by Melissa Knight

Created on: November 06, 2008

Here's a question worth contemplating: how many women reading this right now have had an abortion? Okay, now, if you're a man, how many of you have at some stage in your life been with a woman who aborted your child? Now, how many of the people reading this have had a pregnancy scare and instantly thought abortion before anything else?

Where would you be right now if you hadn't gone through with it? Or, if you're like me, how would life be if you had? For those of you who fortunately didn't need it, how would you have felt even if the option wasn't available to you? Did anyone reading this feel that it was up to the anti-abortion group (who holds meetings in another town and knows nothing about you) whether or not you should have the choice to have an abortion?

Not one person would ever argue that abortion isn't a difficult choice, but sometimes, to many people, it's the only option. That doesn't mean that people want to kill something they created. It doesn't make a person who has an abortion a bad person. It means that they felt that for whatever reason, they were not ready to bring a child in the world.

Personal stories aside, lots of women set out to have an abortion and find they can't go through with it. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're against abortion, it just means that they couldn't do it. Lots of women have abortions and feel the pain forever afterward. Very few women have an abortion and feel nothing at all and that's okay, too.

People don't realize how agonizing a decision it really is. It's not like you find out your pregnant and just go have an abortion. Any good clinic will make sure that you have thought long and hard about what you are about to do. Most of them will actually try to talk you out of it. They know very well that what is being considered is life altering no matter which way it goes and most clinics want to know that you have considered all your options and really see no other way.

For those who argue against abortion, what about all the newborn babies who are found in dumpsters and abandoned every year? Would it have been so bad to abort them before they were brought into the world only to have their only knowledge of life to be full of hunger, cold and pain? Wouldn't it have been more humane to make abortions available to those mothers? What about the millions of babies born each year with irreparable lifelong damage because their mothers couldn't kick a drug habit? What quality of life will they know?

Bottom line is that the argument for abortion, whether you've had one or not, is far stronger than the argument against. It is a personal decision and a choice that every woman in the free world should have.

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