This
is the bad luck chapter, so no point wiping the disease slate clean.
Three weeks later, the tide goes out for Emma and doesn't come in
again. She's pregnant. She had been so ashamed, that she didn't
know how to explain syphilis to Ethan. He found out about her it by
the nature of his own case of syphilis, and came back to her to talk
it over. (These contrived examples are so easy.) Being a stand-up
guy, he had marched her down to the school nurse, and she just
finished a course of antibiotics, and now this.
Her
thoughts are a smoking engine, racing in neutral. She's got to tell
Ethan she’s pregnant, now. How can she possibly tell Ethan? Can
they share this discussion without enunciating the dreaded question
“Abortion?” Would Ethan want her to keep the baby, or abort it?
What kind of man would ever council her to abort a baby? God, why
are you doing this to me? Why me and not somebody else? Ethan
already despises me. How could I tell him this? Easy: It's HIS
baby! It's not my fault; he did this to me. I'm going to call him
right now and tell him what for!
The
girl who could not bear to share the embarrassment of explaining an
STD is no longer the gentle creature that admired the Chess Club
President from afar. She has not become a mean, vengeful aggressor,
but she has nature's fire of DESPARATION kindled in her belly. There
is no deescalating this tension. There is no retreating or moving
on. The urgency of her decision cannot be averted.
At
this point, if she tells Ethan, he is no longer a stand in for ALL
men. He is legally responsible, and there will be no do-overs. An
upright guy wouldn’t be in this position, but Ethan is. He can
choose to marry her, or pay child support for eighteen years. He can
choose to represent his sex badly, and desert. If she decides to get
an abortion, the law precludes him over-riding her unilateral
decision. If she decides not to, whatever gyrations she puts his
brain and emotions through are a mere exercise. He can't make her.
Any council he offers to that end is mere weakness of character. His
decision not to wear a condom has now become her catastrophic
dilemma. If this event catapults her into motherhood, she will
likely make a decision never to depend on a man again. Partnership
is better than trying to go it alone, and that outcome will hinder
her indefinitely from enjoying a healthy loving relationship with
Ethan or anybody else.
What
she does not know is that if she exercises her prerogative to
terminate the pregnancy, the self loathing that she felt as she hid
her STD (while Ethan mounted her,) is merely the lapping waves of a
sea of despair that she will sail, if she kills her unborn child.
True, it will come and go, but she will always wonder what could have
happened IF she had taken the other fork in the road. In this way,
abortion has two victims: the mother and the baby.
In
this example, Emma is not the kind to build a long-term relationship
with a guy with whom she realizes she is not really matched. His
idea of a date is to hang out at the Zoo and watch them feed the
animals all afternoon. She doesn't want to become a mother, and rear
a child. She wants a career, as a Financial Consultant. Being an
intelligent girl, she makes use of the available social safety nets,
and finds out at the counseling center that there is a negative
population growth. They council her (this is a contrived example,)
that there are psychological penalties to abortion, as well as
potential infertility, so she determines to bring the baby to term,
and put it up for adoption. This has the built in problems of
wanting to know what happened to the child, a legal impossibility.
Furthermore, the child may feel that his/her birth mother didn't love
him/her... s/he is statistically likely to seek her birth mother out
in tortured rejection of her adoptive parents. But then this was an
unwanted pregnancy, not the launching of the Space Shuttle. She
hopes that s/he will understand that while all other children are the
product of nature's necessity, s/he was actually CHOSEN by her
adoptive parents, over and above other children, and was sought out,
not thrust upon them.
Forget
Dating and the “no big deal” of a role in the hay. Ethan is
definitely better off never fishing with that kind of worm.
Hopefully things will go better with Harper.
