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Opening Arguments

Retroactive death wish

When you see a headline like "I wish my mother had aborted me," you might expect to read a damn strange article. Lynn Beisner does not disappoint:

If there is one thing that anti-choice activists do that makes me see red, it is when they parade out their poster children: men, women and children who were "targeted for abortion". They tell us "these people would not be alive today if abortion had been legal or if their mothers had made a different choice".

[. . .]

What makes these stories so infuriating to me is that they are emotional blackmail. As readers or listeners, we are almost forced by these anti-choice versions of A Wonderful Life to say, "Oh, I am so glad you were born." And then by extension, we are soon forced into saying, "Yes, of course, every blastula of cells should be allowed to develop into a human being."

[. . .]

The narrative that anti-choice crusaders are telling is powerful, moving, and best of all it has a happy ending. It makes the woman who carries to term a hero, and for narrative purposes it hides her maternal failing. We cannot argue against heroic, redemptive, happy-ending fairytales using cold statistics. If we want to keep our reproductive rights, we must be willing to tell our stories, to be willing and able to say, "I love my life, but I wish my mother had aborted me."

An abortion would have absolutely been better for my mother. An abortion would have made it more likely that she would finish high school and get a college education.

[. . .]

Abortion would have been a better option for me. If you believe what reproductive scientists tell us, that I was nothing more than a conglomeration of cells, then there was nothing lost. I could have experienced no consciousness or pain. But even if you discount science and believe I had consciousness and could experience pain at six gestational weeks, I would chose the brief pain or fear of an abortion over the decades of suffering I endured.

"Strange" isn't quite strong enough. "Bizarre" or "surreal" might be closer. Creepy. She insists that "I wish my mother had aborted me" is not the same as "I wish I'd never been born," but I don't see the distinction except that one is the result (as she acknowledges) of profound angst and the other is supposedly altruistic. As an intellectual exercise, imagining you had never experienced consciousness and self-awareness might be a fascinating (or terrifying, as the case may be) experiment, but as a moral prescription it leaves a little bit to be desired.

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