By Funke Egbemode
Why do women agree to have repeated abortions for the same man or any man at all? What kind of woman is it who rationalises why she should stay in a relationship with a man who risks her uterus and future? What kind of woman doesn’t know or refuses to admit that all the risks taken each time an abortion is carried out are borne by the woman?
Why do women who have had three, four abortions for one man think there won’t be consequences down the road: blocked tubes, damaged uterus and so on and so forth? Why do we not know when to quit a bad relationship? Why would a woman believe that a man who risks her womb loves her? What kind of satanic love is that?
If you let a man swim in your pool without swimming trunks, then you must let him know there are repercussions. Indeed, you must show him photos of baby dresses and maternity wears each time he insists on taking a dive without wearing ‘something’. No matter how good the sex is, it is absolutely stupid to let a man plant a ton of his seeds in you, let him walk away while you are left alone to open your legs for another man to prod your insides with medical forks and knives to bring out lover boy’s unwanted harvest. He even gets to read newspapers or watch CNN while you are in the slab. That is if he even follows you there. He may have a meeting or commitment more important than your delicate womb and the medical equipment running around in it. You are somebody’s precious daughter for God’s sake! Don’t let another person’s child ruin your own mother’s dream of becoming a grandmother. Don’t let foolish love leave your mother childless.
Deaconess Tutu’s husband, a pastor has just moved out of their matrimonial home after 11 years of childlessness. And guess who he moved in with? The young ‘washerwoman’ who came regularly to wash and iron for the couple. She is seven months pregnant. Pastor Mrs didn’t know that her husband had been ‘washing’ the girl for more than a year. The innocent-looking domestic staff simply strolled through the door and took the trophy ‘Madam’ had toiled and sweated for all of a decade and 12 months. While Pastor Kolade and Tutu were ‘still in the world’, she got pregnant three times and allowed herself to be talked into abortion those three times. They eventually got ‘born-again’, got married and in those long 11 years, she never missed her period once! She prayed. They fasted. They attended many deliverance services. Do you think there are adequate words to describe the depth of her pain and sorrow when she was told she would never conceive, by many doctors? She kept on hoping and praying that God would have mercy on her and grant her that one single wish. But that didn’t and hasn’t happened. Now, her husband has moved on, moved in with another woman, a fertile woman, leaving behind the one he damaged with her damaged goods.
A young man went for a deliverance service in a popular Pentecostal church. He waited after the service to see the pastor. As soon as he knelt, the pastor told him that someone else accompanied him to church. The young man shook his head and told the pastor he came alone. The pastor knew the young man could not see what he was seeing. According to the pastor’s narrative, the man kneeling before him was accompanied to church and into his office by a spirit in female form. This she-spirit was also carrying a small coffin and indeed followed the young man everywhere. About two years before that day, the guy had taken his girlfriend for abortion which led to her death 24 hours later. The spirit of the woman was determined to avenge herself and the young man had just six days left on the surface of the earth when he went for that deliverance service.
The pastor asked the young man what really transpired between him and a girlfriend in his past. He broke down and told the sad sordid story when the pastor revealed what the Lord had shown him. Of course, pastor left out the part about the six-days-more-and-you-are-dead. The guy confessed that he and Susan started dating when they were both in 300-level in the university and she had had two abortions for him. The third one that took her life was left for too long because Susan wanted to keep the baby. She was already in Law School and the guy had also graduated. She didn’t see why they couldn’t just go to the registry and start their lives but the guy threatened to deny paternity if she kept the pregnancy. She wept. She begged. The guy stood his ground. Unfortunately, she stood her own ground too long. By the time she decided to have the abortion, it was too dangerous but she did not want to be a single mum. She was the first child of her parents. Her father is an elder in an orthodox church too! What would everybody say? She couldn’t afford the shame. That was how she traded shame for death. She was found dead in her room the day after the abortion.
Now, her spirit had returned with a coffin to convey her mean lover boy home, to a place where they would live happily ever after. According to the pastor, the death sentence hanging over the head of this young man was irreversible but wise pastors do not say unwise things. He prayed for him and told him to go. Six days later, the lover boy died.
Did you say the pastor should have reversed the death sentence with prayer? I feel you, but I must quickly remind you that pastors do not answer prayers. Only God does that. Secondly, not all death sentences are reversible. For even thinking it, here is your home work:
Find out five judgments and death sentences that God did not reverse in the Bible.
But wait, is this another Sunday School? Maybe, maybe not. Or not exactly. But have you ever asked yourself why women do what they do in the name of love? Yes, once in a blue moon, the scenario above plays out; a vengeful spirit ‘returns’ to take her ‘husband’ home. But how many such stories have you heard? How many men do you know that died because they took their girlfriends for abortion? See? You can’t even remember a single case. Now compare that with the number of women you know who are suffering from the consequences of many abortions and or one single badly done abortion. The figures and ratio are sad, right? My point exactly.
If you let a man ruin you and the rest of your life just because he carries the right weight in between his legs and pockets and delivers a pitch better than a marketer, the only person you can blame is yourself. Infertility, a uterus that can’t carry a baby to term or barrenness of any brand are not always the work of witches and wizards. Moving from one prayer house to the other, jumping from one deliverance service to the other and generally stressing every prophet and pastor you can corner, five years from now would be exercises in futility. The time to take the right decision is today, now. Don’t donate your womb to that guy to use as shooting range or football pitch.
No matter how in love a man is when he shoots a woman full of his seeds and tells her to abort four times, he’s never too in love to forget when to move on. Very few men ‘wait on the Lord’ with a woman with a destroyed womb. The nice ones apologise profusely and install new wives outside. The mean ones impregnate the maid and or bring new wives in to flaunt their babies.
Babes, you can’t, must not, give up your womb for a man, any man. It is always better to give up a man, any man, for your womb. It may be tough to let a man go when he threatens: ‘Consider this relationship over if you keep that baby.’
Especially if you have invested everything and you thought he is everything. But you can’t put him first and yourself last. Think of what you stand to lose if you capitulate: your baby, your womb and the rest of your healthy life. Compare that with what you stand to gain if you don’t: your unborn baby and maybe five more after him or her, a healthy womb, a healthy future and then a chance to love again, a chance to find a better man.
Think of these things.
*Egbemode (egbemode3@gmail.com)