My Name is Kate and I Just Killed My Baby

by Duane L. Ostler

me. I was the one who had hurt them.

  But the trouble was, I needed comfort too. I was just a confused, stupid kid that had messed everything up badly. Never in my life had I felt more need for a kind word from my Mom. I knew I should say I was sorry. I knew I should beg for their forgiveness. I wanted to do just that, and even started to mouth the words. But for some reason my throat wouldn't work, and I just couldn't say anything. The emotions in that tiny entrance hall were so intense that no word would come out.

  This was far worse than being yelled at, or even being hit. I suddenly found myself wishing my Dad WOULD explode like he'd been about to do, that he'd start yelling at me for not listening to him and not keeping my religious standards and letting things get out of hand with Bob, and then for aborting our baby. But as I looked at him, I saw that he was just as helpless and speechless as I was. Like me, he was too overcome with emotion to even talk.

  But Mom was the worst. Her eyes still held more pain than I could ever remember seeing in anyone's eyes before. And then they slowly started to shift. The pain receded, and in its place came a glazed and lifeless look. Her mouth twitched, and she swayed dangerously on her feet. Then she started to fall--to collapse, really. Dad caught her of course.

  "Mom!" I cried, looking down intensely into her face. She returned my gaze with a look of sheer horror. Then she tried to say something. She mouthed some words, but at first I couldn't understand what they were. Then she tried again, and this time I heard what she said.

  "You stopped its heartbeat," she said simply, in a voice so strained it sounded like she was choking. "You stopped its heartbeat. They detect a heartbeat you know, about 25 days after conception, which is about the time you find out you're pregnant. You stopped it. You stopped its heart."

  Then her eyes glazed over and she went completely limp. "Quick!" cried Dad. "Call Doc Jenkins!" I just stood rooted to the spot, Mom's words ringing in my ears. I had stopped Jonathon's heart. I had stopped Jonathon's heart. I had stopped Jonathon's heart!

  "Don't just stand there!" cried Dad again. "She needs a doctor!"

  Tears were suddenly blurring my vision. I turned and stumbled to the door, yanking it open. Then I lurched down our front walk and out toward the street. The blasted tears were starting to flood my eyes, and I couldn't see where I was going.

  And then I was running. Running like the wind. Running just like in my dreams, knowing that Jonathon was right behind me, even though I'd stopped his heartbeat. Only this time my running was not in slow motion. I took off down our street like a rocket on fire.

  April 26

  A year has passed since the events of that day. Most people would agree that a year is a long time. At least when we say "a year has passed" it sounds like a long time. After all, that's 365 days!

  But the memory of that day is still etched so strongly in my mind, it's as if it just happened yesterday. And most of all my Mom's words "You stopped its heart" come back to haunt me, at the most unexpected of times. I can be casually doing something mundane, not thinking of my abortion or Jonathon at all, and suddenly her words leap into my mind. And then I start to shake all over and the horror of that day comes crashing back down around my ears.

  With the passage of time over the last year, and as I've gotten a little older, I've realized that Mom's reaction was probably not a typical one. Many mothers in a moment like that when they clearly perceived their daughter was in so much pain and trauma would have said something comforting. They would have set aside their own horror and tried to lovingly comfort their daughter. The maternal instinct would have kicked in to see their child suffering, and they would have tried to comfort rather than yell or freak out. After a minute or two of comforting, THEN they would have started to yell and freak out. But even then, probably the last thing they would do is to say something about how their daughter stopped the baby's heart when she had an abortion. They would know that would just make their daughter feel far worse.

  No, my Mom's reaction was probably not a typical one. But as I was soon to learn, there was a reason for her reaction. A very understandable reason, too. But it was not an easy or a painless one, as I was to discover.

  And anyway, who am I to make such judgments about how a mother should respond? After all, I stopped Jonathon's heartbeat! I made no effort as a mother to comfort Jonathon in his moment of need, and he was in a state of far greater innocence and pain than I was that day in our front hall. Can I really blame Mom for her first reaction, when I acted with far more callousness toward my own child? Seriously, who am I to judge?

