Abortion attempt survivor. Voice for the voiceless.

Dr. Alveda King on King Day: The Dream Includes Us All, Born and Unborn

Priests for Life

Monday, January 18, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dr. Alveda King, Pastoral Associate of Priests for Life and niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., released the following comments today on the celebration of her Uncle’s life.

“Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of a Beloved Community where all are treated with respect and dignity,” said Dr. King. “He fought against society’s exclusion of people who were treated as less than human because of their appearance. Today, we are compelled to continue Uncle Martin’s fight by standing up for those who are treated as less than human because of their helplessness and inconvenience.

“The unborn are as much a part of the Beloved Community as are newborns, infants, teenagers, adults, and the elderly. Too many of us speak of tolerance and inclusion, yet refuse to tolerate or include the weakest and most innocent among us in the human family. As we celebrate the life of Uncle Martin, let us renew our hearts and commit our lives to treating each other, whatever our race, status, or stage of life, as we would want to be treated. Let us let each other live.”

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, will join Alveda and her family as a program participant in the Martin Luther King Jr. Annual Commemorative Service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Priests for Life is the nation’s largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit www.priestsforlife.org.

I came across this letter the other day that I wrote Olivia for her first birthday and was so moved by reading it again, that I thought that I’d share it with all of you. For anyone out there who still doubts the impact of abortion, please read my love letter to my firstborn below.

Just think, if that abortion would have been successful in ending my life, I never would have had the opportunity to be a mother. I never would have had the opportunity to be HER mother. Just think, my daughter would never have lived if I had not survived.

April 26, 2009

My dearest Olivia, Today is your first birthday! I just can’t believe how fast the year has gone! It seems like just yesterday I was lying in bed at the hospital, anxiously awaiting your arrival! You have grown so quickly from a little baby into a big girl!

I will forever cherish the memories of my pregnancy with you, and I will never forget just how active you were in my belly—no one really could believe or understand me when I told them that you never rested in there, but I think now that they’ve seen how active you are over the past year, they can start to believe me now! And oh, what a stubborn little thing you were on the night of your birth! You were not coming out of there without a little bit of a push (or actually pull)!

You made the Dr. look for more help with getting you out, but in true Olivia-style, you decided to come out at the last minute, after having pushed him to look for other options! In that moment that you arrived into the world, I could feel your strength and your will—you are such a strong girl, already at your young age. And you were so beautiful! A head full of dark hair, a beautiful, dark complexion, and plump, the Dr. even had to remark about how fat your little cheeks were! You didn’t cry much when you came out, even when the nurse pushed you to do so.

Your birth was the most wonderful night of my life.  I would do it all over again, because you are worth every ounce of pain that I experienced.  Just as your birth was the most wonderful night of my life, this past year has been the best year of my life (even though at the time I am writing this you STILL don’t sleep through the night!)

There are so many things that I can say about your first year of life, but I will try to keep this as short as possible.  You have brightened the lives of everyone that you have come into contact with, especially mine.  Everyone who knows you, loves you, not just me.  Your daddy adores you, you have your grandpas and grandmas wrapped around your little finger, random strangers are struck by your beauty and your funny personality.  Seriously, we can’t take you anywhere in public without someone remarking about how pretty you are!

What are my favorite things about you?

You are so funny! Never before have I met a child who makes people laugh like you do.  Whether you are playing peek-a-boo, chasing me around the house, screeching and babbling, waving, or simply just hugging on someone, you are just a delight to be around.  You have the most wonderful little belly laugh—I love to tickle you just to hear it!

You are a beautiful girl, period.  I love everything about you from the top of your head to the tip of your toes, but most of all I love your big eyes and your beautiful smile.  I suspect that you will grow up to be like me, and you will tell a lot through your face and your gestures; you already tell a lot through the flash of your eyes—it is easy to see if you are happy, sad, or just plain mischevious.  You have been quick to smile ever since you were just a few months old, but for a long time, you only flashed that beautiful smile to those that you REALLY liked.  Now you smile more often than not, and your wide grin, full of teeth (a couple of them crooked), is just a beauty to behold.

Believe it or not, I have always loved your hands and feet! Let me explain why….Your hands never stop moving (nor do your feet really, either).  Just like when you were in my belly, you are constantly touching, twirling, pinching, grabbing, pulling and scratching at things.  Even when you were just a few months old, you loved to take your index finger and scratch at new textures that you came across.  Of course, you using those little hands to pinch and scratch yourself so you stay awake is not so fun, but it is pretty funny!

As for those cute little feet of yours, I have known you had monkey-feet like me since your birth, and boy, have you figured that out.  You love to pick things up with your toes, rub your feet up against things to feel their texture, and you are not crazy about wearing socks or shoes.  Someday I will share stories with you about how you used to cry when I put your socks and shoes on you!

What are some of my other favorite things about you?  You are strong, physically and mentally.  You are not a delicate girl, by any means.  You play hard, you are rarely phased by falling down, you like to be active, and you sure communicate to us what you want and need.  You are a very determined girl, to the point that many others have noticed this about you, too.  Whatever you want to do or get, you work at it until you get it.  Of course, you are likewise a stubborn little thing, like your Mom and your Dad.  Once you set your mind on something, there is no one or not one thing that is going to change it.  Ahhh….I can see the power struggles that we will have in your teenage years, already!

My list of what I love about you could go on and on and on, but my last one for this letter is this:  I love that you are my daughter! I am so blessed to have you in my life, and I look forward to all of the rest of the years of my life with you in it.  Thank you for being you and for loving me!

What is my favorite memory of you from this past year? I have way too many to count, but I will share a few of them with you:

∙The moment you were born.

