It was actually while reading Carl Sagan about 14 years ago that I came to rethink abortion.
He was basically talking about the miracle of life, and how being born at all means conquering such outstanding, almost unimaginable odds, whether that means wriggling your way toward an egg, racing past millions of other sperm, being in the womb, being comforted by the sound of your mother’s heartbeat; and how we are just stardust, so small and tiny, like granules of sand upon the cosmic beach, and things like that.
Later that night I was drinking with my girlfriend at Milton Lake and wondering at the stripe of moonlight trembling across its glassy face, when I really had a revelation of what he was talking about: That it really was a kind of miracle that I was ever born, and that it was obscene, in a way.
I was actually aware of the past and the future, when I would not be around, and when I wasn’t around, and immediately I thought of the millions who got so close to that miracle-moment of being birthed into this world, beaten almost all of the inestimable odds, defied all of the astronomical maths–so damn close that they had begun to gestate, developed a body, ears, eyes, primitive respiration, and were that close to freedom; within mere months of giggling and playing and learning and being awed by this life, of the wonder of life, but never made it, and would never know anything of the beauty that I was now experiencing at this lake, holding tight my gal, wondering at huge, cosmic questions and metaphysical grandeurs.
And it just seemed unjust to me.
I guess you had to be there, and felt what I felt at that moment. I could never really put it into words.
And so I want to thank Carl Sagan for that moment, for that eye-opening realization of the miraculous, odds-defying journey we all have to take in order to plant our flag in time. Perhaps he believed that we were merely star-stuff, as he often said. But I suspect he too, would rather have appreciated being star-stuff in the form of a living, breathing human, instead of having his blessing crushed, his miracles negated, and lopped away limb by limb in the false darkness of the maternal womb.