By Martin Jumbam
The former US President Ronald Reagan once said that he found it strange that all those who are militating for abortion have already been born. They were given a chance to live but are now depriving others of the wonderful gift of life from God Almighty, who creates us all in His own image (Gen 1:27). Life is sacred from the moment of conception till natural death, and wilfully interrupting human life, even in the mother's womb, can bring untold agony to the woman.
I have been reflecting on this issue of abortion ever since I read in this week’s English edition of the Catholic weekly tabloid, L’Effort camerounais, of a book recently launched in Bamenda, under the tutelage of the occupant of the Metropolitan See of Bamenda, His Grace Archbishop Cornelius Fontem Esua. The said book is entitled Myriam, why are you crying? It was originally written in German in 1996 by a Swiss author Pious Stossel, a member of a pro-life foundation called Yes to Life International. The report talks of participants focusing attention on the devastating effects of abortion, especially on the woman, several years after the act.
The long-term, tragic consequences of abortion hit me forcefully a few years ago at the International Airport in Douala. Not that I witnessed an abortion in progress but I ran into a woman who had aborted a daughter well over thirty years ago and was still suffering from the consequences of her action.
I was waiting for my daughter, who was coming back home on vacation. I saw a woman who looked familiar staring at me, a smile on her face. She saw that I hadn’t recognized her and she walked up to me: “You probably don’t recognize this old face. I am Mrs. _____________.” I protested that she didn’t look that old at all although it was obvious that age, in its pitiless march, had carved out rings around her eyes that were clearly visible despite a thick coating of meticulously applied make-up.
Her name didn’t ring a bell until she called her maiden name and reminded me that we had been together at the University of Yaoundé in the mid-seventies. Oh, yes. I remembered her then. She was majoring in English and I was in the bilingual degree program. We had had a few classes together. We hadn't met each other since leaving university well over thirty years ago.
The first thing she said when she saw my daughter was “Martin, you already have such a big girl?” That question took me by surprise because yours truly is far from being a young man! I would’ve thought that she would be asking how many grand children I already had! I reminded her that the grey on my hair was not a result of some powder someone might have taken delight in sprinkling on my head and beard while I snored contentedly away, but that it was truly the result of age coated with wisdom.
She smiled gently but then I noticed that she looked quite sad all of a sudden. I didn’t know what to make of her sudden change in mood, but then she turned to me abruptly and said that if her own daughter had lived she would be almost thirty years old. I said I was sorry to hear that she had lost her daughter. Had she been ill? I asked, not quite knowing what else to say. “No, she wasn’t ill, I aborted her!”
I was totally taken aback by what she said. I hadn’t known anyone could be so frank about her role in killing an unborn child! If her daughter had died a natural death I would’ve expressed my condolences to comfort her. But there she was, the author of her daughter's own death nearly thirty years ago!! I was frankly lost for words. Was I right to pass judgement on her? I wondered.
Then she turned to look at me, tears glistening in her eyes, and spat out the name of her daughter's father, someone I knew well, who had just retired from a lucrative job in a foreign organization in America. They had been an ‘ideal’ couple in those days when some of us even feared to ask a girl out in case she said ‘Yes!” and you wouldn’t know what next to talk to her about. “Yes, you know him, don’t you?” she asked. I said I did. “Yes, he forced me to kill my daughter. I find it difficult to forgive him! Now, he’s had children with his wife and I have none”.
She said that even though she later married someone else, she was not able to give him a child and her husband had brought in another younger woman, who had given him two sons. All his attention was now entirely focused on his younger wife and children, and the woman, standing head bowed at the airport that day, an island of remorse, was just a lonely and sad figure, forgotten at one corner of her house. Even though she herself held an enviable position in a foreign bank in a neighbouring country, she carried the guilt feeling all her life of having taken a life, that of an unborn child nearly thirty years previously. How sad!
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