The Abortion Accounts Of 26 Women Weep Pain And Regret And Remorse

By Dave Andrusko

 When there is even an ounce of honesty in them, any series of accounts of women who have undergone abortions will accomplish exactly the opposite of what proponents of “telling your story” believe it will. Instead of “de-stigmatizing” abortion, it makes the average person even more skeptical of abortion, even more convinced it is a horrible “choice.”

The latest example is a story in New York magazine which provided thumbnail sketches of the reasons 26 women had their abortion or abortions (see n0ymag.com/news/features/abortion-stories-2013-11/?mid=nymag_press).

The overwhelming takeaway I had was sorrow. Abortion’s ugly truth is everywhere.

I was very much impressed with the introduction written by Meaghan Winter. Take this paragraph, for example:

“And yet abortion is something we tend to be more comfortable discussing as an abstraction; the feelings it provokes are too complicated to face in all their particularities. Which is perhaps why, even in doggedly liberal parts of the country, very few people talk openly about the experience, leaving the reality of abortion, and the emotions that accompany it, a silent witness in our political discourse. Even now, four decades after Roe, some of the women we spoke with would talk only if we didn’t print their real names.”

Again, I understand that the whole point is that the more often women tell their stories, in theory the less “stigma” will attach. But it’s not stigma that is running roughshod in many of their hearts but deep, DEEP regret. Which is why if you take the time to read all the stories, you come away aching for almost all of these women.

I will just cite three stories + a closing quotation from a fourth(but please read them all at nymag.com/news/features/abortion-stories-2013-11/?mid=nymag_press).

continue reading at http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org