A couple of years ago, my mom told me about her abortion, it had to be in the 1950's and she told me that she was eight months pregnant. The back alley abortionist took a baby that even in the 50's would have survived. It was a boy.
My mom told me that her mother forced the abortion and I have to take her word for it, it bothers me in a personal sense, but it bothers her a lot more.
She is 68 years old and her abortion, to this day, still bothers her. Her abortion is the biggest thing troubling her soul.
I can also say that she went on to commit the worst of acts that are signs of post abortion stress: She got married very quickly and tried to have another child; had problems getting pregnant and went on hormonal treatments and was able to conceive another child, but ended up hating him and giving him treatment that would be used as testimonials for kinder treatment for serial killers. He has/had developmental disabilities and brain trauma that I think she inflicted or allowed the stepfather to commit. She has admitted to shaking him, violently, and he had a bite in his tongue from his youth, where a stepfather was beating him and pulled him off of the bed and he bit his tongue during a violent struggle.
It is very hard to instruct girls today. I have daughters that are 21 and 17. The youngest is very against abortion and the oldest believes/believed the easy abortion story about it being just a clump of tissue. I have instructed the oldest not to buy into the easy abortion story because she was once just a clump of tissue and it will not be easy on her when she has to make that choice.
Some women make it sound easy but does the choice ever justify the means? I want 70 year old women saying that it was the best choice that I ever made, does that ever happen?
My grandmother died about 15 years ago at 89. She confessed to me that she had had an abortion -- in about 1920!! They strapped some electric something to her abdomen. SHE was still totally traumatized by it. And she was married, had a child already, just didn't trust that my grandfather would stay around for the long haul. (They were married for 65 years or something).
She told me before I went off to college, as a precaution -- "Be careful, and always remember you have a 'choice.' In 1975 (two years after I was born),...blah blah blah, new choices, blah, finances, blah blah, no big deal, blah kids were a burden..." She's still unrepentant, and it breaks my heart
I never looked at her the same way again, and still struggle with it. A younger sibling that never was, sacrificed on the altars of convenience and choice.