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A difficult letter for a pro-lifer to read came up on Salon yesterday:

I apologize if this is lacking in eloquence, but it is honest. …

It was a very early, first-trimester abortion, but nevertheless, I was pregnant and I chose not to continue the pregnancy even though deep down I desperately wanted a child.

I made this choice based on my relationship with the baby’s father
who dropped me off at the clinic and I never saw again ….

I am only 25 (24 at the time of the abortion), but I am now convinced I missed my only chance to have a biological child. Is that crazy? I haven’t dated, least of all had sex with anyone, since that day. It feels like a part of me died that day and will never return.

The author, signed “Crushed with Regret,” goes on to explain that she has been “truly disturbed” by the abortion, which resulted in nightmares about the procedure (even though it was done professionally “to a T”) and a deep inability to forgive herself.

Worst of all is her frustration that the abortion lobby’s you-only-feel-guilty-if-you’ve-been-brainwashed mantra, often used against such obstacles as informed consent laws and pro-life pregnancy centers, just isn’t working.

“I am a liberal woman and as pro-choice as you can be! Which is even more upsetting!” she writes.

Whether pro-life or pro-choice, anyone genuinely conscious of women’s rights must never silence another key prerogative: to mourn, and therefore recognize, the baby lost to abortion. Even Dr. Tiller, the late-term abortionist upheld as a pro-choice martyr, advertised in-house funerals and baptism services to help clients mourn their dead child.

Another pro-choice post-abortive mother, writing for the New York Post, pinpointed this forgotten right: “Here’s a right I’d march for: the right to wail myself to sleep, to yearn for my long gone baby, yet to know that I needed to delay parenthood.”

I very much hope this woman is soon on her way to healing. Sadly, she’ll probably have more work to do than most, being pro-choice – i.e., the mindset whose very purpose is to set up a high-security compound muffling the concept that abortion kills a baby.

Instead of just “moving forward” and pushing past the pain, hopefully neither this nor any other post-abortive woman will let pro-choice rhetoric get in the way of coming to terms with the loss she’s endured.