The Washington Post on Sunday carried a column in the Outlook section by someone identified only as Dana L. that blamed the “conservative politics of the Bush administration” for forcing her to have an abortion that she didn’t want.  To her credit she did say that she didn’t mean it literally, but you can see where the column was heading.

You see Dana is a happily married mother of two elementary school aged children and is now 42 years old.  She and her husband don’t have much time for each other and recently when they found themselves alone they got carried away in a sudden rush of passion as she puts it in which she failed to use her diaphragm.  The result was an unexpected pregnancy.

Dana then tells the tale of her unsuccessful efforts to locate the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B within the 72 hour time frame for the pill to work.  The culprit, conservative politics that in her words held up approval of the pill for over the counter use.

Her inability to get the pill results in her being forced to have an abortion.  As a pro choice woman this should have been an easy decision but like many people who support abortion they recoil in horror at the though of actually going throughthe procedure. What is really telling is why she decides to have an abortion. It really doesn’t have to do with the risks of someone her age but is more directly related to the “emotional upheavals that an unplanned pregnancy would cause our family.”  So there is the real reason.  It isn’t convenient.  They are a happy family and to add another child would upset their carefully laid plans.  Life always follows the plan we have laid out for ourselves.  Right. Will she tell her children that they could have had a younger brother or sister, but that mommy and daddy thought it wasn’t a good for the family so they decided to kill him or her?  I doubt it.

It’s too bad that Dana L. can’t understand that a baby is a gift from God and not something that we should just toss away because it doesn’t fit our lifestyle.  I know several couples who wanted but couldn’t have children and here is this person terminating a pregnancy and blaming the Bush administration for her decision.  If she had only been able to get her pill she wouldn’t have been forced to abort the baby and she wouldn’t have been in this moral dilemma.

So much for taking personal responsibility for your actions.

Maybe the Post will run a column from someone who faced a similar situation but kept the baby so that readers can see that abortion isn’t the only option, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for this to occur.

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