Unwanted Children: A Personal Conception Of Abortion

Part of my problem is that what I think and how feel about this issue are two entirely different matters. I know that unwanted children are often neglected, even abandoned. I know that making abortion illegal will not stop all women from having them.

I also know from experience the crisis an unplanned pregnancy can cause. Yet, I have felt the joy of giving birth, the delight that comes from feeling a baby’s skin against my own. I know how hard it is to parent a child and how deeply satisfying it can be. My children sometimes provoke me and cause me endless frustration, but I can still look at them with tenderness and wonder at the miracle of it all. The lessons of my own experience produce conflicting emotions. Theory collides with reality.

They are committed and they want me to commit. They do not recognize the gray area where I seem to be languishing. Each group has the right answer—the only answer.

Yet, I am uncomfortable in either camp. I have nothing in common with the profilers. I am horrified by their scare tactics, their picture of well-formed fetuses tossed in a metal pan, their cruel slogans. I cannot condone their flagrant misuse of scripture and unforgiving spirit. There is meanness about their position that causes them to pass judgement on the lives of women in way I could never do.

The pro-life groups, with their fundamental religious attitudes, have a fear or abhorrence of sex, especially premarital sex. In their view, abortion only compounds the sexual sin. What I find incomprehensible is that even as they are opposed to abortion they also opposed to alternative solutions. They are squeamish about sex education in the schools. They don’t want teens to have contraceptives without parental consent. They offer little aid or sympathy to unwed mothers. They are the vigilant guardians of a narrow morality.

I wonder how abortion got to be the greatest of all sins? What about poverty, ignorance, hunger,

Our society does not categorically recognize the sanctity of human life. There are a number of legal and apparently socially acceptable ways to take human life. “Justifiable” homicide includes the death penalty, war killing, in self-defense. It seems to me that as a society we need to come to grips with our own ambiguity concerning the value of human life. If we are to value and protect unborn life stringently, why do we not also value and protect life already born?

Why can’t we see abortion for the human tragedy it is? No woman plans for her life to turn out that way. Even the most effective contraceptive are no guarantee against pregnancy. Loneliness, ignorance, immaturity can lead to decisions (or lack of decisions) that may result ultimately in pregnancy. People make mistakes.

What many people seem to misunderstand is that no woman wants to have an abortion. Circumstances demand it; women do it. No woman reacts to abortions with joy. Reliefs, yes. But also ambivalence, grief, despair, guilt. The pro-choice groups do not seem to acknowledge that abortion is not a perfect answer. What goes unsaid is that when a woman has an abortion, she loses more than unwanted pregnancy. Often she loses her self-respect. No woman can forget a pregnancy no matter how it