While the success of a woman whether she has had an abortion or not is something to admire, it is not an argument for or against abortion. There have been over 61 million abortions since Roe v Wade. It is not hard to imagine that out of 61 million babies some would have gone on to be great inventors, future presidents of industry, political leaders, educators, authors, humanitarians of great renown, community leaders, etc. But they died before they were born. Take a random sample of 61 million Americans adjust it for the economic and racial mix of those mothers having abortions and then adjust for the fact that adopted children on average live in better economic conditions than children living with their biological parents and see what you lost.
On woman’s side of the ledger, how do you establish the correlation between abortion and women being successful? Are not both successful? It is true women who do not want children in most cases should not have them. But given the massive shortage of babies desired by successful woman who put off having children to long to have their own imagine how loved these children would be and the incredible upbringing they would have.
Here is some interesting information on how adoptive children fare…
https://www.americanadoptions.com/adoption/adoption_stats
Let’s applaud woman for their success. Let’s not make it part of the abortion debate.
Reading articles like this make me sad because they totally misdirect the issue from the basic civil rights issue to one based on alternate realities which is totally hypothetical since you can’t prove what would have happened to the woman or the baby she terminated had she not had an abortion.
In the end, the Court and various political bodies will have to determine at what point an unborn baby has its civil rights. And whose rights, the baby’s or the mother’s take precedent once the baby has rights. But in the debate, everyone should keep in mind, that science has determined that a “baby’s brain” functions much like ours at 20 weeks. The baby feels pain like we do.
At 20 weeks the baby is “viable” outside the womb, especially if it is known the mother does not want to keep the baby. When we stop arguing the abortion issue on religious, feminist, alternate realities, etc, we can begin as a society to discuss the legal issues that will prevail once we have established the biological criteria we want to apply to “personhood” (a definition created by Roe v Wade to define when a human or in some cases a corporation is entitled to civil rights) to an unborn baby.
No debate that ignores the rights of the baby or the rights of the mother, which is commonly done by pro choice and pro life groups can resolve this complex issue. Pretend you are reading a different article, a story about a mother who at the last second decided not to have an abortion and her life turned out wonderful and she went on to do great things and her child did likewise (there are many such stories). Would that change your opinion on abortion? So simply said, stories like this cloud the issue as they clutter both sides of the argument… what we need is clarification of the biological and legal realities surrounding this issue.
