choice in terms of what form of birth control to employ so to avoid an unwanted pregnancy?
    The verbiage used is an attempt to soften the brutality of the act murder.

  • Terry March 4, 2021, 6:14 AM

    This thread makes me very sad. Very. How can the left be so driven by such horror. But then I remember the hundreds of millions of innocent people murdered by the communists. And now my country is run by communists.

  • Annie Rose March 4, 2021, 6:55 AM

    Obstetricians are equally complicit. I remember my doctor during both my pregnancies, pushing me to get the standard testing to see if the babies had birth defects, so I “would have time to terminate the pregnancy if needed”. One of the tests sometimes resulted in miscarriage.

    Women were being pushed in the 80’s/90’s to have it all-career, marriage, family-and my doctor had asked how I would feel if my babies were born with Down Syndrome, etc. and I could no longer work or travel. He was incredulous that I refused the testing, even after I explained that I worked with children with developmental delays and they were such a joy to their parents and everyone who knew them.

    When you’ve had the privilege of really getting to know these special people as children and adults, it humbles you. It makes you realize that they have much to teach us about being truly alive and human. Millions of them are murdered each year because parents are made to believe that they would be too inconvenient to live with.

    We are no different than the Babylonians who sacrificed their children on burning altars. We have all been brainwashed and my heart breaks for those who now must live with mental anguish and regret.

  • gwbnyc March 4, 2021, 8:32 AM

    I’m privy to a large&diverse group of people where discussing parts of their lives most won’t entertain is commonplace. women regretting an abortion/abortions in their pasts is a frequent mention.

    it’s a deep regret.

  • ghostsniper March 4, 2021, 9:41 AM

    I remember when people didn’t talk about such things….prior to about 1972.

  • tallowpot March 4, 2021, 12:42 PM

    Yes, I have tears…

  • Flea March 4, 2021, 1:16 PM

    They would break up. Then make up. Then break up . Then……You get the picture. Three years of this torturous, obviously toxic fornication/relationship. I went to Mass and begged Jesus to free my daughter. He did. It finally came to an end. Properly finished. Forever. Praise God. It was over. She was finally free. But the demonic monster of a man engineered one more liaison. He pitched up uninvited at her father’s funeral and she fell for him again. Only a one night stand. But this time she was pregnant. My beautiful blessed benevolent Catholic child was with child. She knew exactly that we, our family, don’t do abortion. We are baby lovers. We will raise the baby, our baby. No questions about it. No outside adoption. We have money. But so repulsed by the man she hated having left inside her a permanent part of himself as a sick reminder of his clutches that she took a flight to New York and murdered my grandchild. She will suffer. I know she will. When she finally realises that it wasn’t only him she was annihilating. It wasn’t his baby. It was also hers. And ours. Our family’s baby. And it breaks my heart because I love her so much because she’s so good.

  • ignoramus March 4, 2021, 1:35 PM

    I pushed a girl into getting an abortion, many years ago. As to my reasoning, I wouldn’t marry her, I didn’t want to marry into THAT family. Sometimes you learn things too late. I really didn’t want a child of mine to be exposed to what she experienced as a child. The pregnancy was her way of trying to force the issue. Her mother tried to keep us together, but I finally escaped.
    I stand by my decision, even with it’s present costs. Older, but no wiser…

  • ghostsniper March 4, 2021, 2:02 PM

    Long ago a very wise woman told me, “Never have sex with a woman you won’t marry, for you will long regret it.” I tried to follow her advice, but I was weak. I fell off the wagon many times. There were dry spells that led to desperation, and then, satisfaction again. But satisfaction is very brief for a young man in his prime. So over and over the cycle repeated.

    I was covering a lot of land in those days and the satisfying moments blurred into a haze as time swiftly swept by. By the time I was in my late 20’s I started to look at life more seriously and behaved more slowly, taking my time. As far as I know, I never fathered a child before I was married and now some 40 years later still nothing has evidenced itself. Did I get through the blur unscathed? Maybe, I’ll never know. And that too can be bothersome.

