It's 1974 and, due to the recent Roe v. Wade decision, a pregnant woman can legally obtain an abortion. When Sandy, a junior in high school, becomes pregnant, she's faced with a stark choice. Her boyfriend's family wants her to get an abortion. Her parents lean that way, but they support her choice to move in with her aunt in Atlanta until she delivers. While she's pregnant she has an encounter with a mysterious stranger who prophesies (correctly, to everyone's surprise) that she will have twins.
Thirty-three years later, Sandy is a high school teacher and one of her students becomes pregnant. The student is under pressure from her father and the school counselor to get an abortion. Sandy, of course, remembers being in a similar position and counsels the student not to get the abortion. This leads to a legal battle challenging Sandy's right to influence her students with her own religious convictions.
Along the way, against all odds, Sandy and her twin boys are reunited. She had placed them separately in a closed adoptions to families on opposite coasts, so the reunion is rather unlikely--but providential.
The Choice has a strong pro-life message, presenting the choices of the pregnant women with sensitivity and compassion. As an adoptive parent myself, I was brought to tears by Sandy's turning over custody of her babies. Whitlow, as his readers know, is a lawyer himself, so it's no surprise that the twins both become lawyers. His treatment of the legal questions of abortion and of the limits of a teacher's speech is worth reading. Not incidentally, he also deals with the plight of immigrants, parental responsibility, and rape. He writes a terrific story about some tough topics. Check it out.
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