So much good stuff in this article. As a Gen X woman, I agree and relate with so much of this. We’ve been sold a lie and so many of my peers are heartbroken because they chose their career over family ‘because we can have kids later’. Fertility for women isn’t the same as it is for a man and we need to be super honest about that as a society.
What gets me is that a lot of women work super hard to establish a career and make their money at their peak fertility in youth, only to turn around and spend a lot of that money on IVF and the adoption process (both of which are super expensive) in midlife. It feels like such a scam. And it’s so exploitative. Most Women simply can’t behave like men when it comes to their sexuality, yet this is what is encouraging and promoted.
I really HATE how the current abortion debate makes it sound like women have no agency and are so stupid they can’t figure out how to get birth control if they want it. Yet they can have a high powered career and ‘kick ass’ anytime they want. (So they can’t figure out how to get a prescription, what?). That just doesn’t mesh.
I’m super prolife because I,too, had an unplanned pregnancy, but I ended up putting that child up for adoption. It still pains me 20 years later, but that’s because I’m inherently a sensitive soul and never should have tried to behave outside of my nature. Not all women are going to be emotionless girl bosses and we need to be okay with that. Some desire it. Others don’t. It’s call individualism.
And just because I truly want abortion to be illegal in most cases doesn’t mean that I can’t be realistic enough to know that when push comes to shove I’m reluctantly okay with abortion being legal with a time limit and restrictions. Is that my ideal, no. In the end, I want to live in a civil society more than I want to impose ‘my will’ or ‘preferences’ on other people. That means tolerance and that I’m nit always going to get my way.
‘All abortion, all the time anywhere’ isn’t a winning slogan for most people. But neither is ‘no abortion - ever’. We need to be honest about so much of this, but people get caught up in slogans. We need to acknowledge the life saving work that crisis pregnancy centers do. A lot of my baby gear from a later pregnancy/birth went to one of these centers and I did a bit to help a struggling mom in my area care for her child. The center was thrilled with my large donation of diapers, clothes, infant feeding gear and a car seat. We also need to be honest about what adoption and foster care really look like in the 21st century. I was able to pick my child’s adoptive parents and received updates. Others have even more open relationships than that. And a lot of kids in foster care simply can’t be adopted because their parents haven’t given up their parental rights. My brother was in foster care because neither one of his parents could figure out how to parent him and give him a good situation. It’s sad, but it happens. Again, a lot of this is just way more involved and you can’t just make a twitter hashtag and put up a flag (or Ribbon) and ‘virtue signal’ your way through it. A lot of people are definitely trying, but it’s so awful watching the posturing and sloganeering.
Too many people would rather have the political issue and division rather than be real about any of this. And then we wonder why our society just sucks in a lot of ways.
Thanks again for sharing your story. (Hugs). Even though it was sad, it made my morning to see your honesty and the truth of what going through an unplanned pregnancy looks like. There are emotions and you simply can’t stop feeling what you feel w/o consequences. That was my experience too.
encouraging others to lead a life of "carelessness" and then claim victimhood is quite lucrative for leftist leaders, quite abusive for those who suffer under their ownership.
Beautiful, thank you for sharing this ... Yes, the casualness of abortion, at any time, "on demand and without apology!", is horrifying even for pro choice liberals. True, apology as in shame is not right ... but some serious consideration that something is happening ...
Why can't we compromise on Safe, Legal, Rare, Early? (With exceptions for serious physical medical reasons ... mental health reasons like not being ready to have a child could be decided before the last few months).
Because the left has gone crazy, guess that's why ...
It could also be possible to compromise on respecting the belief that something sacred begins the moment of conception .. something deserving of respect, that is its own being yet Also inside the body of the mother, and respecting her (hopefully thoughtful, informed consent) decision if she chooses to terminate the pregnancy.
But at some point it becomes a body of its own .. the rabid pro choice at any time crowd conflates limts, even at 16 - 20 weeks, with banning abortion. I thought that very late abortions, other than serious medical reasons, was a right wing talking point that wasn't true. But there are sites that advertise very late abortions, even procedures that give birth to a stillborn.
We are being disconnected from humanity and life.
And the left is going insane and refusing to compromise with anything.
Glad for you that you had the child you wanted ... perhaps, maybe, the same soul returned to you and understood that you weren't ready, and waited, and came into the baby you had ....
This must have been a very painful piece to write, Sasha. You really had to face some dark recesses to lay this all bare.
I would point out that the whole idea that a career is more important than motherhood is as false and damaging as the idea that a career is more rewarding than fatherhood. In 25 years as a volunteer coach and Scout leader, I've yet to ever hear someone say they regret time spent with their kids. Ever. It's always the opposite. My own regrets in 31 years as a father are the times I worked late when I didn't have to, when I was short-tempered because I was tired, when I didn't listen because I was distracted. My kids are my life, and I hope they know that at some level.