    Today, in 40 year hindsight, I wish my wife and I had more than 1 kid. They are sort of like “money in the bank” but of another kind of value. Now, at age 66, I think it would be neat to have half a dozen little grandkids crawling all over me and getting on my nerve, instead of just one 1200 miles away that we haven’t seen in 3 years since she was 4 years old. Really, the only solid thing on this plain is fambly. And lots of it.

  • S. Ray March 4, 2021, 8:19 PM

    I was adopted in 1964 by two of the most wonderful and loving people in the world. I figuratively won the lottery. There is an alternative to abortion, but it’s not easy. Encourage the alternative. Thanks for reminding me how lucky I am. Best wishes. Sorry for your loss.

  • I Am What I Am March 5, 2021, 5:25 AM

    When someone asks, I reply: “I am very pro-choice. And that choice is made when you decide to get naked. After that, it is responsibility. You are pro-responsibility, aren’t you?”

  • Leon March 5, 2021, 5:30 PM

    In 1999 my neighbor on advisive council had pled guilty to a charge in exchange for no jail time only probation. Unfortunately he couldn’t/wouldn’t keep terms of his probation. On the day of his sentencing his wife asked me to drive her to and from the courthouse as she was very distraught. As I recall he got 7 years. On the 20-minute drive home she vented her spleen against the courts and life in general through a veil of tears. I kept silent the whole time pretty much. In that spiel was the nugget that she was three months pregnant and would probably abort because she had no one to help support and raise the baby. Like I said she was venting and I was keeping quiet. About a week later she was extraordinarily upset about the whole unfairness of life and etc. In hindsight I realized that was the day she’d gotten her abortion.

    Fast forward 17 years and a coworker with whom I’d had religious discussions asked me my view of abortion. For a friend don’t you know, who is 17 days pregnant. “For a friend” I was very emphatically pro-life. As a single male in my mid-forties I was in no station in life to raise a baby but I swore to her at that instant that I knew people who would happily adopt the baby and if all other options came to nought I would adopt the baby. About 4 months later she moved back to her hometown.

    About 2 months later I heard by way of a coworker that she had made the choice to keep her baby. I wept tears of joy.

    On May 1st 2018 Kylie was born.
    Sometimes God’s gracious enough to give us, if not a do-over a second chance to do the right thing. I will never again remain silent. I may yet get to adopt a baby. I can only hope.

  • Red March 6, 2021, 12:33 PM

    Many decades ago, I took a friend to a clinic to have an abortion. It was something I did not want to do, but knew it was to save her life. She was the only girl in the family. Her father was using her because her Mom had died. Her father was considered a good upstanding member of the community. After the abortion she went to a relatives house to recover, then disappeared so she could not be found. I later found out she had joined a Nursing Order and was stationed in Africa.

    My attitude regarding abortion was as long as I don’t have to pay for it, go right ahead. Then I thought with the amount of birth control out there, there should not be any surprise pregnancies, hence no abortions. Only there is the stupid human factor. There are times when I think that the women who use abortion for birth control instead of being careful and practical, were told “You’ve had 2 abortions, so you need to get your tubes tied since you are too stupid to be responsible for an innocent human life.” I support Life over Death of the Future.

  • ghostsniper March 6, 2021, 2:06 PM

    Maybe I’m just an old scaredy cat.
    Everyone’s heard the stories, over an over, women lamenting their labor experience.
    4 hours, 24 hours, 2 days, etc.
    The epidural, or not.
    The heinous pain.
    Someone in my past said it was like shitting a watermelon.
    You get the picture.

    I’m a dood, I can’t get pregnant so there is a detachment, I can’t know what having a baby is like, I can’t even accurately imagine it. So I have to take other people’s word. And I believe them, and it horrifies me, the very idea. Shitting a watermelon. How would you ever recover?

    Having said all of that, if I was female and for whatever reason I di not have birth control, there is no way in hell I would take the risk of getting pregnant unless I and my spouse were ready to take it on. I seriously cannot understand how so many women can take pregnancy and abortion so casually. I just can’t. Yes, I believe life begins at conception. Not some arbitrary line in the sand after the fact.

  • Bob Moss March 6, 2021, 3:49 PM

    Generations not long from now will condemn us worse than the nazis for the millions we put to death because we were too lazy to use birth control. Lord I’m sorry, God help us.