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.