guest99999999 wrote:should i feel guilty about getting an abortion?
I cannot talk personally about a woman's feelings when abortion becomes a personal issue because I am male, but I can tell you that fathers can have very strong personal feelings on the issue too. It has never been a personal issue for me because the question has never arisen in my life. Perhaps in that I am rather unusual. I have also read and learned a lot about abortion from many angles on various discussion groups and that has taught me that circumstances can be very varied and very stressful. So I will try to reply to you as sensitively as I can.
You do not say whether you have already had an abortion or deciding whether to get one now. It seems to me your question could be taken either way. Perhaps your upbringing and the views of those around you have lead you to believe abortion is wrong but you find yourself in a position where it seems the only sensible thing to do. Or perhaps you have had an abortion and have since come to have regrets about it which you cannot overcome.
Either way, there is one thing about abortion of which you can be certain. It carries risks - psychological ones as well as physiological ones. Abortion providers and the medical profession generally are NOT unbiased and cannot be relied upon to evaluate and explain the risks fairly. They will tell you that investigations and trials into the health issues show that there is no significant cause for worry, and that the risks do not really exist. However, when such investigations are examined by other medical professionals who are not compromised by financial motives quite different pictures emerge. It can get very complicated indeed but it is something that you need to consider, and you need advice from someone who is more knowledgeable and qualified than me.
You are unlikely to get the kind of help you need from a forum like this. I say this with the experience of having spent years on internet discussion groups which seldom help anybody to make such a difficult decision. If you have already made that decision and gone through with it there is help in the form of counselling which is freely available from people who really care and who do not wish to pretend everything is OK when it isn't.
You will have gathered that I am opposed to abortion but I do not seek to impose my reasons on you by going into detail about them. Whatever you do must be for reasons which make sense to you, and not because of my reasons or what I say. It is you who have to live with the outcome of what you do now. Therefore, assuming you are in the UK, I would strongly urge you to go to www.lifecharity.org.uk or phone their helpline - 0800 915 4600 (9am-9pm weekdays, 9am-5pm Saturdays) - right now. They are strong on practical support too. And there are similar groups elsewhere too.
Remember, abortion is the decision of two life-times (your life-time and the life-time of the life within you).
by Guest on Mon Jul 14, 2008 2:24 pm 
