The last newborn baby I held was my cousin’s daughter. I can remember the trepidation while holding her child. Support the head. Cradle the body. Relax your arms. I remember how she seemed so much heavier than her petite size alluded. An irony I noted most were those small hands barely able to wrap around my thumb. So small, and yet, so demanding.

I remember, too, when my sister was first brought home. How excited we must have been, my brother and I, when our grandmother first roused us from our sleep. How ethereal it must have seemed to see my parents step out from the night – a bundle of pink blankets in my mother’s arms, a car seat in my stepfather’s. How, pulling back the folds of that blanket, I must have remarked on how little she was or the baldness of her head. I remember most those few moments after she crossed into the house for the first time. Even to me, so young in my padded dinosaur jammies, the shift was apparent. There was a baby to take care of.

Having a baby should be the happiest moment in anyone’s life. But occasionally, it’s not. Occasionally it leaves you feeling sad and scared – unsure of the future, regretful of the past.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a private sexual and reproductive health organization, 750,000 young women aged 15 to 19 become pregnant every year. Many do not finish high school, and most never make it to college. And yet, statistics are just numbers. To use them to prove a human point is like trying to cut a piece of paper with a chainsaw. It does what it needs to do, but not very well.

For example, the numbers show teenage pregnancies are on the decline. A person close to me would beg to differ. She is pregnant for the second time at 16 years old. One year ago, only a couple days before Christmas, she learned she was pregnant for the first time. How ironic the situation appears, in hindsight. An unplanned pregnancy about the same time as the most mythologized conception of all time. Only she didn’t have the comfort of an angel telling her what to do.

A month later, she had an abortion at her family’s insistence. And despite what any partisan group might say, she still tells me it was neither an easy choice nor her first. She wanted to keep it, wanted to take care of it. Yet, what would the loss be if she did? The cost of a newborn child can easily overwhelm a struggling family’s budget. The physical cost of a girl (yes, girl!) whose uterus was simply not ready to effectively carry the potential of new life.

And here she is again. While I supported her initial decision to abort the first child, I am torn about her decision to keep the second. It is hard for me to agree with that decision. It is even harder for me to understand it.

Some say the connection between a mother and a child, unborn or otherwise, is one of the strongest human bonds that exists. And yet, every child born to parents who are too young and too unread to support them undermines that connection just as much as every abortion.

The first time this young woman was pregnant, I held her in my arms and told her she was not a bad person. A bad thing had just happened to her. And yet, even as I write this, I know there will be those who disagree. What exactly is the issue we are arguing anymore? Whether it was a mistake for her to get pregnant? To not have the abortion? To keep the child? Or whether we – us, you, me – went wrong somewhere long before she came along?

Sallie Tisdale, in her famous essay “We Do Abortions Here,” writes: “Abortion is the narrowest edge between kindness and cruelty … It requires a willingness to live with conflict, fearlessness and grief.” She ends the essay, imagining a world where abortions are no longer necessary. I, however, imagine a world where that girl I know can be a girl again, and I do not have to wonder about that narrowest edge. But for now, Tisdale and I return to a world where neither is a possibility.

Matthew John Phillips is a junior English major. He can be reached at mjphilli@umd.edu.