Greg Adams shows a mild manner befitting his long career as a social worker counseling grieving families. That temperament also seems ideal for his current public service role as president of the Little Rock School Board.
On three occasions over recent years, he and/or his wife, Syd, had mentioned to me their willingness to share through this column the tragic story of their son lost during pregnancy 26 years ago. They believed the story needed to be told in the context of the rising likelihood that Roe v. Wade will get reversed or severely eroded by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The story amounts to a plaintive cry to reconsider the choice issue in less polarizing and absolute terms, but with new attention and sensitivity to painful personal circumstances.
Greg also says he hopes it will comfort or affirm others who have faced his and Syd's anguished choice.
I put them off, most recently telling Greg that I sought to be timely with these columns and needed a specific development in the abortion debate that would make their story topical, at which time I might be in touch.
Over the weekend Greg posted the story himself on his Facebook page, tying it to last weekend's annual "March for Life," and copied it to me. I realized I had been badly wrong in deeming the issue ever lacking in timeliness.
But I was right not to tell the story secondhand in the 800-word constraints of this space. Only they--or Greg, in this case--could tell it in the powerful way it needed to be told.
I write about it now mainly to invite you to read the story as told directly by him at this link: tinyurl.com/ycke6rfk.
And I write about it to invite you to reconsider, if you can find it within yourself, the strident and simplistic way we consider this epically divisive issue. And I write about it to invite you through a couple of choice excerpts to shed a tear with mine.
First the painful outline of the story: The Adamses were expecting their second child, when, nearing the pregnancy's 20th week, a checkup produced an abnormal reading that was even more abnormal on retaking a few days later. The ultrasound made the technician cry and call for the doctor. The baby had no brain. The condition is called "anencephaly."
The Adamses were given three options: dilation and curettage, induced labor and delivery, or continuing the pregnancy to term.
It was their choice, between them and their doctor and their god. It was soon forced upon them essentially when Syd developed physical complications. They chose to induce labor and delivery.
As Syd slept, Greg held his hand-sized premature boy, named Kerry, who, as Greg describes, "was burgundy-colored with perfect hands and feet, and missing a brain."
Now an excerpt from Greg's post: "As my wife took her well-earned sleep, I rocked and sang him songs that I had sung to our daughter--songs of faith that I had learned from my parents and grandmother. His lungs were not developed enough for him to breathe, but his tiny heart was beating and did so for about an hour-and-a-half. Against my tendencies and history, the tears flowed freely as we shared our brief time together. I knew that there could be someone like me (in ... professional life) in this hospital--someone who was called when bad things happened--but I did not want to share this experience, and thankfully no one came."
But now comes the government.
The point is that raging anti- choice legislation in Arkansas and elsewhere--and widely predicted imminent U.S. Supreme Court action--inserts legislators and laws into this properly undisturbed scene of loss, pain and love--of mom recovering, of Kerry producing a few heartbeats, of dad with son in hand, rocking and singing and crying.
Kerry was cremated and his ashes strewn on church grounds.
This was nobody's business but Greg's and Syd's, yet anti-choice insistence primarily intended to shame women and protect the innocent unborn typically offers no exception in these kinds of circumstances.
Greg's point is that one law doesn't fit all choices. It's that the lauded and widely embraced goal of saving babies from unwanted pregnancies could better be served by sex education, counseling, contraception and better services and care for all who are born.
That way, the next families facing the Adamses' devastating circumstances could deal with those circumstances as they did--painfully, lovingly and between them with the professional advice of a doctor, the prayers of their pastor, and the support of family and friends.
So, here's one more excerpt from Greg's Facebook post: "Syd confronted an anti-abortion street protester with our story a few years ago. He wouldn't believe that she was telling a true story. It didn't fit his narrative."
No single narrative covers everyone. But politically charged Supreme Court case law imposing simplistic absolutism does.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.