By Mary Frances McCarthy
Herald Staff Writer
(From the issue of 7/8/04)

Following are the stories of two moms and the choices that shaped their lives, and the lives of their children. These stories were shared with a group of youths at the recent National Right to Life Conference (NRLC) Convention in Arlington.

Karen Cross knows too well that in life, there are choices to make, and every choice has a consequence. If a young person chooses to study hard and do well in school, the consequences can be good. They can get into the college or university they want and perhaps even earn a scholarship.

But she learned at age 16, that to be sexually active as a teenager did not lead to good consequences.

"You guys are at a time in your life when you are making all kinds of choices," Cross told a group of youths at the National Right to Life Convention. "I’m not proud to stand before you and say I did not choose life."

In her early teens, Cross was a good student and a good child to her parents. Then she was dumped by a boyfriend because she "wasn’t that kind of girl."

When she met Ricky, she decided to "give him something of myself to keep a relationship.

"I really wish I’d had enough self-esteem (to say no), but I’d just been dumped because I wasn’t that kind of girl," Cross said.

She got pregnant. When she told Ricky, he said he didn’t know what he was doing with his life, let alone what he would do with a child or a wife.

Cross told her mother, and without her father knowing, they went to a doctor to abort the baby.

"I don’t remember much about that day," Cross said. "I was shocked at the depth of my feelings, the anguish."

Before the abortion, she had been an honor student. But after the abortion, "nothing mattered to me. I didn’t care."

Cross continued being sexually active and less than a year after her first pregnancy, she was pregnant again. She hid the pregnancy until she felt the child kick.

In 1976, her senior year of high school, Cross married the father of her second child.

"I remember crying and crying," she said. "I knew I didn’t want to marry him."

Cross had met the man when he had just been released from prison.

After two and a half years, they separated. "It wasn’t fun anymore and I realized this was not the life for my daughter."

When her daughter was three years old, Cross took her to church. She joined a Bible study and led the life of a good Christian mother, except that she was still sexually active. She didn’t see anything wrong with this because she had already been married and had a child.

Cross became pregnant for the third time, this time the father was Jack. She told Jack she was pregnant and was going to have an abortion.

"I honestly believed I had absolutely no choice than to have an abortion," she said. "He believed the lie that a man has no say."

It was not until after the abortion that Jack told Cross he didn’t want her to abort the baby.

"I was faced with the same choice twice in one year," Cross said. "I will never regret the tough times we had growing up together. I will always regret the two children I don’t have. We make choices and we have to live with them You don’t realize the choices you make — the impact they’ll have."

In 1979, just weeks before she started her senior year of high school, Norma Jean Center made a choice that would impact the rest of her life when she got pregnant.

"I had my whole life ahead of me — picking a college, choosing a career. I was really going to grow up and become something," she said.

Center was a self-described "band geek and science freak." She loved biology and learning about how things grow and live. She wanted to become a nurse.

She remembers being at an All-State Chorus competition that fall and after hearing a girl complaining about her period, she thought, "When did I have one of those?"

It wasn’t until the beginning of December that she went to the doctor one day after school, without telling her parents.

"I do not know to this day how my father figured it out," she said. But when she got home, her father asked her if she was pregnant, and he was not happy with her answer.

Center was raised in a small farming community in South Dakota. Her family was Mennonite, so they were already seen as different from everyone else. Her parents were scrutinized further because both parents were deaf, and people were always curious to see how they could raise a family.

When he learned his daughter was pregnant, Center’s father said to her, "You cut that baby out."

But, she said, "I had this incredible sense of a mother protecting her baby."

In early 1980, she married the father of her baby, who soon after joined the Army, leaving her alone to give birth to and raise her daughter.

The couple had moved to a nearby city where Center met two young people who were also from her hometown. "They befriended me and really made sure they supported me in my decision to have my baby," she said. But most of all, she said, "They were there."

On May 29, 1980, Center gave birth to a baby weighing just over four pounds.

"I cannot tell you what a blessing my beautiful Crysta Lynn has been," Center said. "I am so thankful for how God intervened in my life."

Center and Crysta’s father divorced before the baby was two years old.

This year, Center will celebrate her 24th wedding anniversary to Todd. She also has a son, Sam, who is 16 and is active with Teens for Life.

The two women urged their teen audience to be like Center’s friends, and be there for other young people.

"We’re not unique," Cross said. "These stories are not unique."

They emphasized that the pro-life movement is a movement of love, not judgment, and women in crisis pregnancy situations often just need a friend to help them make the right choice.