Nature has taken it’s vengeance on my children. Bob Marshall pronounced last Monday that the number of children born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. According to Mr. Marshall - a great scholar of the Old Testament - this is because the first born of all creatures is the special gift to the Lord. The Lord is punishing my kids.

That’s just not very nice!!!

In May 1987 I was preparing to graduate from Temple University. It wasn’t going to happen in June because I was running a just bit late. To prevent an "Attitude of Entitlement" my Grandfather had cut me off financially and against my will I was forced to work three jobs to put myself through school. While this was “the best thing to ever happen to me” I had to transfer to a cheaper school which slowed me down! I was engaged to a fantastic man living in London and our wedding would take place three days after graduation and we would then be winging our way back to England for Graduate school. The world stopped when I missed a period.

Seriously!? Can this be happening. My Grandfather is an OG/GYN - I know better! I am on the pill!! CRAP! My thoughts raced. So did the fiancé - we were panicking, but there were options for us.

Neither of us wanted a child. Neither of us were prepared to be parents. We had taken precautions. For us abortion was the correct choice and while it wasn’t a pleasant experience by any means I have never regretted it. According to Bob Marshall and the Old Testament I was Dead Wrong and my offspring are paying the price!

Tomorrow my husband and I are driving to Raleigh NC to UNC Hospitals to see the Cleft Palate Team that has overseen our daughters care since 1996. One of the factors in returning to the United States was her surgical care. Charlie was born in Coventry UK with a full cleft of her soft palate. We had no warning as this type of cleft often doesn’t show up in a level one scans and we had no reason to believe we had a high risk pregnancy. How were we to know that my first abortion would lead to The Lord punishing our child? It wasn’t included in “What to Expect When You Are Expecting”!

When Charlie was lifted out and we were told she was a girl we were overjoyed! Already the proud parents of a 5 ½ year old son, having a daughter was perfect. Born by Cesarean, Charlie was taken into a side room by a midwife while I was stitched up, but they didn’t bring her back. Time went by, and time went by. Still more time passed, and we began to worry. We couldn’t see her and in 1996 in a British hospital we had very little control over what happened in that room. We were not going to see that infant until they brought her back. The midwife slipped back in to the delivery room because she knew we would be frantic at this point, and very kindly told us that Charlie had what she believed was a cleft of the soft palate. She thought it was fairly big but couldn’t be sure because our little darling wasn’t being terribly cooperative about opening her mouth. This set the pace for the following 14 years since! Charlie was doing well and we would be able to see her when the senior pediatric registrar had examined her. Well...fuck.

We had already been thinking of leaving Great Britain. My husband is a Physicist but couldn’t find a job in the same city, or even country, in which we owned a house. He was living in Glasgow, Scotland and I was living in Coventry, England. This seemed even more unworkable with a child that couldn’t even suck. No soft palate - no ability to suck. It took 2 ½ hours to feed Charlie and she had to eat every 3 hours. She would get exhausted so I would have to undress her and flick the bottom of her feet to keep her awake. I was working full time and looking back 14 years I don’t know how I did it! I do remember curling up on the floor of my office and sleeping occasionally!

It took us 6 months to prepare to leave England and despite everything - being highly educated, three of us being American citizens, and Martin and I living together for 7 years - and being married for 18 months - we had to be sponsored to come into the US. My own country! Go figure! We finally arrived on August 31, 1996 - when Charlie was 6 months old. She had to have palate repair at 9 months for good speech development, and we had no jobs and no medical insurance!! No pressure.

We were extrodinarily fortunate that Martin was able to get a fantastic job with a large company with excellent medical coverage within 6 weeks of our arrival in the US. Thank God - wait the same one who is punishing our child for that first abortion of mine? I’m confused!

At 9 months Charlie had her first palate repair and she did look kind of punished. She looked scared moments before surgery as they took her away because she didn’t understand that we had searched for the best surgeons to rebuild what nature had not given her. She looked really pissed off too because she didn’t like the strangers dressed like spacemen and frankly the entire place smells funny! It’s also cold. Operating rooms are cold! Yep feeling punished Bob!

In those first post surgical hours my daughter didn’t look so much punished as she looked vulnerable. It was heart wrenching and unavoidable and with it came the knowledge that this surgery would not be her last but the first of several throughout her childhood and adolescence.

Tomorrow morning we hit the road with Charlie - who very much looking forward to her evaluation. She has known these doctors almost her entire life and they have take great care of her. We are planning what will be one of her last revisions. She’s really looking forward to this one because being able to blow French fries out your nose is just not a marketable skill - although at her last horse show she found it is an awesome party trick!

Ask my daughter if she feels punished and she will laugh in your face although she will tell you she is “structurally unsound”. Her thoughts on abortions are pro-choice - either way as appropriate to the individual and she believes that Bob Marshall is a “Douche-Nozzle”.

Bob Marshall has recanted his statement about handicaps as punishment and the links to first abortions claiming he was misunderstood - but anyone who has read his words or heard what he said directly has be left with no doubt to his meaning. That he lives in a world of an angry unforgiving God is frankly very sad. What a world that is. Punishing, harsh, and full lies and hate. What is most disgusting is that his world craps all over mine. Mostly it is the kind of crap that is unimportant. Like bird shit on my windshield. Annoying but easily wiped off or a little dog shit on my shoe - just scrape it off on some grass.