And yet men have been taught ever since the Industrial Revolution that you take care of your family by earning a living. That's only part of it, and not the most important part. One of my favorite father figures in all of literature is Bob Cratchit. He doesn't make much money, his boss is a jerk - but the job is only a vehicle for him to provide physical sustenance for his family. He is a loving husband and doting father and truly the hero of "A Christmas Carol."
So not only have men been misled on the value and importance of being fathers, but then late feminism glommed on to this and decided that to be equal to men in society, women had to be just as free to walk away from their children in pursuit of education and career. (Note that pioneering feminists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mattie Brinkerhof and Susan B. Anthony wanted something different: They were adamantly against abortion, wouldn't run ads for it in The Revolution, and wanted to re-form society in way that respected women rather than trying to force women to live as men.)
Every other species of higher animal - both mammals and birds - has organized its entire society for the sole purpose of protecting and raising the young. That's it. The herd puts the young in the middle to protect them from predators. An adult walrus will sacrifice themself to a polar bear to protect the young. I've seen tiny little birds divebombing my cat over and over again to keep her away from their nest.
A culture - no, a species - that views its young as a burden is a species that doesn't seem to me to be long for this world.
And if we look at whether women are more valued today than pre-Roe, it's hard to argue that they are. While women ARE much more represented in the professions and sciences, which is good, violence against women is at all-time highs - and it's not just better reporting or tracking. This, too, grabs my attention: Girls are FAR more likely than boys to want to transition to the other gender - it's not even close. There's something at work here beyond gender dysphoria - the rates for a non-contagious medical condition don't just suddenly skyrocket.
My guess is it's all tied together - I think feminist leaders erred grievously when they abandoned their foremothers' opposition to abortion and tethered the movement to what is fundamentally an act of violence. Sanctioned violence is always corrupting, and I think the above is evidence of that.
There has to be a third way - a way that values our children as much as their mothers, and also frees men from a lot of the crippling expectations placed on us.
This is incredibly brave, and as a result, this piece is incredibly healing. I did not have an abortion and I still relate. I was not able to have a baby, and the seeing a face experience happened to me, after multiple attempts to get pregnant. I think abortion affects many people- it affects all of the people in a family whose entire timelines would be different had someone been there, living. I sense grief in myself for others too. Women collectively carry pain, even those promoting abortion. I pray millions of women read this. It is a leap in the direction of this madness ending. Brava, Mama.
I discovered your articles three weeks ago and haven’t been able to stop listening through them all. Your ability to succinctly, smartly, and compassionately but firmly communicate what so many in America feel and believe is a special talent. Please continue!
Beautifully written and incredibly poignant piece. It’s a reminder of the sad fact that the left has moved away from safe, legal, and rare to a celebration of abortion as some sort of badge of honor. It’s cruel in the extreme.
This is a beautiful essay. Thank you for writing it and sharing your experiences.
There is probably some point to be made about the deeper trade offs at hand, and how the left down plays those costs in a way that would be considered criminal in a tobacco company, or something. Someone else can make that point; now I just want to go hug my daughters before they head off to school for the day.
I felt tears well up in my eyes by the end of this heartfelt piece. Like you, I bought into the feminists view of abortion. I was 18 when Roe vs. Wade passed and remember cavalierly thinking "great, I'll just have an abortion if I get pregnant." Looking back at that naive girl, after having lived life that included mothering two now adult children, I can't help but think how grateful I am that I was never faced with that "great" choice. If I had, I'm sure my regret would be as profound as yours, Sasha.
I continue to believe abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, with a common sense cut off point like 15 weeks. Having said that, I think women, as your subtitle states, should be warned not encouraged. Your point that casting the fetus as an oppressor, a clump of cells not attached to them in any way, sets the stage for the angst and regret represented in Marilyn.
Thank you, Sasha. Every piece you write expands my mind and gets me thinking.
Well said. But not just women, the men who love them and participated in the pregnancy too. It’s past time to consider abortion as just another birth control method.
I don't understand how pro abortion advocates can get past the justification of no limits. I've heard some say that it never really happens, but the reality is that it does, regardless of how rare.
That seems to be the essence of the dispute. If the limits were 15-20 weeks, I would imagine that Roe would still be intact, or every state would vote in the new standards.
It's the fanatics, once again, tearing our country apart because Congress is irreparably broken and incapable of overcoming their respective fanatics and actually legislating.
Such an amazingly beautiful and brave piece. Thank you for making yourself so vulnerable to bring humanity to this contentious discussion.
So much good stuff in this article. As a Gen X woman, I agree and relate with so much of this. We’ve been sold a lie and so many of my peers are heartbroken because they chose their career over family ‘because we can have kids later’. Fertility for women isn’t the same as it is for a man and we need to be super honest about that as a society.
