Hi Trevor,

Thank you also for your response.

I hear what you are saying about your birth, it sounds like this is a very personal topic for you. I'm really glad to hear your biological mother was able to carry you and you were adopted out. I have a few family members who are adopted, and I think adoption is a wonderful thing. I myself am hoping to adopt, as I want another child, but it looks like my body might be healthy enough to survive another pregnancy. I almost died giving birth this time last year, and while I'm personally willing to risk it again, I have to think about my partner and daughter.

I do not think sex-based abortions should be legal in the US, I hope we move far away from that direction. However, rather than outlaw abortions, I recommend culturally as a society we should look into the reasons women have to have abortions and provide more options.

I would like to share with you some of the stories of the women I know who needed abortions.

One woman, I will call her Lily, was very close with her immigrant family and her heritage and church. She was going to college to become a teacher, she was 19 years old. She dated a man (Dale) for a year. After a year, Dale started acting violent and controlling, so Lily broke up with him. Dale did not want Lily to break up with him, and to try to keep her, Dale came over to her house and raped her. Dale knew Lily had her period because they had been so close, and deliberately was trying to get her pregnant so that Lily would stay with him. In Dale and Lily's church and in their families, adoption isn't an option. If a woman becomes pregnant, she is expected to marry the father, no matter what. Dale knew this, he told Lily while he was raping her she would have to marry him. When Lily found out she was pregnant, she did debate adoption, but her refusing to marry Dale would have resulted with her parents kicking her out of the house. Further more Lily's parents would have been excommunicated and admonish from their community. She was only 19, was in school full-time, she would have had to drop out, and essentially become homeless while pregnant. Lily did not want to have to marry Dale, so she got an abortion and never told her family about it. In this case, I think we should work towards having a culture that accepts pregnancy out of wedlock more so that Lily and her family could have had the option to carry the baby to terms.

I had another friend, Elena. Elena was in college young, age 16, and she was sleeping with a friend, Mike. Mike thought it was "funny" to remove the condom during sex. He called it a prank. He laughed when she found out. Apparently he did this to other girls at their school. Elena became pregnant, she debated adoption but several things stopped her. One major factor was that being a student, Elena had virtually no health insurance at the time. The birth alone would have cost her around 30K that she did not have. She would have gone into debt. Acquiring that kind of debt at that age, she would have lost her full-time scholarship at her school, and would have had to drop out. Furthermore, Elena was studying really hard in school to become a doctor. Pregnancy involves very intense fatigue, and she realized in her first month she wouldn't be able to keep up in school, and would have to take a break her first semester, which would have also threatened her finical aid. So pretty much she would have had to sacrifice her entire chance of getting an education if she carried the baby.

I think criminalizing taking the condom off, as well as providing healthcare for pregnant people could help people in her situation. Schools and scholarships being more flexible would also help.

I knew another woman, Sandra, who lived with a very serious mental illness. I don't recall if it was schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but she needed to take antipsychotics daily. When she didn't, she ended up psychotic, on the streets, not taking care of herself. Her drugs helped her maintain a job, feed and care for herself. I don't recall why she got pregnant, but after she did, she learned she wouldn't be able to take her antipsychotics while pregnant. Most medications are not tested on pregnant people, and most are considered unsafe. Sandra was risking becoming psychotic, on the streets, losing her job and her life to safely carry the baby to term. She got an abortion. Honestly if she had become psychotic, the baby probably wouldn't have survived as she often self medicated with coke and weed. She also didn't eat regularly while psychotic living on the street. I think we need more health care for pregnant women. When I was pregnant myself, I was shocked at how much other healthcare I had to give up for myself while carrying a baby. Other chronic health conditions I have got worse while pregnant, with no help available for me other than just wait it out.

The above abortions were early in the first trimester, before 12 weeks. I am going to disagree with you to say this is the same as infanticide. I don't know if you have seen what is present before 12 weeks, but it's not a viable human being. I can see third and 2nd trimesters being questionable, but before the first trimester ended, it's not even human shaped.

Most of the time you can barely even see the embryo it's so small. That's radically different than an actual, breathing baby.

I did know one woman who had to have an abortion in her third trimester, it was my cousin and it was hearth breaking. She wanted the baby and was very happy about becoming a Mom. At 7th months on her ultrasound, the technician ran out of the room. The doctor came in and explained her baby's head hadn't developed fully, and only a small part of the brain. It was explained that after giving birth her child would only live a max of a few days, and would die an extremely painful death. My cousin was absolutely devastated. She and her boyfriend weighted the options really carefully, and eventually she had to have a late term abortion. They also called it a still birth, late-term miscarriage, and other things. But ultimately it was thought the baby would suffer less pain if they got the procedure. She has never recovered. She is one of the rare 2% of abortions that happened late in pregnancy, and I hate that people shame her for what happened.

I have a question for you, since you are clearly pro-life. What do you think of the case with Kate Cox?

Kate's pregnancy was considered non-viable. Her baby most likely (95%) will not survive birth. She is trying to get an abortion because carrying the baby further puts her at risk for uterine damage, which will prevent her from having more children. She wants to have more children, but not gettin an abortion is preventing that.