I was a child victim. I am not a victim as an adult. Nor do I blame all society, all white Christian men, all religions/mores/norms/taboos for restricting me in any way. Nor will I allow the cancer of hatred to dictate and destroy my life.
I am a free agent - and God is Sovereign, if He is God. A spontaneous abortion, when I have done all I can to prevent it, is a result of a world opposed to God; man no longer bears His perfect image, yet is still the crown of creation. If I kill the child God has Sovereignly ordained that I will be pregnant with, I usurp Him; it is me waving my fist in the face of God; committing an act of murder which I am commanded shall not be done; believing I know more than He does about my future, what population the world can hold - saying that my limited understanding of the world, mankind, my own life, the life of that child - is greater than His. To trust God is to believe that His plan is better than mine, isn't it? Even if it isn't something I would have 'chosen' for myself. Actions have consequences and those consequences are not always physical or even immediately apparent.
My first experience with the idea of abortion was as a teen. A girl in the class behind me became pregnant after being raped by her father who was drunk. Abortions were still quietly done in those days - quietly between a doctor and patient. At first, as you can imagine, she was scorned. But many peers surrounded her, included her in all their functions, including church youth group etc., supported her through labor and delivery and beyond. I was ill and not in school for a year and a half but heard that she placed the baby for adoption - believing that though an evil had been done to her, she did not do evil to an innocent child; her integrity and self-respect were intact; the evil was clearly her father's.
I received a Master's degree in Community Mental Health Nursing and I have counseled women in every aspect of the issue. I don't understand how another woman could believe that ending a pregnancy - allowing someone to enter your womb and remove a healthy growing person, is done without any residual difficulties. Most of the women I met with - personally and professionally - were having real emotional problems sometimes decades later. Many life events would trigger grief, depression, even suicidal ideation - and not because anyone was doing them any harm, even when people were supportive. Guilt is internal. Individuals change over time, and they often regret 'choices' they made at a time they were particularly vulnerable, feeling fear/panic, not able to see far enough ahead to how carrying a child to term might actually work out. And this choice is final. No matter whether the woman finds a wonderful husband and has other children, she will never have THAT child. A future marriage, the birth of their first live child, the date of the abortion, the due-date of the aborted child and so many other life events, even those that should be a source of joy, are instead often heavily tinged with grief and regret.
There are women who get an abortion because they are given an ultimatum by their husband/significant other; those relationships are often destroyed, even when the woman holds herself fully responsible for her 'choice'. Children of those women may learn about the abortion and, even though they love their mother, there can be real pain - even rage - at being deprived of a sibling they never met. A society, civilization, is weighed in how it treats its most vulnerable. You can call this pregnancy a fetus, a bit of protoplasm, an embryo, it really doesn't matter WHAT you call it - everyone knows that this is a living human being; even the mother knows this. Men come to think that offering to pay for the abortion is the extent of their responsibility and society has given them that out. Society becomes ever more crude and cruel, with less concern about anyone's else's life - only about limited resources, and everyone wants to be sure to get theirs. There is much less emphasis on duty and self-sacrifice; life is cheapened.
And who do these women talk to? If they try to talk about their feelings, they're usually met with people telling them that it was far in the past, they should get over it and go on with their lives, and, when these supportive remarks don't provide any relief, they resort to telling them that, after all, it was their choice - they didn't have to do it. These women know that, too.
In MOST cases. a pregnancy can be avoided (rape, incest, the life of the mother are rare reasons for the 40 million abortions performed since it was believed to be legal). Preventing a pregnancy is exercising self-determination; an abortion is determining someone else's life. And, in mental health terms, it is much easier to forgive another the harm done to you, than to forgive yourself the harm you've done to another.
