I am 57 years old and I have two grown children – a daughter and a son. I have had several abortions. I am not sorry at all, except for one. The truth is – in retrospect, I am not sorry about any of them – even the one that was coerced and distasteful and left me with some regrets. It was, in the long run, something for which I cannot be very sorry. Nothing about the pregnancy was good and that includes the abortion – but it was safe and it was legal.
I am grateful that thanks to Roe v. Wade I was never forced to undergo an illegal abortion and I am grateful that I had the right to choose because twice I chose children whom I love. I have no painful thoughts about the times I chose differently because the idea of a baby – any baby – at those times, was the worst thing I could imagine. An unwanted, unloved accident is not how I saw children being born. Not my children. For the last 30+ years since Roe v. Wade I have wondered about all the people who think choice is about having an abortion – choice is about choosing – many of us choose to have babies and that is a choice. Others don’t – but it is a private decision and not one that belongs in the hands of anyone but a woman and her doctor. There are women who can hand over their newborns to adoptive parents and that is their choice; there are those that leave their babies in dumpsters – that is their choice. The ones who are attached to idea of pro-life don’t take into consideration the quality of the life they “spare”; beaten and murdered children seem to come from families that are pro-life a good deal of the time.
I have never felt anything but relief when it was over and done and thankful for the lives I did spare from being unwanted. No one who is pro-life ever seems to have any idea what to do with all these “saved babies” – I haven’t heard any of them offer to take them in, no questions asked, and I suspect many pro-lifers have drowned a kitten or two in their lives. I am not sorry; in every case the final decision is personal. I am not sorry I made the choices I did. I am grateful the choices were available to me.
