Quite so. However, not all sins are committed with full knowledge and full consent of the will. These are required for a mortal sin, along with grave matter, which there's no question abortion is.
Modern young women often have never considered the fact that abortion is a grave sin. It's legal, after all, and practically all the celebrities are "pro-choice." Nor is there full consent of the will under pressure from family, for example, or in a panic because "My parents will kill me!" Of these two issues, I suppose the first is more common, because our societies and most institutions simply don't recognize abortion as a sin.
However, because it is a sin, it psychologically traumatizes the sinner, even if she's not aware of it. Just as you go splat if you jump off a building, even if you don't recognize the law of gravity, you psychologically and spiritually go splat if you kill your baby, even if you didn't know it was wrong, or didn't think you had a better choice.
To conclude (because I have to start cutting up vegetables for supper and some kid wants to check his email), I agree with you and trisham that the process of reconciliation for post-abortive women cannot in any way "fudge" the gravity of the sin or their responsibility for it. One has not repented of sin if one has not taken responsibility for sinning.
Well said, TC.
It's unclear to what extent the moral accountability belongs with the woman, to what extent it belongs with those who knowingly and willingly blinded her to the truth, and to what extent it belongs with those whose own earlier blindness infected them with a need to spread it.
IMHO, primary moral culpability falls with those soulless people who have no qualms about killing babies and who manipulate the guilt of their victims so as to draw in more. The proper message for those who were deceived in any significant measure, even if they were significantly complicit themselves, is "You were deceived. You should not have allowed yourself to be deceived in such fashion, but the ability to recognize such deceit often only comes through experience. Now you know the truth. There is no longer any excuse for you not to challenge the deceivers. Do that, and you won't have to feel guilty anymore."