Back-Street Abortions Coming to a Life Near You

This is a long but wonderful article as reading it I felt like I was revisiting every winger argument with every winger I have ever had regarding abortion but unlike me the writer makes all the arguments that have failed to come to my mind.

The comments are also worth reading as they come from run-of-the-mill wingers (who are to me beginning to sound like parrots); pro-lifers against all forms of killing including the death penalty and war; labor-room nurses squarely of the opinion that pregnancy is not a passive or safe decision that should be forced upon women and many others. The following caught my breath as it exemplifies the stories that most motivate my pro-choice stand:

"I am a 56 year old grandmother and could never imagine a circumstance under which I would have an abortion (moot point now). The subject of a 'theraputic abortion' actually came up when I became pregnant with my third child after two difficult pregnancies, but I refused. All that said, the idea of the roll back of Roe scares me silly.

My maternal grandmother died of peritonitis caused by a botched abortion when my mother was 9 months old. The reasons for her choice have been lost over time; she was married and had one child. This left my mother to be raised by a succession of aunts, and then finally, by the Poor Clares in a convent. She never had a family per se, and the nun's ideas about discipline were draconian at best, and would be more than just a little illegal today.

She had no idea about how to be a mother. I was alternately neglected, pampered and beaten. I remember kneeling with a pencil under each knee for hours. When I played with fire, she lit the stove and held my tiny hands over the flames until they blistered.

I cannot know for sure, but I think my life would have been profoundly different had she been raised by a loving mother. Let's not go back there, to the days when a woman's body was not her own.

They are making it more difficult to obtain or learn about effective contraception, which cannot help but lead to even more unwanted pregnancies. It defies reason. "