Footnote to the Abortion-Restriction Discussion

I just came across this over at Shakesville, and while I fully understand that "anecdote" does not equal "data," the story is an important perspective for anyone who has ever argued that a woman faced with an unwanted pregnancy should carry it to term and give the baby up for adoption rather than aborting the embryo. As much as anti-choicers harp on the inevitable psychological damage to women who choose to abort, and as willing as they are to trot out women who've aborted and regretted it, the voices of women who have chosen adoption do seem to be curiously lacking.

I have given a baby up for adoption, and I have had an abortion, and while anecdotes are not evidence, I can assert that abortions may or may not cause depression - it certainly did not in me, apart from briefly mourning the path not taken - but adoption? That is an entirely different matter. I don't doubt that there are women who were fine after adoption, and there is emphatically nothing wrong with that or with them; but I want to point out that if we're going to have a seemingly neverending discussion about the sorrow and remorse caused by abortion, then it is about goddamn time that we hear from birth mothers too.

Believe me when I say that of the two choices, it was adoption that nearly destroyed me - and it never ends.

This is just one woman's story, but it's compelling and worth a read.