In a play about abortion.<\/p>\n
Bennett College undertakes a creative, compassionate and rational treatment of this volatile controversy.<\/p>\n
In the late 1960s a young woman gets pregnant by a partner who abandons her and she feels that becoming a single mother will thwart her dreams to make something of her life on her own terms. So with reluctant determination the young woman visits an old woman to have an abortion. <\/p>\n
The old woman had resorted to becoming an abortionist to support her family after her husband had lost his job. But she felt such great guilt over her choice that she went to a Catholic church to pray for absolution at the feet of a statue of St. Lucy. <\/p>\n
St. Lucy, who was martyred c. 304 during the Great Persecution under Roman emperor Diocletian, was born in Syracuse, Sicily to noble and wealthy parents. Beautiful and virtuous, she intended to leave her inheritance to the poor and so was denounced as a Christian. During her torture one of her tormentors attempted to rape her, but she gouged out her own eyes rather than submit to him and her statues traditionally depict her holding her eyes on a tray. The old woman was horrified to feel St. Lucy’s eyes watching her as she walked through the church, so she vowed to make every effort to ensure that some good would come out of the evil of her work. <\/p>\n
So the old woman performs the abortion, but in a nurturing, motherly way she counsels the young woman that she must learn from this painful experience and go on with all the more resolve to make something of her life. Years later when fate brings the young woman and old woman together again, events bear out that, as difficult as it was, in this case this decision was the right one.
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