I have wondered how it affected someone later in life after they had a child.
i never knew anyone that had one either, til i started in my current job (granted it was 20 years ago!) the woman, an atty also, freely discussed her MULTIPLE abortions. honestly, it is as if she was using abortion as birth control, which unfortunately, is how many consider it. she ended up with one child and wasn't even still married to the father when i met her. she wasn't in the job that long and who knows how many more men [and abortions] she may have had since. even 20 years ago she was a living breathing example of rode hard and put up wet.
I only personally knew one woman who had two abortions-another social worker I worked with. She was a couple of months pregnant with the first baby, and then about4 or 5 months with the second. She shamelessly told all the women at work how painful the later abortion was for her-she even admitted that the baby was "killed". I did ask her if she wondered how painful it was for the baby, and she just stared at me as if she'd never considered such a thing. She married the father of both babies the following year in a huge wedding, and last I heard, they had three kids they decided to let live and be born.
One of my daughters friends in college was having a secret affair with a married, older man, and he talked her into an abortion when she became pregnant, even though she was Catholic. When she repented what she did and went to make confession, the priest she went to refused to give her absolution. She went home and took all of the prescription pain pills her mother had for a broken arm, washed them down with a fifth of gin, and fortunately was found still alive by her parents, and recovered. She spent many months in counseling after that-my daughter told me she never forgave herself for what she did.