                   Jesus Should Have Been Aborted
                                by
                            Jenn Shreve

        I remember my mother, an active member of the pro-life movement,
taking me aside and in a serious whisper telling me: "What if the Virgin
Mary had had an abortion? She certainly had a lot of reason too.  Where
would we all be then?" She was using this statement to prove how
horrible an abortion could be.  That even the savior of the world was
subject to surgical removal.  That an abortion was, in essence, the
potential wiping out the greatest person to ever die.  Unfortunately
for her, I suppose, I didn't share here respect for the life of christ
or the results of his ultimate and untimely death.
        When I turned over this statement in my mind, I considered why
Mary would want an abortion and decided she should, by all means have
had one, if she had so desired.  The, I considered, the results of
Christ's life and death and could not fathom one truly good thing
accomplished by it.  That was not necessarily his fault.  I have the
feeling that Jesus himself wasn't all that bad, just a little misguided
into believing he was the Son of God.  What resulted after the fact,
however, has turned into the nightmare of western civilization.
        Christ should have been aborted.  To begin with, Mary was raped
by the Holy Spirit.  There was no consent, just a mere warning by the
Angel Gabriel.  "Hey Mary, you've been chosen to get knocked up by God!
Have fun!  Got some shepherds to scare, so see ya!  And he was gone.
Sure enough, the Holy Spirit showed up while she was sleeping (so she
couldn't protest) and impregnated her.  This was rape and it was wrong.
She was violated and had every right to choose to suffer less for what
was done to her.
        One must also consider Mary's personal situation.  She was an
unwed mother of 14 living in a society where women who lost their
virginity outside of marriage were stoned to death.  Even the staunchest
of pro-life activists will often concede that abortion should be allowed
when the mother's life is at risk.  In Mary's case, it most definitely
was.  Furthermore, barring the risk of stoning, she had no way to
support the child.  Women didn't earn money for their labors in those
days.  Joseph bailed her out of the dilemma, proving himself to be quite
and exceptional male considering the times in which he lived.  Most guys
would be searching for the largest rock.
        So they married but didn't consummate and went to Bethlehem to
register for a census.  They didn't have adequate health care, so they
were forced to birth the child in the filthiest of places, a barn.
Needless to say, Mary's life was once again at risk here, and
considering that, theoretically, she was still a virgin, the pain
involved in childbirth must have been doubled.  ouch!  She should have
died, but must have been some sort of wonder woman amazon to survive the
whole ordeal.
        Besides the fact the child compromised Mary's life in every way,
there is another reason May should have considered an abortion.  She
knew, as did every other good hebrew person at the time, that the
Messiah was destined to suffer horribly-- to be sacrificed like a fuzzy
little lamb.  Gabriel informed her, prior to rape, of just whom she was
going to be pregnant with.  Seeing how she was most certainly familiar
enough with the Scriptures, she easily could have figured out just how
this future life would end.  it is imperative to ask the question
whether it is indeed moral to bring a fetus to term. giving life to a
child whose entire purpose in life is to be sentenced to die at the whim
of a hysterical mob.  It seems almost malicious to bring into the world
a person who can know no joy of living, who will be tortured,
humiliated, beaten, then executed in the most inhumane way ever invented
by mankind.  She could have spared herself and her child heaps of misery
if she had decided to end theses possibilities during the fetal phases
of development.
        But what does all this matter now?  Today Mary's trials and
tribulations seem small and insignificant to us.  However, one can't
deny that the life and death of Jesus weighs heavily on our history and
our modern society.  Scanning the records of the ages since his death,
there stands an overwhelming pattern that is rather difficult to
overlook.  Christ followers have, in his name, raped, pillaged,
,murdered, tortured, and destroyed nations and people up to this very
day.  yesterday there were religious wars waged against Muslims,
Protestants, Catholics, and presumed witches--the Spanish Inquisition
the Protestant Reformation, the Crusades, the numerous witch trials to
name a few.  It continues today with the harassment and murders of
doctors who perform abortions.  It will not stop there.  History is
proof of that.
        I don't believe Christ would have advocated all this evil, but
because he existed, it happened.  It's almost impossible, now, to
imagine a world without a New Testament, but stretching as deep into my
imagination as I can, I can pretty easily assume it couldn't have been
much worse.  If Mary had simply chosen and abortion, infinite amounts of
suffering could have been alleviated.  She didn't make that choice.  I'm
not even entirely sure that abortions were possible 2,000 years ago, but
if they were, she would have been totally justified in pursuing one.
        I do know and am happy to say that abortion is still an option
for most women in the world today, but that right is being threatened
daily.  Choosing Christ, patron saint of the pro-life movement, as a
case study is an extreme example, meant to take a stab back at the
pro-lifers who are attempting, as I write, to strip me of my personal
rights and freedoms as a woman--to send me back to Mary's time when
there were no choices.  Obviously, there are times when it is good to
carry a child to term. There are other situations when it is better to
have an abortion, for yourself, for the fetus that will one day bear the
burden of life, and perhaps for all humanity, as was the case with Mary.
