Some selections:
The simplest central tenet of feminism – that being female is a full human plenitude, not a shameful lack – had saved my soul. Abortion, I believed, was a woman’s business. My body, my choice. Case closed. Then I had one.
I can’t tell you now whether the realization came slowly, over years, or all at once; whether it arrived piecemeal, through painstaking reasoning, or sudden and complete. All I know is that at some point it dawned on me: If he had a sex, then he also had a face. And a temperament. And maybe a destiny. The die was cast. We comfort ourselves by saying, “I can always have another baby.” But this wasn’t a baby. It was that baby. I had come upon the objective fact that that “baby,” child, embryo, wasn’t an idea in my mind. It was an individual in my womb.
Even most pro-choice Americans believe there has to be a point of no return, though they disagree about exactly where in gestation to find it. But it’s a whole other species of lie to say that an 8-week embryo is little more than a blob of phlegm. You were that “blob.” Everyone you love and can’t imagine your life without was that “blob.”
The writer is, as she says in the title, ambivalent. She's trying to give expression to both sides, and she does so eloquently. Please, if you comment, do so with great respect and kindness. I recommended some reading, because I think she'll find much food for thought. And I trust in truth. SHe's looking. She'll get there. She doesn't need to be smacked upside the head on the way.
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