Joan Scannell | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

When three women find their lives connected by a single incident that impacts them all in separate ways, they each must make a decision that will result in their own personal defining moment. Defining Moments is a story to which people everywhere will undoubtedly relate. It begins with the main character, Heather McClellan, waking up in the hospital after a failed suicide attempt. She is told by the emergency room doctor that the baby she is carrying has survived the attempt as well. Twenty-one-year-old Heather is both relieved and upset by the news. You see, the decision about how to handle the unplanned pregnancy is what drove Heather ? herself the product of an unplanned pregnancy - to such an extreme action. While Heather sorts through the moral ramifications of how to handle being pregnant with a baby she knows she does not want, yet can?t seem to abort, her mother and the doctor who saved her life take adversarial positions on the issue of what Heather should do. Having each been in this position themselves, Mrs. McClellan and Dr. Esperance have very different views on the kind of help Heather needs to get her through this crisis. What develops is an investigation into the backgrounds of all three women and a review of the situations that drove them to the decisions they made. The story also explores how the two older women came to terms with their decisions despite the fact that the choices they made years earlier still impact them today in ways they had never imagined. Defining Moments is a story about giving birth to ourselves, and becoming the person we truly want to be. Although the issue of abortion is forefront, there is no moral judgment in the story. Rather, it's a storyabout being your own judge, accepting consequences for your actions, and learning to overcome the most difficult hardships of all; those that are self-imposed.