[Megan]

HumbleDee, I agree. It seems to me that abortion chips away at our perception of the value of human life.

Imagine being a child who knows that your mother has selectively eliminated some of your potential siblings. She has the power to do that, and has done that. This energy is put into the family system, and is not directly addressed with the child, in many if not most cases, I would imagine. Even if the child doesn't know about the abortion, he 'knows' the energy has changed. Children feel these things.

I think using violent solutions of any kind 'tears the fabric of reality' in some way we don't really comprehend, i.e., it damages us all, and this accrues. Call it karma, call it emotional baggage, call it what you please. As Erin said, there is a price to pay.

Once you concede to the need for violent solutions, then it begins to seem evident that violent solutions are the best solutions, or at least the most expedient. They may be dirty, but they're relatively quick and cheap. More and more violent solutions are required, it seems.

It sounds like I am a black-and-white thinker about these things, but like Older/Wiser, I have often, often wished I had not been born. I think the lives of unwanted, often abused and neglected children are another holocaust right under our noses. It is a form of living hell. Also, when I was 16, a doctor gave me pills to take that must have been some sort of 'morning-after' thing, so I have been there and know the fear, confusion and desperation.

I'm just concerned that if we rely on abortion to prevent this tragedy, we will ultimately pay for this in the overall deadening of feeling in society in general, a very high price to pay. We need our feelings.

I used to help an Ob-Gyn do home deliveries before Roe-vs-Wade, and she also did illegal abortions. I assisted her with one, and I had a visceral sense of revulsion at what I was doing that went beyond any kind of mental conditioning. It was as if every cell in my body was enveloped in darkness and heaviness. It felt elemental.

When the next girl came in for an abortion, she was a 15-year-old Mormon whose boss had taken advantage of her. She told me she was going to hell for what she was about to do. The doctor was busy, so she and I took a walk. I encouraged her to take some time to think it through.

The doctor was not happy with me, but I think it would have been very irresponsible to do an abortion on a child who was convinced she was going to hell, without providing some kind of counseling, without family support, or support of some reasonable kind. The doctor stopped doing abortions after that. She was Hindu, and never did feel right about it anyway.

There is something fundamentally missing when we feel we must play off the needs of expectant mothers with the needs of unborn children, it seems to me. There is a rip in the fabric of society, and that is the deeper issue that we need to address, I think.

For that reason, I would not vote to repeal Roe-vs-Wade, as I think doing that before the requisite dialogue and social remedies are in place would just create more chaos. And, sadly, sometimes abortion is the loving thing to do. I just ask that it be done humanely, respectfully, consciously, and that emotional support be considered essential before and after.

I believe we have a lot more talking, thinking and feeling to do. And meditating.

Megan