Q&A - The Atonement Child

Unwanted pregnancy is still a big issue. Abortion is still a big issue. What made you decide to make your character a victim of rape rather than a woman who finds herself unmarried and pregnant?

I wanted to deal with the tough cases. Dynah, a Christian college student who finds herself pregnant after being raped, has to deal with the issues in a very personal way. As a Christian, she believes abortion is wrong, and so does her fiancé--until she's raped. Then the question arises, "Would it be OK in a case like hers?"

Dynah wonders, "What does God really want me to do?"

As Dynah's story unfolds, we are drawn into the complexity of the issue, including the number of people who are involved. A lot of people think abortion just involves the woman, that it's her decision alone, and that's not true.

In this story, there's the mother, Hannah, who had an illegal abortion, and her husband, who had nothing to do with Hannah's abortion but has had to deal with his wife's inability to trust. And Dynah's grandmother, who had had a therapeutic abortion, which her husband had encouraged at the time. There's Dynah's fiancé, who has a real hard time dealing with the situation. There is the dean of the Christian college, who faces the dilemma of whether or not to allow a pregnant student to remain at the school, which I against the rules. There is her fiancé's roommate, whose girlfriends had gotten pregnant and had an abortion, which he opposed, but has no real say in the matter. There is the abortion doctor, whose sister had an illegal abortion and died; he feels he's helping other women by providing "safe" abortions. There's the pastor who struggles with how to advise his parishioners who are hurting from this issue. Every person in this story is feels the impact of abortion in some way, which I believe is true in our society. We often don't even have a clue about how someone's choice impacts us. I think there's a real undertow of guilt and grief in our country because of abortion.

By developing all sides of the abortion issue and how deeply it affects so many people in so many ways, I hope to help people develop compassion for anyone who is affected personally by abortion. For a woman who has an abortion, for anyone in her family, the event is never forgotten—as I've learned from personal experience.

The scene where Dynah is raped is difficult to read. Was it as difficult to write?

Extremely!

I had read a number of books on rape and its impact. I've been asked why I didn't have Dynah pursue the man, bring him to justice. That wasn't the focus on the story. I wanted the story to be about the impact of abortion. I wanted portray that even in the case of rape—which many people say justifies abortion—abortion is always a very complex issue.

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