Comments on: Three ancient tales of unwed pregnancies

By: Chuck

Chuck — Fri, 13 May 2022 19:19:31 +0000

I do know a woman who aborted herself with the proverbial clothes hanger — and spent a long time in a hospital afterwards recovering. It is hard to imagine being desperate enough to do such a thing, it must have been painful, and it was life threatening. That was just before abortion was becoming legal in some nearby states. I didn’t inquire much about how she felt about aborting her pregnancy, but do know that after she married and had a child she was relieved that everything still worked as it was supposed to. In any case, I am happy that there are less drastic alternatives now. But people boasting of having an abortion strikes me as unseemly, for many it isn’t an easy decision and can lead to regrets. A cavalier attitude towards abortion was one of the reasons I stopped supporting Planned Parenthood, which is sad, because I knew many women of limited means who had benefited from it before it went all political.

By: neo

neo — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 14:54:21 +0000

Art Deco:

For those statistics on sepsis deaths from illegal abortions to be correct, it would require that all such deaths were correctly logged and identified. I doubt that they were. Sepsis was common and abortion was common, but people didn’t necessarily own up to the latter, or even go to a hospital for treatment.

I don’t think we know the true statistics, which were probably higher than that – although how much higher (a little or a lot) we don’t know.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 12:41:59 +0000

He too had taken care of the dying mothers of eight, nine , ten who left them orphaned from their back alley abortions. C. Everett Koop pointed out many years ago that there was no year on record where the number of deaths from sepsis associated with illegal abortions exceeded 350. I think there were about 8,000 obstetricians and gynecologists practicing in the US ca. 1945. The probability of you encountering a fatal case in a given year would be just north of 4%. So, over 35 years of practice, you might expect to see about two cases. In that era, about 5% of all households had more than five people resident therein. It would have been quite atypical for an OB-GYN to encounter what you describe even once in the course of decades of practice. Many of those men, despite devoting their days and especially nights to bring life safely into the world, were pragmatists who supported legal abortion. That's not the sort of 'pragmatism' from which the world benefits.

By: Lee

Lee — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 10:52:05 +0000

Powerful essay, neo.
I suspect there are a whole lot of us 60-something women who have changed our minds about elective abortions. I am so grateful that I never had to chose while in school, because I have no doubt what the choice would have been—and how very difficult it would be to live with that choice.

I do support the squish position of “safe, legal, rare” abortions–but I also want them called what they are: baby terminations (if not ‘killing’). Society has every right to limit them to the first three months in this era of dipsticks at the WalMart.

The chief of OB who present the topic to us students in 1977 told us to not get into the argument of whether or not there was a separate life–clearly, it is—that DNA is unique–but to acknowledge that every religion allowed for justifiable homicide.
He too had taken care of the dying mothers of eight, nine , ten who left them orphaned from their back alley abortions.
Many of those men, despite devoting their days and especially nights to bring life safely into the world, were pragmatists who supported legal abortion.

By: wendybar

wendybar — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 14:48:02 +0000

My “Pro Life Heroine” is a girl who graduated high school the year before I did. Her boyfriend got her pregnant, and she refused to get an abortion, so he broke up with her. She stayed in school, pregnant, and when she gave birth, she gave the baby up for adoption. Many years later, I worked with her sister in law. She has since married and has other children, but asked her sister in law to let her know if her first child gets in touch, since she has married and changed her maiden name, and her SIL has that name. I was in awe of her strength when many others took the easy way out. I think of her often, and she never knew how much I admired her.

By: JuliB

JuliB — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 01:59:45 +0000

I cannot accept that the death of a pre-born baby is ever the correct answer. Several years before I became a Catholic (from being an atheist), I stumbled upon a website of a transgendered lesbian (or something of the sort) libertarian who was pro-life. (S)he had linked to a graphic anti-abortion site which had warnings on it – that some of the pictures could be upsetting.

I blithely went in, knowing that nothing would change my mind.

It changed my mind. I was rabidly pro-choice before that encounter. But after that, no way. I was horrified to be on the same side as icky religious people and set out to find other atheists who were pro-life. I found Nat Henthoff, who although a lefty, had some great thoughts on bio-ethics.

The more I reviewed the arguments on the pro-life side, the more I realized that both sides were arguing based on different assumptions of what was more important, and what the main issue really was. So it was easier to come to grips with my new thoughts. After converting, the religious arguments have been the frosting on the cake, but it really didn’t strengthen my feelings on it.

So that’s one of my big change stories…

With the exception of ‘double effect’ (in which aborting the baby is an unavoidable side effect of a life saving medical treatment), I am 100% anti-abortion. And yes, I consider myself empathetic anyway.

By: JJ

JJ — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:54:46 +0000

I was one of “those girls” in high school. Coincidentally, also my junior year. I chose not to abort, not because I had support (I didn’t) or because of my circumstances. I did it because just the year before I had learned, in a basic human biology class, about the development of a fetus. I knew about its DNA, chromosomes, genetics- all that jazz. I knew how it was conceived, I knew how it grew. I knew that the fetus was human and that it was alive. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that if I had an abortion, I’d be killing it.

In the end, the choice WAS about me. I knew I couldn’t kill another human being, no matter how hard that human would make life for me, and no matter how much I was encouraged to do so.

I have no regrets.

By: Ed Bonderenka

Ed Bonderenka — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:00:20 +0000

I once asked a friend who was “personally opposed to abortion, but pro-choice”, why he was personally opposed.
He looked at me, started to answer and then stopped. Checkmate.
But it’s not a game.
Either that’s a human life in there or it isn’t.
If it is, protect it. If it is not, do what you will.
Can there be any other question?
Personal trauma cannot justify the taking of a life.
Sure I’m a guy, and I will never have to face that trauma.
But it doesn’t disqualify me from protecting human life.

By: RandomThoughts

RandomThoughts — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:21:26 +0000

Mac, words of wisdom there.

And this I wholeheartedly echo: “One can recognize that a certain act is objectively wrong while empathizing with the person who does it.”

I’ve always felt that every abortion has two victims, the child and the child’s mother.

By: Mac

Mac — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:37:36 +0000

One of the core elements of conservatism is recognition that it is not in our power to remove tragedy completely from life, and that often the best we can do is to try to ameliorate its effects.