∙All of your firsts-Your first smile, your first laugh, first time of rolling over, first time sitting up by yourself, first time pulling yourself up, first time standing, first steps, first time saying mama, dada, hi, waving bye.  Even the first time that I saw you hit another kid at daycare was a favorite memory of mine!

∙Even though I am not fond of being up all hours of the night, I love snuggling with you in the rocking chair in the deep, dark of night, while you play with my hair; I will treasure those memories forever.

∙I love story time with you and have lots of great memories around it.  I enjoyed rocking in the rocking chair and reading to you when you were in my belly.  I started reading to you when you were just a few weeks old, and although you’ve always seemed to enjoy it, you have taken a huge liking to it since you were about 10 months old.  You like to point to the books you would like to read, and you definitely have your favorites—The Can Do Choo-Choo and all sorts of pop up books.

∙You waking up in the morning.  You have been a morning person from the very beginning, but as you have gotten older, you have been more and more vocal about it.  Some of my favorite memories from this past year involve you waking up and chattering away, climbing all over your Dad and I in bed, looking for the dog or cat to pet.  I tell you, you are not one who takes awhile to wake up.  The minute those eyes of yours pop open in the morning, that’s it—you are ready to take on the day!

∙Our family time each evening.  Although what this looks like has changed as you have gotten older, I have wonderful memories of the times that your dad and I have spent with you each night.  When you were first born, this usually consisted of you cuddling up with us and watching tv or going for a walk.  As you have gotten older, it progressed to working with you on rolling over, sitting up, standing, walking, playing with toys, dancing and singing, playing outside, and most of all, climbing and hugging all over us!

∙Your attendance at the Siouxland Interfaith Prayer Service and my speeches in Storm Lake were very special to me.  You are an important little girl in the pro-life movement already!

This letter will be the first of many letters that are written to you on your birthday.  My plan is to write you a letter for each of your birthdays and leave them for you to read when you are old enough to read and understand them.  I hope that you enjoy them when you get older.

Although you are not old enough right now to understand why I am crying tears of love and joy as I write this letter, someday you will understand.  You have been the greatest gift of my life, and I love you more than I could ever put into words.  You are by far the most amazing little person that I have ever met, and I can’t wait to see the amazing big person that you will become.

All my love, Mommy

It’s been almost a week now since Nancy Pelosi came out publicly with her comments about abortion coverage in the national healthcare plan and her personal beliefs about abortion and how they are or are not connected to her Catholic faith.  I’ve been praying for Ms. Pelosi for months now, but after hearing her comments last week, I have been praying more fervently for her.  I have been mulling over writing her a letter for days now, and I am going to give all of you first glance at the initial thoughts that I plan on sharing with her:

1)  You state, “thank God” the Senate bill includes massive funds for abortion.

I say, THANK GOD that He saved me from certain death by saline infusion abortion.

THANK GOD that He saved me from being burned alive from the outside in.

THANK GOD He spared me from suffering from any form of physical, emotional or mental disability as a result of the abortion procedure.

THANK GOD that instead of living her life knowing that she ended the life of her first born child, my biological mother has been able to know that her child was given the gift of life-as opposed to the millions of women just like her who are not so blessed to say that their children lived.

2)  You say, “I never count on Republicans.”

I never count on most Democrats, like yourself, to help protect and respect me, my life, and those of my fellow unborn brothers and sisters.  Although there are certainly a handful of Democrats who are pro-life and are not afraid to admit it, by and large, you have continued to fail children like me each and every day.

Where would you be if your own biological mother made the same choice that mine did? When will you and your peers learn that without the basic right to life, healthcare for all Americans would not even be an issue?

3)  You state that restricting abortion amounts to a violation of women’s free will and is inconsistent with your Catholic faith.  You state that women should have the opportunity to exercise their free will.

Please tell me where my free will is as a woman who survived a failed abortion attempt, a lethal attempt on my life? Where does the concept of free will begin and end? At what point of my life, as a female, did I suddenly become “eligible” to exercise my free will? How is it right or just that without God’s grace in saving me from the abortion attempt that I NEVER would have had “the opportunity to exercise [my] free will?”

Do you believe that women being coerced into having an abortion, just like my own biological mother was, are REALLY exercising their own free will? Do you believe that by focusing all of our funding efforts on ending lives through abortion instead of focusing our attention and funding on addressing the real needs of pregnant women, such as the need for insurance coverage for the child’s birth, for the child after they are born,  meeting their financial needs, addressing their need for safe and habitable housing, providing them with emotional and social supports is REALLY helping to provide women in exercising their own free will?

Is it REALLY free will when you believe that there is no other option out there OTHER than abortion?

4)  You mention that you have “had five children in six years…so I appreciate and value all that they want to talk about in terms of family and the rest.”

First of all, I don’t mean to make an assumption about you, but to be honest, you are obviously making assumptions about me as an unborn child, so I feel compelled to share my hypothesis about what underlying issue may be driving your stance on abortion.

Being a mother is hard work, I know.  I only have one wonderful child, who is now 20 months old (who, by the way, would never have had the opportunity at life if her own mother would never have survived the abortion attempt), and she can be a handful.  I can only imagine what it was like for you to raise five children in the span of six years.  No matter how rewarding and wonderful it is to be a mother, I am sure that you had your moments of being under extreme stress.

I wonder whether your experience of having so many children in such a short time frame hasn’t impacted your thoughts on abortion….you may have chosen life for your five children, but maybe your experience has led you to believe that other women should have the “choice” to not be a mother of five in six short years? Are you at some level resentful of being the mother of five children in six years?

This is just the barebones of what I’m putting together…..let me know if you have any thoughts about it….I plan to keep working and reworking it and fill her in on the specifics of my survival, of my daughter’s life, etc.