  Of course, some people--like the "Dearie" lady at the abortion clinic--might scoff at my saying this, and point out that my abortion was simply to remove a growth of cells, and that I was not really a "mother" like my own Mom at all. Therefore, they say, I should not feel bad about what I did to Jonathon because there was no Jonathon to feel bad about.

  I no longer believe such complete and utter nonsense. He had a HEARTBEAT for cat's sake! Is a being with a heartbeat and DNA different than mine really just a blob of worthless cells, like a wart or a cancerous growth? Don't give me that rot! He was MY baby, and I killed him! What Mom said that day helped me to finally understand that. And also to finally understand that there was no justification--absolutely NO justification--for what I had done. Would I walk casually by and watch a man bleed to death on the sidewalk? No. I would recognize him as a human in need and try to help him. Why did I do differently with Jonathon?

  That whole business of a "woman's body" and a woman's right to do with "her body" what she wants is sheer lunacy. Jonathon's body was not my body. His body was dependent on mine, but only briefly, for a few months--just like some people become briefly dependent on life support machines, and others depend on donors to give them a kidney to stay alive. Men fighting in wars do things with their bodies they don't want to do. They suffer for a few months so that others who are innocent can live in peace. So do policemen and firemen. Many average men go to jobs they hate and subject their bodies to abuse to feed their families. Have the women of this world descended so far down the road of selfishness they no longer see any need to experience some discomfort to save someone's life? Why was I so selfish that I put my own comfort and fear of being found out as a higher priority and more important than Jonathon's existence?

  The truth is, Jonathon's DNA makeup was so different from mine that if it had been found at an explosion crime scene where a few bits of DNA were all that was left of him and me, he would have been identified as a separate, distinct human being--not as part of me at all! NO DNA expert would have identified him as being part of my body.

  And that whole business of his not being a 'life' or 'alive' is also sheer stupidity. Of course he was alive! If he were dead tissues, my body would have expelled him! And while he wasn't a fully grown human being like me, he had every bit as much individuality in his few tiny cells as I do in my few billion cells. His brain was there, his heart, his arms and hands and feet--all of it was there, fully developed in genetic code that just needed a little time to develop physically. This was no stray group of random, worthless and useless cells. This was no wart. This was a person, plain and simple.

  But I'm getting off on a tangent again. I'm getting ahead of my story. I have to calm down and pull myself back to that horrid day when Mom and Dad found out and I went running crazily down the street instead of calling the Doctor like I should have done. Because once again, I was just thinking about ME, rather than someone else that needed me. Someone else like Jonathon or Mom. After all, Mom could have been having a seizure or a heart attack there in the hall. And did I help her? No. So once more, rather than act to save the life of someone who needed me, I tried to simply escape, leaving them to die.

  It seemed like I ran for hours. I ran until my breath came in ragged gasps that threatened to tear my ribs apart. I was gulping air like a hooked fish gulps for water.
I paid no attention to where I was going, since I had lost all touch with everything around me. It's a wonder I didn't get hit by a car.

  When I finally came to my senses, I found myself in a city park, with a couple of old guys sitting on a park bench staring at me. They had good reason, too. Looking down into the park's duck pond, I saw that my hair was wild and straggly, my face was streaked with tears and smeared with make-up, and my eyes were bloodshot and bulging.

  "You all right?" called out one of the men to me. I simply nodded in reply, still gasping for air from my long run. "You don't look it," he said again, which I suppose he thought was supposed to help somehow. It didn't, of course.

  As I stood there being stared at by the two old dudes, I came to one of the great and very simple realizations of my life. No matter how hard you try to run away from a thought you don't like, you can't do it. I'd run like crazy, but my Mom's words "You stopped its heart" still echoed through my mind. And no matter how hard I tried, I simply could not make those words go away.

  I'd stopped Jonathon's heartbeat! Why hadn't anyone told me he had a heartbeat at 25 days? He had a HEART for crying out loud--and I'd stopped it from