The recent death of Henry Morgentaler has made headlines across the country and it’s stirred up some emotion for me.
You see, years ago, as an 18 year old, I had an abortion. A decision that was not easily reached.
It was a painful decision at the time but one I wouldn’t change for the world, for a lot of reasons.
I’m not saying it’s the right decision for everyone but for me, at that time and in my situation, I wholeheartedly believe it was right for me and for the father and for the child.
Don’t get me wrong, I still wonder what if… wonder if it would have been a girl or a boy, wonder if he or she would look like my children that I have now. But that happens less and less as time goes by.
I believe we should all be afforded the opportunity to make choices for ourselves and not be harmed or judged by others who have not stood for a moment in our shoes.
If it’s not your body, it’s not your decision.
34 Comments
I agree with you 100%. I have a dear friend who had to make this painful decision years ago and I am so grateful that she was given the opportunity to make it herself.
Killing your own baby should not be a choice!! women need to take responsibility and have protected sex and not resort to murder when an ‘accident’ happens! Shame on all you ‘moms’ who have had one. As soon as you kill your baby, born or unborn, you are no longer fit to be deemed a real mom!!!
Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy.
A child is not punishment for the crime of having sex while female.
Being ‘pregnant’ does not make a person a mom.
I bet you feel all superior with your s1ut-shaming
I pity you.
How am I sl@t shaming by saying have responsible sex? I guess if you like having sex with multiple people without using protection, then yeah, I guess you are a sl@t! And no need to pity me, I have a wonderful family including a beautiful 2 year old whom I did not murder.
No judgement here. I am so thankful that I never had to make that decision either way. Although it was pretty touch and go a few times.
I often think if society put as much energy into helping women deal with the emotional impact of making this choice than to try to make rules about our bodies, it would be an easier issue.
There is no “good” or “easy” choice when one isn’t ready to be a mother, and both choices have life long impacts.
Great point! And one that really gets to the heart of the matter.
That baby’s body growing inside of you was NOT your body. It was a separate body, living and growing. So no, it was not your choice. What about that baby’s choice to live?
Wow, you really missed the point. Hope you adopt and keep your DNA away from the public gene pool…
that is a very immature response, and you are also suggesting to this person what to do with their body and their choices about children, which is what you are claiming that no one has the right to do for you…
But…when women make a choice to abort the baby, they are making a decision for the baby’s body. . . The baby’s body is NOT your body, it is INside your body…you want to be able to choose to kill an unborn baby…so the statement is completely contradictory and hypocritical :(.
Thank you!
I agree, Heather. It’s all about women’s choice… you made your choice when you conceived. What about freedom? What about the baby’s right to LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If the ‘baby’ growing inside the woman has it’s own ‘separate’ body then why does it need a placenta, an umbilicus and use of the woman’s organs to survive?
Why does it need sugar from the woman’s blood?
Calcium from her bones?
Why does it use the woman’s kidneys to process it’s waste?
If it’s so f’ing SEPARATE
Also…the father SHOULD have a say! It takes two people to make a baby, and the father should have a voice just as much as as unborn children have the right to life, without their mothers taking that life from them. The hypocrisy in this statement is appalling.
Women choose to kill their babies–these same babies who, if allowed to live and grow into teenage daughters, you would be claiming that no one should have the right to tell them what to do with their bodies!!!?!?!
I’m sorry I have never been to this site before today but have to answer to this. You are right..it takes 2 to make a baby. But just because someone raped me and now I’m pregnant….does not give him the right to make a decision about my body. To use the word “father” is ludicrous. Again….before you make statements and judgements about other people’s decisions about their bodies…walk a mile (or perhaps have forced sex) as them.
If I am a mother of three that is newly pregnant and find out at the same time I have stage 4 cancer and if I don’t go through life sustining treatment I only have a year to live. this means I need to abort ny fetus. I’m sorry…I have the right to decide to save my own life and watch my other 3 children grow up as long as I can. That should be my VERY PERSONAL CHOICE about MY BODY and my LIFE. Not yours!!!!
I realize the author of this particular article is not saying they were raped or that they were terminally ill…but when you make blanket statements about what women should and should not do….you should really think first…It does nothing but damage all of us. It is not YOUR place to judge.
Tell me Stephanie, when else in our society do we punish a child with execution for the crime of a “father?” Why should the child die compounding the atrocity? Did the child choose to be conceived? Why can’t anyone do anything sacrificial for someone else? Giving a human a chance at life?
