Yes, Leyla, You Are Ashamed

Leyla Josephine has become another YouTube mini sensation, sharing a poem about having abortion, and declaring her pride in doing so:

I think she was a she

The poem begins:

I think she was a she
No, I know she was a she, and I think she would have looked exactly like me
Filled cheeks, thick eyes, thick auburn hair

. . .

I would have told her stories about her grandfather
We could have fed the swans at Victoria Park
She would have been like you, too
Long legs and a plastic smell

She would have been tough, tougher than I ever was
And I would have taught her all that my mother had taught me
And I would have taken her to the museums
And there we would have seen the bone dinosaurs
She could look at them and wonder about all the things that came before she was born.

Leyla spends much of her time talking about all the things that her little daughter would have done, could have done.

Then she explains why it's "would" and not will:

She could have been born

I would have made sure that there were spaces in the walls
And I would have made sure that I was a good mother to look after her.

Indeed?

But I would have supported her right to choose.

Right away, the illogic of the poem trends toward its deep immorality. The right to choose cannot precede the right to life. Libertarians of our times struggle with this fact, as well.

The American Declaration of Independence speaks about the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Where there is no life, there is no liberty, and certainly no pursuit of happiness.

Listening to Leyla explain that she had an abortion, the melancholy in her voice cannot hide the pain, nor put away the shame of taking a life, that she who was (not could have been) a she.

To choose  a life for herself, a path for herself. I would have died for that right, like she died for mine.

Poetry does permit flights of fancy and imagination, but this woman's statement is a lie. She did not die, she was killed. She did not have a right to choose, because she did not exercise her right to live.

 I'm sorry, but you came at the wrong time.

No. Leyla chose to have sex when she was not ready. That was not the baby's fault. She did not come, because she was not alive somewhere else. She was conceived, and the mother , Leyla, was part of that.

I'm sorry, Leyla, but you are wrong.

Then comes the frequent refrain of self-justification:

I am not ashamed.

When she declares these words, the camera does not focus on her eyes, then her eyes look away.

Yes, Leyla, you are ashamed.

Yet she protests two more times.

I am not ashamed. I am not ashamed.

I'm so sick of keeping these words contained.

I am not ashamed.

Protesting does not take away the truth, or the shame, Leyla.

I was a teenage girl with a boy she loved between her thighs and felt very far away.

There is the real need. Intimacy, love. Leyla reveals that sex does not equal love.

Another poem explains when love should be awakened:

"I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please." (Song of Songs 2: 7)

Physical love must wait for a woman until a man pleases her before sex.

I am one in three. I am one in .

She next explains that she did not have the age or energy to raise the child.

She did not have to have either, for there are many in the world who would gladly adopt a child if the parent cannot raise the child.

The refrain that stands out reveals the deepest irony:

"I am not ashamed."

What are you then

Don't you mutter murder on me.

Who is muttering? She is. A conscience unclean.

Abortion is the taking of a life, and the reason for this abortion: no money, no energy?

It's my body. It's my body. And I don't care about your ignorant views. When I become a mother, it will be when I choose.

She had already become a mother, when she conceived the child in her womb. She is not a mother, since she killed her child, and out of convenience, out of ignorance.

I am not ashamed.

But you are Leyla, you are, and a video to the world protesting otherwise cannot change that.