@Anonymous I know few will read this and it will probably change no one’s mind. Maybe one if I’m lucky. But I need to make a few things clear:

1) Not all people who are morally opposed to abortion are conservatives. In fact not all people who are morally opposed to abortion believe it should be illegal, since all of us in the prolife movement do not necessarily agree on what the State is, or should be. Only in the isolated world of Columbia would it be “obvious” that prolifers are all politically conservative. I personally think abortion is one of the deepest and most hidden evils in our society but I am vary wary of saying that means its the government’s job to ban it. Interestingly, the Right to Life rally was not about the legality debate. It was about the personal experiences of women who have HAD abortions. You cannot tell them that their experience is invalid. These are women who have cried over their lost children, gone sleepless night after night, and suffered from severe depression because of something the pro-choice movement would have us believe is a routine medical procedure. As human beings, even if you disagree with their ultimate stance on abortion, you have to acknowledge that these women are not crazy, are not deluded and that their pain is real.

2) Although it is not the only issue at stake, the question of whether a fetus is a human being is central to the abortion debate. There is nothing religious, nothing conservative, nothing “fundamentalist” about the basic truth that we do not know when an embryo becomes human. The hour before a baby is born we know it is a human being because babies are born prematurely all the time. No one, I mean no one, would watch someone reach into a pregnant woman and dismember a baby that is an hour away from birth without the deepest horror. Okay so that’s one end of the spectrum. On the other end we have a sperm and an egg, not yet joined, just two gametes. Definitely not a human being. So sometime between A and B it becomes a human being, and therefore gains the right to not be killed. Do you really know in your heart of hearts when that happens? Can you point to the moment and say “There! the humaness just entered”. If you cannot, you need to seriously think about the possibility that the fetus became a human before the abortionist injected it with poison and sucked it out with a vacuum tube. The argument that it becomes a human being when it can survive on its own is totally false in that that age gets younger and younger as medical science improves. And that means that a baby that would have died in 1950 at 22 weeks could possibly survive at 22 weeks in 2010. But developmentally they are exactly the same, so whenever they became human did not change, only our ability to save them. And if we define human by some certain set of abilities or qualities, we are going to exclude people who are already born. The deaf, dumb and blind are human, therefore our senses do not make us human. The paralytic, retarded and comatose are human, therefore it is not movement, reason or even consciousness that makes us human. Those on life support, those who need organ donation, or an even better example, congentially joined (siamese) twins rely on another for their survival and would die without the support of another’s body. So it is not some set of abilities, even the ability to survive on our own, that makes us human.

3) As a feminist I believe that abortion is ultimately our society’s failure to serve women. Perhaps the young college elite may feel differently, but statistically the vast majority of women who have abortions believe they are doing something wrong, but that it is a lesser evil than what they perceive as a loss of their own life and self. More importantly, most women who have abortions say that they would not have had one if they had the money, the work benefits, and the family support that they should. I think we can all agree that no woman should be forced to have an abortion from lack of support. More than that, the question of a human life should never ever come down to money. There is no amount worth a person. Also, post abortion syndrome, whose symptoms include depression, insomnia, recurring nightmares, eating disorders, obsessive replay of the abortion, uncontrollable weeping and emotional numbness is real and documented and can occur years, even decades after the abortion. This is the experience of many of America’s women and it should be our collective shame.

4) If anyone reading this had an abortion, or is a man whose partner had an abortion, you should know that there are resources out there for you. Silent No More, which is actually the group that was on the steps has good resources. Ramah International may be another place to start but there are many organizations our there (including some that are not at all religious) with different focuses because there are literally millions of women in this country dealing with the aftermath of their abortion.

5) If by some chance you are reading this and are considering an abortion, know that there are resources for you too. In New York City the Sisters of Life are an excellent resource. Though they are, of course, themselves religious (being nuns) I know them personally and can promise that they never never never force religion or even bring it up at all unless you do first, and that they are some of the kindest and least judgemental people you will ever meet. They currently work with more than 600 women in this city a year, so you know they’re doing something right. They are not just a hotline but will meet all your needs, physical and logistical and emotional. They also have post-abortive healing retreats.

@Anonymous abortion = crime stopper

@Anonymous I think targeting the feeling of regret is kinda lame. Shouldn’t that just support an increase in counseling before and after?