The feminist in me shrinks away from talking about the pain of that loss. Even though my heart believes I sent it back so it could return at a better time, there’s fountain of pain and a kind of aloneness I had never experienced that seems to gush interminably.
....
I dream about the baby, the one with no name. In the dreams, I am overwhelmed with trying to find someone to help me care for it, of hearing it call the babysitter “mama” because its mother can never be there. When this happens, I feel like I made the right choice for myself and the children that will come. But I still grieve.
She also speaks of the physical nightmare that was the abortion itself.
Is it just me, or is there a sort of "misery loves company" aspect to the prochoice movement? This is far from the first heartsick cry from a woman totally wrecked by an abortion, awash in a sea of anguish and regret -- but still insisting it was "the right choice" and one she wants other women to have the chance to experience firsthand.
What other human act can so totally blow up in so many people's faces, cause them so much heartbreak and grief, and still be promoted as palliative?
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What other human act can so totally blow up in so many people's faces, cause them so much heartbreak and grief, and still be promoted as palliative?
ReplyDeleteDivorce? Declaring bankruptcy? Selling a beloved home? People voluntarily do things that break their hearts all the time, for a variety of reasons -- and recognize that just because something can be heartbreaking does not mean it should be illegal.
alexandra, those things don't involve ending the life of an innocent human being as an integral part of what they are. Abortion isn't parallel to divorce. It's parallel to hiring a hit man to kill your spouse, because it's too difficult to live with them any more, but you can't bear the idea of them being loved by anybody else, either. Abortion doesn't just break one heart -- it stops another. And that's just wrong.
ReplyDeletealexandra, those things don't involve ending the life of an innocent human being as an integral part of what they are.
ReplyDeleteYes, and that -- not the grief or the heartbreak it may cause -- is why you oppose its legality. Your question was, "What other human act can so totally blow up in so many people's faces, cause them so much heartbreak and grief, and still be promoted as palliative?" Lots of things can. You just don't take issue with them because you don't think they're wrong.
Supposedly we need to make abortion readily available because it spares women anxiety and distress. If all it does is replace anxiety and distress with soul-wrenching anguish, what are we accomplishing? Is the destruction of the fetus in and of itself such a great boon to humanity that it's worth buying at the cost of causing the mother harm?
ReplyDeleteAbortion isn't wrong merely because it's damaging in so many cases where it purports to be palliative. It's damaging in so many cases where it purports to be palliative for the same reason it's just plain wrong: It's killing. There's something wrong with you if you can kill an innocent party without suffering some damage yourself.
Christina,
ReplyDeleteApparently she doesn't take too kindly to others responding to her public posts on her personal life ;-)
Now there's no excuse for any pro-lifers to leave rude replies on her blog, but if you don't want others to know about or talk your personal business, then don't make it public!
Supposedly we need to make abortion readily available because it spares women anxiety and distress. If all it does is replace anxiety and distress with soul-wrenching anguish, what are we accomplishing?
ReplyDeleteWho says that "all it does" is replace anxiety and distress with anguish? Certainly, many women feel anguish over their abortions. Many more feel conflicting emotions. But you can't act like that's a reason it shouldn't be allowed. Your objection is not the conflicting emotions or the difficulty moving on that some women have, your objection is that you think the baby's right to life trumps the woman's right to bodily autonomy. If you frame it by saying that it's this unique case where we leave people to make a decision that has caused so many other people anguish and heartbreak, you ignore all of the varied other adult decisions that leave many people feeling conflicted and upset, decisions whose outcomes we may not always love but whose legality we do not question.
Alexandra, I think there are two types of aborters, in a nutshell:
ReplyDelete1. The "I'm not sorry" bunch, who either feel no qualms whatsoever or who do suffer but who if given a second chance still prefer a dead baby to a live one.
2. The "Silent No More" bunch, who would give the world to have their babies back.
Their interests are incompatable. We can either build a society that promotes the interests of women who prefer dead babies, or the interests of women who prefer live babies. Because protecting the interests of Group 1 means that you're always adding to Group 2, creating more and more grieving mothers whose suffering is dismissed as a small price to pay in order to provide the baby-slaying services that Group 1 wishes to continue to avail themselves of.
Let abortion be limited to women who have so much enthusiasm for it that they're willing to go to all the trouble of breaking the law to get it. And let the rest of us be spared the dubious benefits of fetus-slaying.
Why are the interests of the two groups mutually exclusive? Do you think that the interests of women who are hurt by abusive husbands -- people whose marriages hurt them very badly -- are incompatible with the interests of women who love their husbands and would, if given a second chance, do everything the same? Why not help women who don't want abortion choose other options by making unplanned pregnancy more feasible and less frightening, but leave the actual legal choice available for the women who want it? (The 'why' is rhetorical, because of course your reason for wanting to do away with the legal choice has everything to do with your views on abortion and nothing to do with your views on saving women from pain; it just so happens that some women are hurt by abortion, so their pain runs alongside your desire to do away with the legal choice.)
ReplyDeleteNot to mention there are far more than just those two groups of women. I don't regret my abortion, and I have never felt damaged by it, but that doesn't mean that I 'prefer a dead baby to a live one.' If I were to get pregnant today, would I have an abortion? Probably not. Am I grateful that I was able to have an abortion some years ago? Absolutely.
If abortion wasn't evil, simply painful, I'd say that you could protect both groups at once -- those who embrace abortion and those to whom it is a horror.
ReplyDeleteBut there's a metaphysical dynamic at work. Evil is never the slave. It's always the master. The minute you get into a mindset of using it to achieve your (however noble) ends, you start getting sucked in.
This is why in practice we're throwing women who don't embrace abortion under the bus. Because yeah, there are prochoice citizens (achromic and L come to mind) who do want to protect the women for whom abortion is a horror that they want to avoid. But in practice, the chutes are greased and troubled pregnant women get fed into it. This is how we wind up with women crying on the abortion table, "I don't want to kill my baby, but I have no choice!" The machine is set up to grind them up and spit them out.
Notice that there are no prochoice pregnancy centers that offer help to the woman who wants to avoid an abortion. For all the organizations saying they're in existence to protect "CHOICE", how many of them do more than a cursory pittance for any choice that's not abortion?
I'd love to see prochoicers prove me wrong, set up a network of resources that really help women who aren't freely CHOOSING abortion but feel trapped into it. It's been 35+ years now. Where are they? They're busy protecting those women for whom abortion is something to embrace.