I think that abortion is the best of all possible alternatives right now- but it is a rather nasty alternative to have to have in place.
I think abortion probably affects different women in quite different ways. If you go on from your abortion to have a happy life, and you get all that you want from life, I doubt you would worry about your abortion very much. If, however, something goes wrong- especially with your ability to have children, OR your children themselves, you might be tempted to see the whole thing as a judgment by some greater force on you and your abortion. Sadly that kicks a woman who is already down, and leaves lucky successful women free to go about their lives without worrying about their abortions.
Imagine the pain of someone who had an abortion and later has a child with a birth defect. I think you might spend a lot of time wondering if the child you aborted was "perfect". And so on.
The people who get abortions in the first place probably contain, in their numbers, more women who are mentally distressed than groups of ordinary women would contain- after all one of the reasons women get abortions is because they know they can't care for a child. That kind of knowledge, in itself, is probably distressing.
I think abortion is necessary right now, in our society, but that doesn't make it a good thing, and that doesn't make it healthy for women. I think women need free and open access to abortion, but it would be nice if women could control their fertility BEFORE abortion became an issue. Everyone who is anti-abortion, logically, ought to be working very hard on birth control issues. I know I have an interest in those issues, merely because I prefer women to control their fertility at the earliest possible instance. |
