re: #183 Sharmuta

I’m just sad to think that valuing life is considered odious now, Sal.

Every bit as heartbreaking as the stories of Dr Tiller’s patients are the stories of women who later come to regret their decisions. I’ve heard them. I don’t wish that upon any woman, but that is what many of them do every day. It’s very sad. For them, for the babies, and on occasion for the fathers. I wish both men and women respected themselves and each other enough not to end up in this position, but I doubt that will ever happen.

I guess I don’t know what to consider myself. I would never have an abortion, I wouldn’t ban it, I support contraception, I think abortion is horrible and would council any woman who came to me that another option is better but not judge her for the decision she decided to live with. Am I a jihadist now too?

My ex-wife had her arm twisted by her commanding officer while she was in the military to not have an abortion after her contraception failed, but rather to carry her pregnancy to term, and to give it up for adoption. As soon as the window for having an abortion passed, he marched her out in front of the entire unit, and denounced her as a whore and a strumpet; meanwhile other servicewomen were obtaining abortions without personal or professional consequence. Shattered, she resigned her commission.

More than thirty years later, she curses that callous hypocritical bastard and the fact that she allowed herself to be coerced by him, has nightmares about running into the kid, and deeply, profoundly regrets not obtaining the abortion she desired.

There are genuine regrets on BOTH sides of the choice. But antiabortionists like to pretend that they are all on one, and only one, side.