As far as the cancer case goes why does she need an abortion? Why should an abortion be necessary just because she needs treatment? There have been many cases where mothers have not chosen an abortion, went through treatment and their baby was completely healthy afterward. If the treatment is necessary and the baby ends up dying as a result so be it, but why kill prematurely? Why is the human in the womb any different then you or I having this discussion? Would you be here to discuss this if your mother chose to end your life in the womb?
Father? A man is not a father until he has made the decision to dedicate his life to the life of that child ie caring for it and raising it. Same thing for mothers, there is a difference between a genetic progenitor and a parent. Just because a rapist deposits his sperm in a women, inadvertently creats a pregnancy (the point of the rape isn’t getting her pregnant) doesn’t mean he is a father. Just because a women is pregnant doesn’t make her a mother unless she dedicates herself to caring for the pregnancy and subsequent baby.
Why can’t anyone do anything sacrificial for someone else? Giving a human a chance at life? You ask . . .
A women’s has a right to choose to sacrifice the embryo/fetus for herself or her family, an abortion can be sacrifice. Sometimes it’s the right sacrifice for herself and her family. How about we give the woman a chance at life? A women’s who’s raped may never get over the trauma of it if she has to go through the secondary violation of a rape pregnancy and having to look at her rapist’s features in her own offspring. On a personal note, I’ve been raped, if I had gotten pregnant from it I would have become more mentally unhinged and suicidal from it than I already was, I might have actually succeeded in killing myself if I had been forced to remain pregnant with a rape pregnancy. Just because other women may be strong enough to endure it doesn’t mean it should be forced upon all women.
And I’m done for now because I have to go attend a birth, instead of spouting (hateful?) rhetoric on the internet from the safety of an anonymous computer why don’t you do what I do and go out into the world and help women, babies, children and families? Or are you – http://www.zazzle.com/pro_lifers_offer_hate_because_helping_is_hard_magnet-147487763806968062 this kinda of anti-choicer? All hate, judgement and rhetoric without actually helping someone out? Not trying to be mean or insulting but do you really think what your are doing here is helping anyone? Most of these blog comments seem down right spiteful, mean degrading and insulting – how does that help anyone but your own self esteem?
Why do you get off on punishing a woman/girl for the crime of being raped while female???
The father should not have a say.
A woman doesn’t exist just to give birth to a kid for the sperm donor.
Women are not livestock to be used by people who want kids.
I bet you think a rapist should get parental rights while the woman is pregnant
sick!
seriously?? HOW can you not see that this VERY statement applies to the baby as well? Is the fetus your own body? If it were, there would be no need to discard it. “If it’s not your body, it’s not your decision.” Yes, exactly, not your decision to end that life.
Such a true statement, “IF ITS NOT YOUR BODY, ITS NOT YOUR DECISION” So true. That baby’s body was its body, not yours. We kill our babies out of convienience before they are born, how wonderful. I believe in the freedom of people to choose, the freedom to choose to act like an adult and realize that if they can’t keep their pants on they might end up with an STD of some sort or pregnant. Ever heard of the game “Russian Roulet”? You put one shell in a six shooter and spin the cartridge. Hold the gun to your head and pull the trigger. One in six odds your gonna waste yourself. So, what’s the comparison? Go find some guy to bang and see what the odds are of getting a disease or pregnant. In some primitive cultures people believed that baby’s had no soul until they had teeth and therefore they could kill the baby if they wanted. Other cultures killed baby’s as human sacrifices and that was even encouraged. Today we have cultures that kill their women if they dishonor the family name. We also have cultures where they stick vacuums into women to dismember and suck out unborn babies. Hmmmm, all sounds kind of barbaric when you say it like that doesn’t it
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http://liveactionnews.org/new-york-magazine-features-26-heart-wrenching-abortion-stories/ Sometimes, we don’t have to walk a mile in their shoes. They described their walk well enough.
Abortion is not pro-woman, but pro-man, if you call call such a guy “a man”.
LOL, the embryo/fetus is an extension of MY body and will remain so the entire time I allow it to gestate. Once the umbilical has been cut then it’s body is it’s own and is no longer an extension of mine.
As an extension of my body I retain the sovereign right to evict it at any time if it is detrimental to my or my family’s well being.
