The Pro-Choice Mind

Read this pitiful piece by a self described pro-choice feminist Christian, who has apparently had more than one abortion (at the end, she mentions that "I have had my abortions, and I have had a child.").

Of course the decision to have an abortion must be a difficult and agonizing one. But other than cases of rape, incest, life of the mother at risk or severe fetal deformity, it's worth asking: How, in an era of inexpensive, readily available and highly effective contraception, does an educated woman come to have several abortions?

The author argues that , there are, indeed, two lives implicated in the decision to abort -- "one born (the pregnant woman) and one not (the fetus)." But where, from that, does it ineluctably follow that "the born person must be allowed to decide what is right"? The interest in life between the mother and the unborn baby is equivalent, really, only in cases when the mother runs a chance of dying as a result of the childbirth (and in such a case, few reasonable people would challenge a decision to abort). In most cases, as inconvenient and unwelcome and potentially embarassing as a pregnancy might be, a woman's "life" is not literally at stake in the same way that an unborn baby's is.

But perhaps the saddest part of the piece as a whole is the anger underlying it. Where does that come from? How did it happen? And consider whether, perhaps, the author is more to be pitied than blamed.