We were told we had a choice. But not that our choice had consequences.

We were told love was free. Or maybe we just wanted it to be, because we wanted what we wanted: Love without commitment, sex without responsibility. To have and have not.

We were told unplanned pregnancy is a mistake, and mistakes can be fixed.

But life is not a mistake.

Our choices define our values. And life is full of choices.

We raised an entire video game generation in digital fantasyland unplugged from reality. But those naughty online photos long thought deleted live on as someone’s screen-saver. And they live on forever. Like your soul.

We may not have a choice in the cards we are dealt, but we do have a choice in how they’re played. Any unplanned pregnancy is difficult, especially one resulting from force against consent. However hideous the offense, punishing the innocent does not satisfy the penalty of sin – it compounds it.

There’s a lot we didn’t understand back in the day, but not today. Advances in medical technology have laid bare the excuses we used to justify our selfishness.

We were told it was nothing. But then the baby’s heart begins to beat.

We may not be able to declare with scientific certainty what a baby is before that magical and (one hopes) constitutional moment when the soul enters the body, but we do know what it is not.

It’s not nothing.

Life: The Early Days
Day 18:  Heart begins to beat with baby’s own blood, often of a different type than the mother’s.

Without Exception
The only lies we get drunk on are the lies we tell ourselves. But the mirror lays bare our nakeness.