Your Choice

I’ve just been conceived but you may not know
I’m inside your belly as an embryo.
At four weeks old I’m developing fast
And you begin to question when your cycle was last.
Now five weeks old and my heartbeats begin!
My arms, legs, and brain are developing within.
Nostrils and lenses continue to form;
I’m beginning to look more like a newborn.
Elbows and fingers, feet, toes, and ears,
Eyes and nose, they all do appear.
By nine and ten weeks I can jump, suck my thumb,
Turn somersaults, squint, frown, and move my tongue.
My fingerprints evident on my soft little skin;
I wish you would call me your little bumpkin.
My brain is formed fully, and I can feel pain,
I can silently cry, but in here it remains.
I wish you could hear me, know I’m not “just a foetus”
For your talk of abortion is causing me distress!
Do you know what happens? Have you seen what they do
To babies like me, unwanted by you?
If you aborted me now, a common method would be
To give you anaesthetic, then they’d focus on me.
The doctor’s hand holds a suction curette,
A hollow tube with a knife-edged tip set
To insert in your womb, and connect to a vacuum,
Suction tearing my body and other volume
Into tiny pieces, then discarded in a jar.
How could you murder me? You are my Ma!
Or if you prefer, they could first slice me to bits
Then remove my remains out through your cervix.
You decide to think through the issue a bit longer,
During which time, I only grow stronger.
You can hear my heartbeat when you visit our doctor;
Will this convince you, my mum, my protector?
I can blink and grasp, I have hair on my head
Yet still you wonder if I should die instead.
At the size I am now, if you had an abortion
It’s called Dilation and Evacuation
Which instead of a knife, they use forceps to grab
Parts of my body, it’s teeth twists and stabs
And tears at my bones, snapping my spine,
Crushes my skull, and you think “Sure, that’s fine”?
Or perhaps upon some more reflection
You decide to opt for the Saline Injection
A long needle injects a strong salt solution
I swallow the poison; it’s your resolution
That I should not live, the inconvenience I’d cause,
Completely excuses these actions of yours.
It burns off my skin, and in time I die.
You go into labour, but if things go awry,
And I’m born alive, then I’m left unattended
To suffer alone til my life shall have ended.
Or you could have surgery to seal my doom
They cut the umbilical cord while I’m still in the womb
Then having been suffocated, I am removed
This is the method of which you’ve approved?
Prostaglandin is another procedure
Causing violent contractions, but there is the danger
That I be not killed nor decapitated
And may be born living once labour’s abated.
But perchance you still can’t quite decide,
Do you realise that outside your womb I could bide?
My lungs have developed, I can breathe on my own,
Your belly attests to how much I have grown.
And yet there is another way still
To dispose of my life, to murder, to kill.
Guided by ultrasound, the abortionist seizes
My delicate legs with forceps and tweezes
Them out through the birth canal, delivers all but my head
Jams scissors in my skull, there they imbed.
Why won’t you see that this is so cruel?
To enlarge my skull he opens the tool,
Pulls scissors out, puts in suction catheter,
My brains are sucked out, my skull caves in.
Then I am removed, yet I could have survived
Had you not, by choice, deliberately deprived
My right to life, my chance to live
To love, to laugh, and to forgive.

Is the fault mine that I am alive?
Is it not nature to want to survive?
Why would you hurt me, when I’m not to blame?
For the actions of others, you’d refuse me a name.
No one but God in heaven hears my voice,
Yet you may forever silence it because that is “Your choice.”