Slog

As much as I despise this sort of thing being trotted out to illustrate the evils of abortion - You have to admit that the knowledge is traumatic at the least.

It's bad enough should a parent tell a child "I wish you'd never been born." Knowing that your parent actively TRIED to ensure that and then FAILED can't really be all that stunning for the ol' self-esteem.

Wouldn't you disown your parents if this happenend to you. She shouldn't be mad at the government she should be mad at her parents for making the decision. Why wouldn't her parents try to abort her again if it didn't work the first time.

This isn't worth discussing, but to me, an "abortion survivor" is an aborted fetus that lived. Yep.

I'm just happy that my parents didn't take the purity pledge.

So, they take one person's extremely unusual circumstance to make the argument against abortion? PUH-LEASE. OK, let's use my unusual circumstance to argue for CHOICE:
I had become pregnant with spontaneously-occuring triplets (did not take fertility meds). I had a previous history of uterine surgery so multiples or single, I would be giving birth via Caesarean.
At 12 weeks - on the cusp of my second trimester, I learned that two of the triplets no longer had a heartbeat and the third had a pronounced defect, one that would likely end in miscarriage or stillbirth. Had I let "God's will" prevail, I still would have lost the pregnancy but would have likely sustained damage to my uterus, likely making future pregnancies a long shot.
So, I aborted the pregnancy. It was the humane thing to do. Several months later, I became pregnant again and now have a beautiful son.
My son is here because I had an abortion. It is a decision I am crystal clear about having made. If the Right Wing had their my, my son would not be here.

Did the doc try to abort her by dragging her out jaw first?

@5 - geez, what are you doing on Slog? Get yourself into a commercial pronto. No amount of political exploitation of unique circumstances is too much for this election apparently.

My right-wing dad in Texas contends there are thousands of "abortion survivor" women who've gone permanently insane because of their infanticidal actions. He assures me there are tens of thousands of such women kept hidden in asylums and the liberal media is not telling you this. He knows this because he got a fwd of a fwd of a fwd of a chain email wherein this truth was exposed.

#1

It is totally unreasonable to assume that your parent's decision to abort had anything to do with their amount of love for you after you lived. How could it?

On the contrary, their decision was likely based on their perceived ability to take care of you and give you a fair shot in the world.

Please do not make Charles your "science" writer.

Agree with #3, "abortion survivor" implies someone attempted to abort you. Technically, she's a pregnancy survivor.

@9 I totally agree with you.

However, most of the abortion survivor stories I've heard - I was raised pentacostal, I heard a lot - ended with the "Survivor" (sometimes perfectly healthy, occasionally horribly crippled) lovingly adopted by good Christian couples who apparently spend a lot of time telling the miracle fetus that her mother hated her, but god loves her.

I assume/hope any parent who kept the kid after a failed abortion WOULD NEVER EVER TELL THE CHILD. Because seriously, no matter how much they love you, I have to think that would fuck with your head a bit.

@3 & @11 - How about "Involuntarily Delivered?" for the "scientific" term?

Either way, my previous sensitivity aside, I've been mentally substituting a soundtrack for the ad that has Gloria Gaynor singing over a backing track of toilets flushing.

we all experience trauma to one degree or another as a child. we then spend the rest of our lives suffering the reprucussions of said trauma, but only if we choose to live bound by it. to identify with this role is one thing, but to make it our identity is our own damn fault.

#13 - Don't get me wrong, I'm laughing... but holy shit.

Charles,
"All can be challenged" even Holocaust survivors' accounts:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/08/29/holocaust.hoax.ap/

Can't/should the trauma of a rape that occurs at the age of 5 or 90 y/o be necessarily unambiguous? Are children under the age of reason (6-7 y/o?) or an elderly person with dementia "not there in any ontological way"?

I think "SURVIVOR: Abortion" is on ABC's Fall schedule.

@16 you made two points. i don't think the validity of the woman's claim is being questioned in the same way one would question the validity of a holocaust survivor. i think the question being posed is not that of the survivors honesty but of the Truth of their experience. as for the second part... sounds like the terry schiavo saga.

If women weren't so cavalier about having abortions for their convienience, then this would be such a rare occurence that nobody would ever have the need to talk about it. That said, I support a woman's right to choose.

Cavalier? Cavalier? Two in the afternoon's a little early to be drunk off your ass, raindrop.

@19 you're fucking gross

that's a MAN, baby!

@5: i'm going to second @7, and suggest that you contact the obama campaign. i think they are going to treat abortion like a hot potato this time around, and make little if any mention of the issue. but your story makes a compelling case for choice that the anit-abortion fanatics will have no answer to.

District Attorneys could make a strong case prosecute the mother for attemepted murder.

It's interesting that Ms. Jessen was born only four years after Roe v. Wade. Why did her 17-year-old parents get such a late-term abortion? Did they not have adequate access to and knowledge of abortion? If they had gotten an early term abortion, none of this would be an issue. Ms. Jessen never would have been born, end of story.

@24,

No, according to the Supreme Court, they wouldn't.