I don't know how to say this.

Because I've been there. And I mean actually there, making the decision that only a wee percentage of people have had to make compared with those who talk about the implications of that decision.

On Sunday, my birthson M turned 7. SEVEN! Time flies. Oddly enough, Sunday was also "Sanctity of Human Life" Sunday. Now, listen, I'm not going to get "preachy," because, as I said earlier, I've been there. I've been at the moment when your world goes for a swim in front of you, and everything gets kind of floaty, and time really does slow down because holy $h!t you're pregnant. [look, I'm just saying what I did when I found out. I don't say that word now.]

I'm so glad I had people in my life who told me as a teen that, if I decided to have sex, I needed to know what I would do if I were to get pregnant. I'm so glad I was raised to believe that a fetus is a person. But I'm most glad that I had given my life to Jesus two weeks earlier, so I had the Holy Spirit to help me.

I don't know if there was one factor that was more important than others or what, but I just never thought that abortion would "make it all go away." But, now that he's older, I can't help but wonder if people know how it's the same thing to kill M now as to have killed him when I was 8 weeks pregnant. It cannot be anything other than the same thing, because that fetus is now M. He has food preferences and big blue eyes and a wonderful personality. It would be a travesty for him to die. And I wish there was some way to lovingly communicate this to girls and guys who are there right now. That a person's a person, no matter how small. Let this person live. They will be beautiful and uniquely themselves and will add to the world.

It's hard to lose your life for a while. It's hard to let your body change and have people give you looks and feel such pain for someone you don't know. It's hard. But the opposite of that is not giving that person a chance to live at all. M deserved to have life. I know that my need for justice is showing, but it's only fair. I don't get to take a person's life because they've drastically changed mine. It's not my right. And I know because I was there seven years ago.

I think of seven years ago and the old cracks in my heart open a little. I so desperately wanted to keep him. I was so not ready to be a parent. I held him in the hospital all night my last night there, mourning. But I did the right thing for my situation, and I have no regrets.

If you've had an abortion, please understand that I don't judge you at all. That time is so intense it's almost an alternate reality. I believe it as much as I believe in the air I'm breathing: God can redeem anything. Jesus died so we could be forgiven of everything, and He really does forgive everything.