By Dave Andrusko

All of us of a certain age (and you don't have to be THAT old) know well that the Christmas season is a delight to many and can be a real challenge for others. There is something about this sacred time that can remind us of our fondest memories or, alternatively, of behavior we'd do anything to take back.

Over the weekend I saw a link on Facebook to a blog entry that appeared, coincidentally, on my birthday. It was a reflection titled "My Other Daughter."

I had been alerted about the contents, but otherwise would have not known initially that this was both a tribute and a quiet plea for forgiveness to the child she had aborted twenty three years before. I naturally thought of what is for men the classic post-abortion story--"Remembering Thomas: Responsibility, Guilt and a Child Who Never Was "--written by Phil McCombs, then of the Washington Post [http://www.priestsforlife.org/postabortion/rememberingthomas.htm].

In the beginning you might be led to think Marilou had given her first daughter up for adoption. Indeed, why is she hard on herself for such a courageous and honorable decision? Then she tells us about the abortion. It really takes you aback.

"Why am I telling this story now?" she writes. "Well I guess it's only because my daughter Anna in a sense gave my other daughter a voice. And while Anna was thanking me for 'loving her enough', I also heard my other daughter's voice saying, 'how come you didn't love me enough?'"

Your heart quickly melts. And if you are, like me, a softy, you sense a catch in your throat.

Every time I read an account like Marilou's, I think of the anti-life propagandists who insist that women rarely suffer from their abortion and, if they do, they had it coming to them.

Okay, that's not a fair description. The Abortion Establishment rationalizes that these women carried their emotional baggage to their abortion, and it merely spilled out, so to speak, after their child's life was extinguished. For me, that's almost worst.

For those many women who've experienced an abortion, I hope you take a few minutes to read her kind and generous entry (http://marilouschnaderbeck.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/my-other-daugther).

If not, please consider her conclusion.

"For the short time you were there, you were knit together in my womb by God's hands. You are beautifully and wonderfully made! And although you were never alone having lived these 23 years in the presence of your heavenly Father and his angels and our family members that were already 'home', you also have a very large family here on earth with loving parents, siblings, grandmas and grandpas, LOTS of aunts, uncles and cousins. My beautiful baby… you are wanted, you are precious, you are loved!"

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