What gets me is that a lot of women work super hard to establish a career and make their money at their peak fertility in youth, only to turn around and spend a lot of that money on IVF and the adoption process (both of which are super expensive) in midlife. It feels like such a scam. And it’s so exploitative. Most Women simply can’t behave like men when it comes to their sexuality, yet this is what is encouraging and promoted.
I really HATE how the current abortion debate makes it sound like women have no agency and are so stupid they can’t figure out how to get birth control if they want it. Yet they can have a high powered career and ‘kick ass’ anytime they want. (So they can’t figure out how to get a prescription, what?). That just doesn’t mesh.
I’m super prolife because I,too, had an unplanned pregnancy, but I ended up putting that child up for adoption. It still pains me 20 years later, but that’s because I’m inherently a sensitive soul and never should have tried to behave outside of my nature. Not all women are going to be emotionless girl bosses and we need to be okay with that. Some desire it. Others don’t. It’s call individualism.
And just because I truly want abortion to be illegal in most cases doesn’t mean that I can’t be realistic enough to know that when push comes to shove I’m reluctantly okay with abortion being legal with a time limit and restrictions. Is that my ideal, no. In the end, I want to live in a civil society more than I want to impose ‘my will’ or ‘preferences’ on other people. That means tolerance and that I’m nit always going to get my way.
‘All abortion, all the time anywhere’ isn’t a winning slogan for most people. But neither is ‘no abortion - ever’. We need to be honest about so much of this, but people get caught up in slogans. We need to acknowledge the life saving work that crisis pregnancy centers do. A lot of my baby gear from a later pregnancy/birth went to one of these centers and I did a bit to help a struggling mom in my area care for her child. The center was thrilled with my large donation of diapers, clothes, infant feeding gear and a car seat. We also need to be honest about what adoption and foster care really look like in the 21st century. I was able to pick my child’s adoptive parents and received updates. Others have even more open relationships than that. And a lot of kids in foster care simply can’t be adopted because their parents haven’t given up their parental rights. My brother was in foster care because neither one of his parents could figure out how to parent him and give him a good situation. It’s sad, but it happens. Again, a lot of this is just way more involved and you can’t just make a twitter hashtag and put up a flag (or Ribbon) and ‘virtue signal’ your way through it. A lot of people are definitely trying, but it’s so awful watching the posturing and sloganeering.
Too many people would rather have the political issue and division rather than be real about any of this. And then we wonder why our society just sucks in a lot of ways.
Thanks again for sharing your story. (Hugs). Even though it was sad, it made my morning to see your honesty and the truth of what going through an unplanned pregnancy looks like. There are emotions and you simply can’t stop feeling what you feel w/o consequences. That was my experience too.
encouraging others to lead a life of "carelessness" and then claim victimhood is quite lucrative for leftist leaders, quite abusive for those who suffer under their ownership.
Beautiful, thank you for sharing this ... Yes, the casualness of abortion, at any time, "on demand and without apology!", is horrifying even for pro choice liberals. True, apology as in shame is not right ... but some serious consideration that something is happening ...
Why can't we compromise on Safe, Legal, Rare, Early? (With exceptions for serious physical medical reasons ... mental health reasons like not being ready to have a child could be decided before the last few months).
Because the left has gone crazy, guess that's why ...
It could also be possible to compromise on respecting the belief that something sacred begins the moment of conception .. something deserving of respect, that is its own being yet Also inside the body of the mother, and respecting her (hopefully thoughtful, informed consent) decision if she chooses to terminate the pregnancy.
But at some point it becomes a body of its own .. the rabid pro choice at any time crowd conflates limts, even at 16 - 20 weeks, with banning abortion. I thought that very late abortions, other than serious medical reasons, was a right wing talking point that wasn't true. But there are sites that advertise very late abortions, even procedures that give birth to a stillborn.
We are being disconnected from humanity and life.
And the left is going insane and refusing to compromise with anything.
Glad for you that you had the child you wanted ... perhaps, maybe, the same soul returned to you and understood that you weren't ready, and waited, and came into the baby you had ....
This must have been a very painful piece to write, Sasha. You really had to face some dark recesses to lay this all bare.
I would point out that the whole idea that a career is more important than motherhood is as false and damaging as the idea that a career is more rewarding than fatherhood. In 25 years as a volunteer coach and Scout leader, I've yet to ever hear someone say they regret time spent with their kids. Ever. It's always the opposite. My own regrets in 31 years as a father are the times I worked late when I didn't have to, when I was short-tempered because I was tired, when I didn't listen because I was distracted. My kids are my life, and I hope they know that at some level.
And yet men have been taught ever since the Industrial Revolution that you take care of your family by earning a living. That's only part of it, and not the most important part. One of my favorite father figures in all of literature is Bob Cratchit. He doesn't make much money, his boss is a jerk - but the job is only a vehicle for him to provide physical sustenance for his family. He is a loving husband and doting father and truly the hero of "A Christmas Carol."
