A Spark of Light

Unsurprisingly for a novel that takes place at a women’s health clinic, a central theme of A Spark of Light is the personal and societal impacts of abortion. Picoult uses characters on both sides of the abortion rights debate to illustrate the wide range of ideas about the morality of abortion, and reproductive care (or a lack of it) affects many characters deeply. For example, Janine is an anti-abortion activist and was raised in a Catholic household: “[S]he knew from the time she was a young child that a baby was a baby the moment it was conceived. At the very least, it was a human person in progress” (51). Despite this upbringing and her beliefs about abortion, she terminated a pregnancy after a sexual assault. She has spent her life wracked with guilt, in large part because of the divide between her beliefs and her actions; she interprets the events depicted in the novel as a form of punishment for her earlier act. Bex is also a character raised in a conservative Catholic household, and she chose to give birth to Hugh and allow her parents to raise him as her sibling. Though she did not terminate the pregnancy, she thinks that she “had still lost a potential life that day—her own” (349). Her decisions to keep Hugh and later to raise him when her mother could not mean that she missed out on art school and other important dreams. Though she thinks that she “would not have changed a thing,” she still feels “the question rise high in her throat, […] like she [i]s choking” (349). Both women have complicated feelings about their decisions even though the outcomes of the pregnancies were different.

Characters in the novel who are determinedly in favor of abortion rights also experience a range of emotions about the procedure. Joy is bitter that her lack of healthcare access and wealth forces her to be at the clinic that day, rather than having an easier and cheaper operation earlier. Vonita, the clinic owner, had an illegal abortion as a young woman. Later in life, Vonita “thought it was her personal calling to create a place where a woman could safely get an abortion if she needed one, a place where a woman could be supported and not judged” (207). Despite this calling, she tells Louie “that she herself dream[s] of the baby she didn’t have” (207). Even though she believes that she made the correct decision, she still feels the personal impact of it. Louie also understands that the women who come to see him have many different reasons for being there and that it is not an easy decision for any of them. He urges people to look past the hot-button debate issues and instead think of the personal and societal costs of forcing women to bear children against their will, including the fact that some of the women are children themselves. A Spark of Light emphasizes that abortion is a complicated issue and that there are a range of feelings and stories on both sides of the debate.