My testimony for Right to Life...

For me I guess I grew up with the word not a part of my vocabulary. I really didn't think about it one way or another as a youth. I was a Christian, but apparently those sermons did not catch my attention or opportunities for whatever reason were missed. As an adult I had children right away and always thought they were the greatest blessing anyone could have. I am not going to say I did not know abortion by definition, but spiritually the issue had not taken hold of my heart. So there are probably some people out there like I was... able to use the word in Scrabble, but in reality without a Clue. I sat in church ready to listen to my pastor, when a man with a message to share surprised me. He was a member of our church and the Pastor introduced him as wanting to speak about something on his heart. As he spoke he brought out a baby doll and told of abortion. By using the doll it had a personifying effect. At the end of the message he took the doll and tore it apart limb; at that moment my mindset changed. I could not shake what I had witnessed. I used the encounter as inspiration to write a poem "Through Death Roe I Wade". A poet always wants their message heard and when a piece is written from the heart it special to them. I shared the poem with a friend, who ironically is having a new child due soon, He told me this poem touched him so much that it changed the way he thought about abortion. His response validated again minds can be changed, by one persons willingness to speak out. A poem was as far as my talent could take “Through Death Roe I Wade”. I had one person use it in a song and shared with churches. She too told me it touched lives. Another friend and I sat down together and made the poem into a song. The lyrics of the poem start out ambiguous as though the speaker could be a prisoner or child in the womb. It is only in the last stanza that the death sentence being decided, certainty is revealed. My hope for the song is that it will do what the theme has been doing from conception...changing minds.

My latest work was a new poem Separated at Birth. I was thinking about how ludicrous it is to think of the value of human life being reduced to wanted vs unwanted. People who want the child see it as a beautiful process. In hope and fear the go through the process with the delicate humbleness. They watch the development in eagerness looking forward to kicks, heartbeats, and sonograms. Conversely. the unwanted are treated like a science project. The treat it as a culture growing mold. Every step of the way they are dealing with a specimen or tissue. To use an analogy It is our legal systems way of green lighting the onslaught of ugly caterpillars knowing they cannot use the same distorted logic once the real beauty is seen by the world. Most of the time an abortion is between one person's choice and one child. I wrote this poem to create a different scenario, one-woman two babies. The poem follows the fetus’ journey until a mother does the unthinkable she makes two choices. This is a matter of convenience, because she only wants one child. By writing the poem this paralleling the journeys, there is no way to deny we are dealing with life-one will be born. The poem challenges society; how far are we willing to go in letting one choose. This is not an attack on mothers but more so the law compartmentalizing life. We enter a slippery slope when we make decisions on life, which make us appear less human.

Stephen Boan