In 1970 a close friend of mine had an abortion in New York City when it first became legal. She was an 18 year old college student and she was totally freaked out to be pregnant. 

She assumed, and there wasn’t much hard information available at the time, that at 12 weeks her babies (it turned out she had twins) were just a shapeless, mass of cells, nothing more.

For some reason she “named” them Pastrami and Paramecium and says she still thinks about them from time to time. And knowing what we know now about fetal development, she’s not so sure she would have opted to end their lives. 

The plain fact is, when you’re pregnant, you have a human being developing in your body. If a similarly helpless baby animal was encountered on a walk in the woods, I suspect most women would want to rescue and nurture that vulnerable soul — not stomp it into the ground. It’s awful to hear some women speak, with such contempt and vitriol, about their right to get rid of a tiny living being in their body — like it’s some malignant tumor.

While I believe there is general acceptance in this country for abortion up to 12 weeks or so, I think most people don’t support abortion after that, and certainly not the barbaric and currently legal practice of partial-birth/late-term abortion.

Abortion is a Big Deal and it should never be taken lightly or done casually. Above all, it shouldn’t be used as an alternative form of birth control, which sadly, I suspect many young women today are doing. 

We are fortunate to have a myriad of cheap and easily obtainable birth control methods available everywhere. Please use them.