Can't Have It Both Ways

I was thinking about the pro-choice position that women who make adoption plans for their children have more trauma from that decision than do women who have abortions.

On one hand they say, abortion has little effect on women and that if there is a problem it is only "acute stress" often ending with the abortion. Yet if a woman chooses adoption they say she deals with it as "chronic stress", that often goes on and on as she has questions about her child in the future.

To say that there are different emotional outcomes when women abort their "products of conception" (POC) than when they make adoption plans for their newborn (POC, different size and location) highlights the truth that abortion takes the life of "someone" that the woman, if given time, would become attached to and be concerned about. If the POC is not "someone", then the emotions should not be any different.

As a three time post-abortive women and a birth mother of a child I released into an adoptive home, I can say that I will always grieve the loss of my three POC someones, and I did grieve when I released my son into his adoptive home. But today, I am rejoicing for the life of my 26 year old birth son (POC, different size and location) as I can never rejoice for the lives of my aborted someones.

They can't have it both ways. If POCs cause emotional attachment leading to stress of any kind, they must be "someones", not simply POCs.