Abortion is bad for women.

Dalzuga, you make some good points. It seems like the bottom line of your argument is that having a baby is, or at least could be, worse than having an abortion for women. And, believing that idea is precisely why most women who get abortions do so. Unfortunately, for many women, it's just not true. That's why tens of thousands of women who thought it was a good idea at the time, now regret their abortions. Before we go further, I do want to reiterate that my thesis today is that "abortion is bad for women" NOT that it should be outlawed. 1) It seems like you are arguing that women who have abortions are not prepared to be parents and if they had a baby, they would be worse off psychologically than if they had a baby. The facts do not seem to bear that thesis out. In fact, in a California study of women on Medicaid (i.e., lower income women), those who had an abortion experienced more psychological difficulties in the year following their abortion than the women who carried to term did in the year following childbirth (http://www.cmaj.ca...). Another study (Finland, I believe), showed that women who had abortions were more likely to attempt suicide in the following year than women without a pregnancy event and women who went through childbirth (even given well known issues such as post-partum depression) were less likely than both groups to commit suicide (http://www.bmj.com...). In addition, women who choose to have a baby often own the problem pregnancy in a healthy way. Having a baby motivates many women to do things professionally, in their education, and in their personal life that they didn't know they could do (finish a degree, ask for a well-deserved raise, dump an abusive boyfriend, etc). While tens of thousands of women have publicly testified that they regret their abortions, I don't know anyone who regrets having her baby. 2) Your point is conceivable. Just because one event follows another, doesn't necessarily mean they are related. In fact, it is likely that at least some of the relationships did not break up because of the abortion. A woman who was forced into the abortion may choose to break up b/c her b/f is a controlling idiot and the abortion was the last straw. He may have broken up w/ her b/c she was an alcoholic. She may have broken up w/ him b/c he cheated. He may have broken up w/ her b/c she stole his last thousand dollars. All of these things may well be true for some of these break ups. However, it is highly likely that the abortion and many of the break ups are related events when there is no other single factor with sufficient explanatory power (see one researcher who placed the break up rate at 80%: Linda Bird Franke, The Ambivalence of Abortion (New York: Random House Inc., 1978) p. 63). 3) Studies show different results as to whether abortion or childbirth is more physically dangerous for women. We do know that childbirth today has fewer complications than ever before and that childbirth is a natural process. However, the likelihood of experiencing immediate complication from early abortions is far less than later term abortions. It is difficult to obtain clear statistics on the overall difference in complication rates from abortion and childbirth. One reason is that national figures for maternal mortality include deaths from ectopic pregnancy. Also, several states don't report numbers of abortions to the CDC at all and some abortion related complications are not reported at all. For instance, an infection related to an abortion is often not reported as being related to the abortion, possibly to protect the privacy of the woman and possibly b/c the doctor performing that procedure is seldom the emergency room physician or the family practitioner who treats the resultant complication. 4) Basically, a failure to prevent pregnancy often leaves a woman in the position of having to choose between an abortion and the good opinion of those she loves (boyfriend, parent, others). I'm not trying to dump on all men at all. There are some really good guys out there but there are also guys who are jerks and guys who are just scared themselves -- guys who say things like: "you should have kept this (pregnancy) from happening. If you'd taken your pills, it wouldn't have happened. Now I'll pay for an abortion but I'm not being a father and you are not putting me on the hook for monthly child support. I love ya' but it's me or the kid, baby." Finally, you respond that: "Wouldn't it be worse if she had no option at all?" [than choosing between losing her partner or ending her pregnancy] I'm not sure what you mean by that. My argument is that abortion is bad for women. Usually, when we talk about choice positively, we are talking about a choice between good options -- chocolate or vanilla. To say "at least she has a choice" illustrates WHY I'm contending that abortion is bad for women. Even if you are right that having the choice is a good, it doesn't mean that making the choice of abortion is good for women. As I contend, it is not.