So not only have men been misled on the value and importance of being fathers, but then late feminism glommed on to this and decided that to be equal to men in society, women had to be just as free to walk away from their children in pursuit of education and career. (Note that pioneering feminists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mattie Brinkerhof and Susan B. Anthony wanted something different: They were adamantly against abortion, wouldn't run ads for it in The Revolution, and wanted to re-form society in way that respected women rather than trying to force women to live as men.)
Every other species of higher animal - both mammals and birds - has organized its entire society for the sole purpose of protecting and raising the young. That's it. The herd puts the young in the middle to protect them from predators. An adult walrus will sacrifice themself to a polar bear to protect the young. I've seen tiny little birds divebombing my cat over and over again to keep her away from their nest.
A culture - no, a species - that views its young as a burden is a species that doesn't seem to me to be long for this world.
And if we look at whether women are more valued today than pre-Roe, it's hard to argue that they are. While women ARE much more represented in the professions and sciences, which is good, violence against women is at all-time highs - and it's not just better reporting or tracking. This, too, grabs my attention: Girls are FAR more likely than boys to want to transition to the other gender - it's not even close. There's something at work here beyond gender dysphoria - the rates for a non-contagious medical condition don't just suddenly skyrocket.
My guess is it's all tied together - I think feminist leaders erred grievously when they abandoned their foremothers' opposition to abortion and tethered the movement to what is fundamentally an act of violence. Sanctioned violence is always corrupting, and I think the above is evidence of that.
There has to be a third way - a way that values our children as much as their mothers, and also frees men from a lot of the crippling expectations placed on us.
Beautifully stated, Sasha. Thank you.
Unfortunately, the left is treating the abortion issue like they treat all of their favorite causes: the most extreme position must allowed.
Abortion: post-birth is OK.
Climate change: any warming is not allowed (when in fact, mankind thrives in warmer times).
Election integrity: having to identify yourself is racist and not allowed.
Immigration: open borders is the only fair policy.
And so on.
This is incredibly brave, and as a result, this piece is incredibly healing. I did not have an abortion and I still relate. I was not able to have a baby, and the seeing a face experience happened to me, after multiple attempts to get pregnant. I think abortion affects many people- it affects all of the people in a family whose entire timelines would be different had someone been there, living. I sense grief in myself for others too. Women collectively carry pain, even those promoting abortion. I pray millions of women read this. It is a leap in the direction of this madness ending. Brava, Mama.
Wow, Sasha. What a heartfelt, intimate narrative. Just stunning...
I discovered your articles three weeks ago and haven’t been able to stop listening through them all. Your ability to succinctly, smartly, and compassionately but firmly communicate what so many in America feel and believe is a special talent. Please continue!
Beautifully written and incredibly poignant piece. It’s a reminder of the sad fact that the left has moved away from safe, legal, and rare to a celebration of abortion as some sort of badge of honor. It’s cruel in the extreme.
Here's a hug. Words fail me.
This is a beautiful essay. Thank you for writing it and sharing your experiences.
There is probably some point to be made about the deeper trade offs at hand, and how the left down plays those costs in a way that would be considered criminal in a tobacco company, or something. Someone else can make that point; now I just want to go hug my daughters before they head off to school for the day.
Thanks again for writing this.
Truth is so powerful. You are powerful and you are making an impact. Thank you for this piece.
I felt tears well up in my eyes by the end of this heartfelt piece. Like you, I bought into the feminists view of abortion. I was 18 when Roe vs. Wade passed and remember cavalierly thinking "great, I'll just have an abortion if I get pregnant." Looking back at that naive girl, after having lived life that included mothering two now adult children, I can't help but think how grateful I am that I was never faced with that "great" choice. If I had, I'm sure my regret would be as profound as yours, Sasha.
I continue to believe abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, with a common sense cut off point like 15 weeks. Having said that, I think women, as your subtitle states, should be warned not encouraged. Your point that casting the fetus as an oppressor, a clump of cells not attached to them in any way, sets the stage for the angst and regret represented in Marilyn.
Thank you, Sasha. Every piece you write expands my mind and gets me thinking.
Well said. But not just women, the men who love them and participated in the pregnancy too. It’s past time to consider abortion as just another birth control method.
I don't understand how pro abortion advocates can get past the justification of no limits. I've heard some say that it never really happens, but the reality is that it does, regardless of how rare.
That seems to be the essence of the dispute. If the limits were 15-20 weeks, I would imagine that Roe would still be intact, or every state would vote in the new standards.
It's the fanatics, once again, tearing our country apart because Congress is irreparably broken and incapable of overcoming their respective fanatics and actually legislating.