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When I was about ten or eleven, I attended a youth lock-in at my church, during which we had an activity that forced us to choose sides on hot topics. There were corners of the room for strong agreement, mild agreement, mild disagreement, and strong disagreement. When a question was asked, each person had to go to a corner and then debate their stance. One of the proposed statements was "Women have the right to choose whether or not to abort an unborn child." This being a church function, one side of the room was unsurprisingly empty. But I, with my untested ideals, was surprised to see that not everyone strongly disagreed, some did it only mildly. The argument? "But if someone was raped. . ." It’s a question that plagues our country, even into our churches. Everyone says that the answers are not simple, and Rivers tackles the issue with her usual insight and tenacity. It’s so easy to love her main character, the sweet and faithful Dynah, that the reader’s heart has to break when tragedy strikes her, even though we all know from the outset that it will, otherwise there would be no book. As Dynah struggles first with the fact of the attack itself, and then with the outcome of it, the true complication of the situation becomes so very apparent. Rivers points out through her uncomfortably real characters that the intellectual decisions we make when uninvolved don’t always transfer so easily to something when it hits us in the face. She doesn’t just open the question of whether or not abortion is wrong, ever or always or sometimes. She deals with the heartbreak of rape, the fragility of relationships, the blinders people put on in the face of trial, and the depression that haunts us in our lowest hours. The lack of support Dynah encounters in everyone from her fiancé to her school to her parents is gut-wrenching. She is fighting not only to make the right decision concerning the child she did nothing to find herself carrying, but to maintain the love of those who were supposed to give it unconditionally. She finds that world that is supposed to be unquestionably Christian unquestionably political; her college is so concerned with keeping up the appearance of virtue that they neglect its actuality. That forces the reader to take a step back and examine the institutions that many probably take for granted. And as usual, when we finally have to question our assumptions, we find faults that rip at our hearts. Nothing is easy for Dynah, and it isn’t any easier on the reader. We’re forced to understand the generational outcry both for and against this monumental decision, to learn the facts that horrify and yet still leave that gray area. We cheer for the one friend Dynah has who never wavers, never leaves, and we cry for the woman who is little more than a girl and can’t find the right words to pray. She hears the voice of God in her heart, but the voices of those supposed to follow Him are so loud, and so contradictory that she questions her own spirit. I truly wanted to scream as time and again people chose convenience over righteousness in this book, mainly because I saw their points, saw the world in them, and knew that this was far more than a fictitious story. I had to open my eyes and realize that the issue wasn’t as distant as I probably thought, wasn’t as clear as my eleven-year-old-mind had once thought. . . and yet murky only because of our human failings, fears, and pain. Rivers looks at both sides of many different debates in this book, presenting them honestly and clearly. Her conclusions don’t make the question hurt any less, but they guide the reader toward the most crucial epiphany of all: this Choice isn’t just about an unborn child, it’s about the women that have to live with it. It isn’t a matter of saying yes or no to abortion, but yes or no to God. Whose voice do we listen to when the tempest is crashing? Do we pray for atonement for our sins, or do we step up and stop sinning?
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