I was actually thinking that as I read the hospital's comment on this. They should be in suits and respirators, so... yeah, that *is* a breach of protocol, Dallas Presbyterian. I'm not surprised the hospital fucked this up though. I commented yesterday that I would not be even mildly surprised if this poor woman was…

Agreed! Thank you mods for creating a safe space.

I don't know what she's babbling about. I wish she'd just said she was depicting how these things often come up in the real world, whether or not that is right or ideal.

I agree it's such a weird thing for commenters to get in a huff about.

Thank you. This is why I get so annoyed with the whole 'you wouldn't be here if your mother had an abortion' argument. There are many people who wouldn't be here if their mother/grandmother/foremother did not have an abortion.

As someone who has been there, she's writing it to the idea of a child, not the individual cluster of cells.

How so?

I think she's referring to pregnancy itself, the zygote/fetus being real but not a being with consciousness. She's not writing as if she's speaking to a specific child but the idea of a child that won't happen this time though maybe next. So I think she knows exactly what she's doing. Unless you believe the cell…

It exists for her in the same sense that your internal organs exist for you — as a concept in your head because you don't get to know them first-hand, you don't get to look directly at them and say hi. Would you recognize your own brain in a lineup?

She's actually being quite eloquent here. She gets right at the truth that the "baby" is just a concept, a dream, a gift you have yet to open and don't know the contents of. She's saying that someday, she hopes to be able to do this again, and open that gift, that she would like to see the potential person become an…

The "baby" that she's talking to is just a concept, a potential. She is saying she will get to dream about the baby she will have again someday, when she is ready and capable of giving it a proper life.

I read it as an idea. When I was pregnant, it was an it. I didn't really feel like it was going to become a person; it was the idea - motherhood, baby, future, rightness. For me, I thought it was pretty spot-on. Maybe because I felt the same way when I was pregnant (and it was on purpose). I wasn't ready - I…

I disagree. You think it's common to say, "You just had open-heart surgery; how do you feel about the procedure?" You might ask about someone's health but not their emotional state. There's not an existing mythology that the people who get open-heart surgeries are emotional to a fault and open-heart surgeries are…

I get what you're saying, but I don't feel like she thinks that it is going to be the exact same baby... Like I thought she was talking to the idea of *her* child? But that's just how I read it..

It's a medical procedure. Some people get scared, some get sad, some don't care, some are over-the-moon when it's over. The fact that everyone is always emphasizing the emotional reaction strikes me as very sexist - no one doggedly asks men for their emotional reactions after their medical procedures.

If my mother didn't have an abortion, I wouldn't exist.

Sometimes it is an easy decision. Sometimes there are no emotions involved at all. I feel for women that struggle with it.

Well, other than the fact that that's not "biblical" sex. Only the woman *has* to be a virgin, and quite a few biblical patriarchs had multiple wives, concubines, etc.
Plus, you can get them during circumcision if everything isn't sterile. Or, if you act as a "good samaritan" and take care of someone who's bleeding.…

There are a lot of types of sex endorsed in the bible, and virginity is really only a requirement for women, not men. And it's only really a requirement because the Bible instructs us to kill so many non-virginal women.

After all, if you get married and discover on your wedding night that someone isn't a virgin, it…

That's not exactly true. Diseases like HPV and even syphilis can be caught through other methods (i.e. passed from mother to child, spread via an oral-genital route, etc.) Also, a lot of 'virgins' over 18 have had oral sex, which can also spread STDs.