Reply #28: I won't flame, but I'll share. [View All]

[LWolf]

I know many women who have had abortions. I don't know any who boast and brag.

To find oneself pregnant in the wrong circumstance is a devastating event. Whether because a young girl believes "it can't happen to me" in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, whether it is a failed method of birth control, a rape, a relationship gone bad, or a health crisis, women don't have abortions without thought.

I remember when Ms. Magazine ran that issue. You see, I'm an only child because of my mother's illegal abortion.

I was 3. My father was no longer in the picture. She was a single, blue-collar, working mom with NO EXTENDED FAMILY at all. No parents, grandparents, siblings. She had an affair with a married man. He couldn't marry her; he wasn't going to support her.

Yes, it was irresponsible to have the affair. Not unusual, though, for a young woman raised in an abusive household, led from early childhood to believe that the only thing any man would ever value her for would be her housekeeping skills and sex. It's a vicious, self-fulfilling cycle.

So, already having one toddler to raise on her own, she decided that she couldn't care for another child. She didn't want to go through with the pregnancy, either. She'd lose her job, and how would she support herself and the child she already had? She had no family to turn to, having left the abusive foster home she was raised in behind.

She had an illegal abortion. She almost died. I remember the fear that she was never coming home; I remember the hospital, I remember the neighbor, who we barely knew, caring for me. I'm glad she didn't die. What would have happened to me then? She lived, but with such internal damage that she never conceived again.

My mother has never been a "prominent" woman. Her story wouldn't ever make Ms. or any other magazine. If she'd died, she would have been a single line obit, with no notice taken. She is important to me, though. I am a strong supporter of choice, and Roe v. Wade, for that reason. For my mom.

For all the women out there who, for whatever reason, find themselves having to make a choice.

I think the nation needs to remember just why abortion is legal.