Abortion: right or murder?Weekend commitment.Week-315

_{If you need to talk about the subject, I'm here for that.}

Warm greetings to all the friends in this community who gather every weekend to share their personal views on the topics our host, @galenkp, puts on the table.

Topic 1. What is your opinion on abortion, and why?

The beginning.

I was 16 when I made my first deeply personal and drastic decision: to have an abortion. I was studying enthusiastically and enjoying a phase of life I wasn't willing to sacrifice—school, beaches, and parties; the usual things for a girl my age. I also had the unconditional support of my parents, who let me choose; they were practical people rather than conservative ones.

Yet, I remember a terrible, sinking feeling in my stomach when I was left alone—wearing a gown that barely covered me, lying on a horribly cold metal table—trying to understand a faceless doctor who was instructing me to move closer to the stirrups where I had to lift and rest my legs before succumbing completely to the anesthesia.

When I woke up, the other girls told me that the room had echoed with my screams of horror... clearly, the anesthesia had been a truly bitter experience.

But the true trauma wasn't the fact that I didn't carry the pregnancy to term; it was the shock caused by the D&C room, because I absolutely did not want to go back there—not even to have children.

My opinion on abortion.

Abortion is a right—my right to make decisions about my body, my circumstances, my priorities, and my NEEDS. However, we shouldn't view it as an easy way out, as it carries significant physical and psychological risks.

Women who choose this "way out" face very specific pressures:

1. Continuing with our lives to achieve certain goals of personal fulfillment—almost always professional ones.
2. Facing the decision without feelings of guilt.
3. Waiting for the ideal or perfect moment—a subjective concept.
4. Not wanting to lose control over our bodies.

Many people might believe that women who make this decision are incapable of harboring the maternal feelings inherent to human beings—that we are cold, or that we would make bad mothers—but nothing could be further from the truth. Maternal instinct is in our genes, even if we choose not to become mothers or if circumstances do not allow it.

We should require certain women to undergo a psychological evaluation in order to obtain a maternity permit.

There is also the desire to maintain the privilege of certain freedoms; anything entailing obligations that fall outside our current lifestyle can be viewed as a disruption to what we consider a normal life.

It is a moral issue according to our own standards and perspectives on life.

Is abortion a solution?

There are many ways to view abortion as a necessary recourse, despite the risks. I was always clear that carrying a pregnancy to term in cases of fetal non-viability was not an option for me.

While the evolution of human thought has succeeded in highlighting the humanity of individuals born with syndromes compatible with life, mothers must also have the right to decide whether or not to bear such children under these circumstances—and no, it is not murder.

Abortion and rape—two words that rhyme.

Is a woman who has suffered such an ordeal obligated to accept forced motherhood? Is it open to question if she decides to terminate the pregnancy following this act of barbarism—given that the fetus was conceived through violence? It simply requires a bit of common sense.

Under these circumstances, the effect of an abortion will be primarily healing; with strong family and social support, the victim will have a far better chance of moving forward. No woman wants to become pregnant by a rapist, let alone deal with post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, or suicidal tendencies.

The stark risk of abortion.

I was left scarred by the horrific experience of my abortion; although I had supposedly gotten rid of "that thing," I began to let go of the dream of one day becoming a mother.

I suppose I put the idea off indefinitely—masking it with trauma and the threat of random bouts of depression—but I had never factored in the risk that an abortion could leave me infertile.

PS
No religious or government institution has the right to decide on a woman's unquestionable choice regarding her own body.