I got into a YouTube spiral a few days ago and ended up watching a bunch of videos on abortion. I've always just held a pro-choice stance and didn't bother to do any more research. The reasoning that a woman should get to choose what she does with her body seemed good enough for me and I didn't bother to question anymore.
But watching all these videos and reading through a mountain of YouTube comments made me have some doubts.
I didn't doubt that a woman should do what she wished with her body; however, I did start to reflect more on the fetus and the seriousness of abortion.
In a lot of the videos I watched, I noticed a biased trend. Either there was a pro-life bias that made the woman who chose to get an abortion look rather insensitive or there was the pro-choice bias that made the pro-life supporters look like idiots. I expected this so I tried to look past all this to focus on the women themselves to gather my own impression of them.
One common factor I saw in all of them was that abortion wasn't a light choice.
As someone who has never had an abortion, I assumed that abortion was this quick little procedure that gave women a choice as to whether they wanted to go through with motherhood or not. I figured all the thinking and emotions were left at the operating table with the fetus and, after a few weeks, these women were off again living their lives. This isn't a fault to the pro-choice supporters, but from how brazenly they advocated for a women's right to choose, I naively thought that having an abortion was merely a checkbox decision that you make and then move on with, like deciding whether you want wheat or rye bread for your sandwich and then moving on with your day.
But it's really not.
Having to decide whether you want to bring a fetus to life inside you must be one of the most horrifying decisions a woman has to make. Intense pro-life supporters make it seem like these women are just casually getting abortions without a care in the world but most women take it very seriously. They are well aware that they are deciding to end a life before it has begun. And those who don't have internal issues far greater than whether they should carry a baby to term or not.
Most women, even three years later feel having an abortion was the right decision for them.
Those who had the hardest time adjusting were the mothers who put more planning into their fetus's conception and those who lacked social and communal support.
Yes, it's important to instill in people the value of life and pregnancy is a beautiful miracle, but we cannot deny that there is something equally important and beautiful about a woman knowing what is best for her and doing so despite what others have to say.
