A Kiss and a Hug -- Part One of Two
Part 2

Today is my oldest daughter's 23rd birthday. Our middle daughter is coming back from college tonight so that everyone except our son (who has to work) can be together to celebrate Emily's birthday.

Emily is an extraordinary young woman, as kind and as welcoming as she is loving and generous. Em's the light of my life.

All of my children's birthdays now recall for me a song that came out a few years ago titled, "I knew I loved you [before I met you]." As performed, it had nothing to do with children, although I thought that was a natural link.

But, as if it were a gift special delivered to me, a year or so later when the song was "covered" by another artist, in the accompanying music video the dad addressed the tender lyrics to his newborn child.

The chorus goes like this:

"I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
I knew I loved you before I met you
I have been waiting all my life."

I married later in life and didn't have a clue--a hint even--about the hundred ways becoming a father would change me. The impact was reminiscent of one of those science fiction flicks where the guy is jolted/injected/irradiated.

The scientists subsequently scan his body and discover that the electrons in every molecule in his body have been reoriented. He has been, in a word, transformed.

In this case the transformation has been all for the good. If the journey to becoming the kind of man I ought to be is a thousand miles long, I've barely left the starting gate. But thanks to my four children, I'm at least pointed in the right direction.

Years ago I wrote about the day Em was born. In those ancient times, there was no e-mail, only the United States Post Office. To my surprise there came as many letters in response as any single piece I've ever written.

We live in Northern Virginia. Two days before Em was born in 1983 the area suffered through a major snowstorm for which it was wholly unprepared. (Ironically, this year another major snow storm blanketed our area and it began two days before Em's birthday!) Knowing Lisa was already overdue, I devoted much of the next day to digging out a long, wide path for our car. Early the next morning, it was time.

In all the 25 years we've lived out here, the roads have never been worse. In places they were virtually impassable. We had a trip of 20 miles to the hospital. I drove carefully.

What I remembered most clearly, and which evoked the most reader response, was a comment Lisa made to me between contractions as we crept down Highway 395: "I don't know how any woman does this alone."

This insight could be taken in a dozen different ways. Let me discuss just one.

America suffers through the agonies of 1.3 million abortions each year for reasons we have explored hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. But the primary cause is not, I would argue, a misbegotten strain of feminism that mistakes child sacrifice with liberation, or 1970s' demagoguery about "over population," or the corruption of the noble profession of medicine by the misguided, or a whole-hearted support for abortion on demand that now seems to be a part of the national Democratic Party's DNA.

All these are contributors, as is, of course, individual weakness. But in my judgment the greatest contributor, the paramount reason we take the lives of more than one in every four babies conceived in this nation is that too many men fail too many women in their hour of greatest need.

In so many instances, it borders on obscene to talk about women "choosing" abortion. Because the men in their lives--husbands or boyfriends (and, perhaps, worst of all, their fathers)--have deserted them, these frightened, abandoned and desperate girls and women can see no way out. Everything and everyone seems to be part of a conspiracy to send the same message, sometimes in a whisper, often times in loud, threatening tones: "You need to get rid of this, now!"

That is why we must be there, to assure them that someone does care about both mother AND child, and that there IS another way, a better way.

But we must be there to council and fortify and support the men in these women's lives so that they do not shirk their moral obligations, not only to the woman, but also to their unborn child. I have long suspected that this is one of the great challenges our Movement must, and will, meet.

As the parents of four wonderful kids, my wife and I have been fortunate never to find ourselves in that emotional, panic-stricken situation so many couples find themselves in.

That does not mean, however, that I am unfamiliar with crisis pregnancies. Between acquaintances, friends, family, and even strangers, I am well acquainted with the sheer soul-eviscerating panic that so often accompanies an unplanned pregnancy.

With that in mind I would like to conclude with a thought that I can hope somehow, someday, might make its way into the life of a man whose girl friend or wife is in the midst of a crisis pregnancy. It is neither profound, nor original, only true.

"Be there for her. Be there for yourself. Be there for your unborn child. Be a man.

"Whatever challenges you face, and they could be considerable, in the long run you will never regret standing up for life."

If you have any comments, please send them to dandrusko@nrlc.org.

Part 2