Hey Leona just FYI – the reason why you are getting so many BS anti-choice opinions is because LifeNews picked up on your blog post, wrote an article of agitprop about it and to linked, leading all the anti-choice crazies straight to you.
http://www.lifenews.com/2013/11/17/mommy-web-site-posts-blog-supporting-abortion/
A Pro-Choice Midwife Who Give No F’cks About Anti-Choice Propaganda and Opinions
“If it’s not your body, it’s not your decision.”
Your baby’s body is not your body, it’s not your decision. I know there’s no way to turn back time. But out of love, I urge you, if a similar scenario were to happen again, I hope you would choose to give the child up for adoption.
The fetus’ body is constructed from the woman’s body
And since it is using her body as life support it is her decision
And adoption can’t erase a pregnancy if the woman doesn’t want to be pregnant.
“I wonder if it would have been a girl or a boy. ” Sad to say, it was a girl or a boy when it was killed. From the moment it is conceived, it is either a boy or a girl. It was a human being, in the fetal stage of its life, like all the rest of us were at one point. That doesn’t make it less human. I know some women feel that this is their only choice or the right choice but many of them, unlike this author actually come to grips as to what actually happened. Their baby girl, or boy was killed before they could laugh, coo, smile at you, hug you, tell you they love you, and yeah most when they get to this point have 100% regret. This author needs to come back to reality and grieve the fact that they are a mom to a dead baby. I am not saying they should wallow in it for the rest of their lives but remove the selfish pride you have and ask for forgiveness and then change your life. She is still trying to find a way that this is ok, that it was the right thing to do. and maybe one day she will come to the realization that it wasn’t. Then she will truly be able to move on, and help others from making the same mistake. A mistake you have to live with for the rest of your life.
You admit you killed your baby because you didn’t feel prepared to handle…what? You post this on a Mommy blog. You are that dead baby’s mother. What, you weren’t strong enough to handle pregnancy? Or mommyhood? I’ve walked in your shoes. I wasn’t cruel enough to kill my baby. I got help. She got a family that loves her. And today she has three beautiful children. I got counseling. I will never regret that baby’s life like you regretted your baby’s death.
I am so sorry you felt you had no other options when you were 18. That the support systems you needed to say yes to having a baby were not sufficient. An unplanned pregnancy, especially at such a young age, is a terrifying thing. Choosing to end it is a hard and painful decision – one that stays with you your entire life. Please know that your experiences and memories can be healed. There are several great places to go for help – hopeafterabortion.com or http://www.heartlink.org. Both organizations are great, and will provide you the answers you are looking for.
Some time ago i was a baby in my mother’s womb…she was sick, a sick and poor mexican pregnant women in her 30’s living in a 4×4 meters room in the country…but she did not kill me, someone can say “she had not option”…i think that she did the right decision, she loves me and she did know that it was not her body, it was not her life, it was not her decision…blame God, blame the Biology, but that is the true…i always will be thankful for the courageous decision of my mother and i want to say “please have mercy of your children” to all the moms in the world…the question is not about freedom is about life, life is more important than freedom, because whitout life there is no freedom, freedom is the tool to preserve life and goodness y all the world, many women are suffering their pregnacy and we have the duty of help the mother and the baby…please choose both, both are equals both are precious lifes. Thank you…sorry for my bad english.
You have no mercy since you think that anyone born with a uterus is livestock.
You lack empathy for women and it is disturbing.
This conversations saddens me. It saddens me that a woman posts her own, personal struggle with a decision that is one of the hardest a woman can ever have to make and is judged, not disagreed with, judged. There is a difference between agreeing to disagree and being hateful. Who are we to judge one another? I could never look at another woman and say, “I know exactly how you feel losing your chid to suicide.” I have never lost a child to suicide. How could I possibly know how she feels? Whether you agree with abortion or not, no ond should judge, even if you have been through the same experience. Everyone’s life is different. Choices are made for many different reasons. Even the Pope has come out and said we are not to judge. I say this because most of the anti-abortion people I know are Christian people. I was raised Roman Catholic and left the church years ago for my own reasons. If you are judging the podium of religion, isn’t that a bit hypocritical? I’m all for lively discussion and debate and realize this is a very controversial subject but why the hate? None of us is perfect, we all make decisions and we all have to live with those decisions and their consequences. Remember the old saying about glass houses?