Linking grief: abortion, adoption, miscarriage, stillbirth, infant mortality

Ok, so if the main issue for so many people is abortion vs. choice, how come I keep harping on, and on, and on about sidlateral nonsense like miscarriage, and stillbirth, and infant mortality?

Clue #1 comes from the justification Justice Kennedy used when writing the majority opinion in Gonzales vs. Carhart:

"It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know . . . "

via Tennessee Guerrilla Women

In other words he's bought the most recent and thus, by definition, post hoc anti-abortion argument that it's better for a woman to bear an unplanned, unwanted child because it will save her from any possible post-abortion anguish.

Hmm. If post-loss anguish is going to be the new metric let's take a look at other forms of loss. And I mean this, literally, as an invitation for you, and you, and you to join me in taking a look.

1) Ask a friend who's had an abortion, or who's partner has hand one, how they feel about it. Chances are extremely good you know someone who had an abortion maybe 20 years ago. I have a number of such friends, and many of them do say, wistfully, that circumstances been different their child would have been 14, or 21, or 32 years old this year. I must say, though, that no one I've talked to about it has expressed more than passing regret.

2) Now ask a friend who, years ago, carried an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy to term and then gave the baby up for adoption, or who's partner did so. Chances are fairly good someone you know may be in that position. I have several such friends and when they speak of the child they were forced to give up they speak in *anything but* terms of wistful regret. Such parents often go to considerable lengths to find their children after their 18th birthday. Some of the ones who can't make contact get pretty crushed about it. Even the ones that have other, more recent children of their own. And yet Justice Kennedy and the baby-trafficking lobby are silent on this issue.

3) Now ask a friend who's had a miscarriage, or the partner of someone who's miscarried. Chances are somewhere between one in four and one in ten that an adult woman who's wanted children has had one. *At least* one! Ask whether or not he or she remembers the loss of that wanted child with anything like regret? Speaking for myself I often remember when our first child's life ended in nearly two days of horrific cramping and gouts of clotted blood twelve years ago. And while I take incredible joy in my two health children I often wonder who the first might have grown up to be. And, again speaking for myself, once we "outed" ourselves about our miscarriage none of the women and men who appeared almost out of the woodwork with their own tales spoke cheerily of their own experiences. None of them chirpily quipped that, oh well, just try again and hope for the best. Word from Justice Kennedy? Deponent sayeth not.

4) Now ask a friend who's suffered a stillbirth or who's partner has. Outside of, perhaps, Mississippi, chances are you might not know such a person, but there's one within, say, two degrees of separation so recruit your friends to help you find him or her. I'm sorry to say that several people I know, two quite close, have had this experience. Of those close to me, one's child died almost right away and the other died in the womb and was delivered several days later via induced labor. Ask them about their regrets. Ask them what it was like to dismantle the cribs and put away the quilts and fuzzy mobiles and turn their erstwhile nurseries back into office or spare dens? Justice Kennedy and those who applaud him have nothing to say about this form of regret.

5) Finally, ask a friend who's child died in infancy how he or she thinks her regret compares to someone who might have had an abortion in the 12th week? Ask them whether they think Justice Kennedy should spend more time holding women's feet to the fire over their decisions or whether his time might be better spent questioning whether states like Mississippi are doing enough to reduce infant mortality?

It's important to ask these questions of those known to us so we can understand and recognize how people really feel about these events in their lives.

It's important, also, to ask these questions of those abortion opponents who, like Justice Kennedy, claim to care only about the regrets a woman might feel after terminating an unwanted, unplanned pregnancy. It's important not least because, by taking on this responsibility for parental regrets they logically take on also responsibility for the regrets of those who would have been parents of wanted, planned pregnancies that ended in adoption, miscarriage, stillbirth, and death in infancy. I really want to know their answers.