I follow with great interest the fascinating conversations on the Abortion.Com Facebook page.  There are close to 3,000 “friends,” both pro-choice and pro-life, who have some very interesting and, usually, civil dialogues about the issue.  I say “usually” because there are always those who need to SCREAM at you and those who just spout the usual “ABORTION IS MURDER” stuff.  You come back and ask a simple question like “do you support birth control?” and they just disappear.  Maybe they’re exhausted from all of the intellectual energy they just expended.    

The other day, there was an interesting admission by a pro-lifer.   This woman is a very reasonable, calm, smart woman from Florida.  She is always quick to chime in when pro-choicers ask the tough questions and she, in turn, asks tough questions as well.  Of course, no one expects to change any minds and she is just as locked in as others, but I do have the sense that she is learning more about the mindset of a woman who decides to have an abortion and she is also learning about doctors who perform them.

Suddenly, just the other day, in a very long thread towards the bottom of the page, she “quietly” admitted that years ago she had had an abortion. 

What the heck?  

I had to read her comments several times to make sure I was reading it correctly. 

So, it seems that years ago, when she was much younger (well, weren’t we all?), she became pregnant and she CHOSE to have an abortion.  Yep, that’s right.  This pro-lifer exercised her constitutional right to choose.  But now, she wants to take away that same right from millions of other women.  It was good for her then, but it’s not good for others now.

She says that she has now come to regret having the abortion.  Okay, I get that.  Indeed, I addressed that issue just the other day in another one of my potentially Pulitzer Prize winning blogs.  She has even gone so far as to join the “Silent No More” campaign that I referred to in the same blog. 

So, I’m trying to sort this out.

 She had an abortion and she regretted it.  Okay.  Now if she were just out there telling women to really, really think hard about the decision, I’d have absolutely no problem with that.  But she doesn’t stop there.  She takes it to the next level and says that women should not be able to access the same procedure that she took advantage of years ago.  That sounds a little hypocritical to me.

Years ago in her youth, she “got in trouble,” as they used to say.  She made what she thought was the right decision for her at the time.  She CHOSE to have an abortion.   Then, many years later, now that her life has been “straightened out,” as she says, she wants to take away that same right from other women who might be in the same situation as she was.

What am I missing here?