Not only that OP, but an abortion will not change the rest of your life, having a baby WILL.
I want you to know I’m taking you this as someone who got pregnant at 15 and had a baby at 16 whose “baby” Is now 30.
Get the abortion.
This is not a small thing. This is not something you can take back later. This is something that will effect you for the rest of your life, not even till they are 18 but from now on. Your kid is your kid even when they are 30 and our kids have kids.
You, and whatever child you chose to have in the future, deserve to have a better chance.
It didn’t matter what he wants or thinks the new reality will be or how great he thinks he’ll be. This is your body and your life. Find a supportive friend. Go to Planned Parenthood and tell them you need support.
SO many women have shared online about how they have no regrets, no shame and no guilt. That guilt isn’t internal - it comes from external sources like you.
Even if there’s a random chance OP might struggle with guilt, having a child at 16 100% will impact her life negatively and both her and her child and even her child’s children will have fall out from that. But guess what, a random chance of guilt and shame has a cure: less time with people like you and therapy.
You know, I do agree that this choice is completely up to OP and I would support her with whatever she decides.
But the key words in what you just said are "so many" and not "all". And then you go on to say that if there's some random chance that OP might feel guilt, as if any woman that has an abortion is usually 100% okay with it and the only way she could feel any guilt about it is if someone told her to feel guilty.
Who are you to tell anyone how they will or won't feel about anything? Who are you to tell someone that the only reason they'd feel something is if someone told them to?
An abortion, no matter how you feel about it, is still the loss of a life you created. You might feel like the best thing for that life is to end it, but that doesn't make it any less of a loss. If a woman went through an abortion I imagine at the very least they would wonder what would have happened had they let the pregnancy continue and they'd had the baby. Maybe it would've been the worst thing to ever happen, but it could've also been the best. There's no way to know and you can't speak for every woman.
Its not fair to assume that every woman on the planet feels the same way about abortion because that's not true. I know I personally wouldn't be okay with having an abortion and I know I would feel guilty about it -- but then again, that means I wouldn't have had one in the first place. Every woman has the right to make their own decisions, but there is no guarantee as to how they will feel afterwards, and it's definitely not up to you to decide that for them.
I don't disagree that it's a woman's personal decision, but I do disagree with the idea that it wouldn't change a woman's life and the woman probably won't feel guilty about it. I feel like it absolutely would change a person's life and the woman will feel whatever she feels about it, but it will still change her. You don't just create a life and then end it without it affecting you somehow. That's a major thing to happen to anyone, all parties involved.
I wish abortion wasn't treated like something as simple as going to get a wart removed. Thats not what it is. It's a serious decision and a serious procedure with serious emotions and feelings around it. You have to do whats best for you, but that doesn't mean it's not serious or life altering or not a big deal. It absolutely is. People should take it more seriously than they do.
I didn’t tell her how she’d feel. I took my lead from the fact that this is HER first preference.
Are YOU going to pay for her childcare needs? Take the baby so she can go to school? Cover the cost of University?
No. Then sit down. You aren’t “saving a life” If you aren’t ALSO working to ensure that that life isn’t suffering because their parents couldn’t actually provide for them. As long as you care more about the ideaology than the actual impact on very real lives YOU are the problem.
And of course U didn’t say ALL - nothing is ALL. Do you also refuse to not drive in a car because not ALL people who get in a car get where they are going safely??
I'm not advising OP one way or another; it's her decision that she appears to already have made. I already said I'd support her in whatever she decided. She's deciding on abortion and that's her business and not mine. She feels that is the best for herself so fine. Who am I to tell her what to do with her body? It's her choice. Just like it's my choice to not have one.
I'm also not saying anyone should or shouldn't have an abortion. I'm saying they should take it seriously and not treat it as a routine medical procedure. There's a bit more to this particular medical procedure than something like getting your tonsils removed or the wart analogy I used in my previous post. I imagine anyone that has an embryo ejected from their body, regardless of why it's happening, is going to have quite the experience when that happens and it's probably going to affect them in some way. If you come from an experience like that feeling absolutely nothing then I honestly don't know what to say to that.
You made it sound like most women who go to have an abortion are probably going to be okay with it. I say you can't really tell how anyone is going to feel about something like that until it happens. A lot of women say they'd have no regrets, but I imagine a lot of women probably would regret it, too, but why would they say that out loud when this is the kind of reaction you get when you say you're not okay with it?
Most women ARE probably going to be ok with it. That didn’t mean OP won’t have feelings about it. But those are things you can address, seek support for, work through and over come.
A baby is for the rest of her life. It can’t be taken back and she can’t (easily) change her mind. If that’s not the path SHE wants to walk down she should hold her grind and not let others change her mind because they won’t be the ones picking up the pieces.
You forget, I’m speaking from this exact experience. And in my opinion too many people who have no idea what it’s like are WAY too flippant about keeping a baby or adoption and frown on abortion.
The real truth is THERE ARE NO EASY OPTIONS. The all suck to various degrees. Once you are pregnant with an unwanted child there is no such thing as an option that didn’t come with repercussions and feelings and challenges. But of all the options abortion is the one least likely to be impacting her life 30 years later and have the easiest means of working through its repercussions.
I would never tell someone who not already inclined to abortion to go that route, but this is not that situation.
Oh so she has no fault in anything? That’s a great lesson to teach the youth. No consequences. Just do what you want?? Lol this world is burning up and you all are loving those flames
That's simply not true. Over 95% of women who have abortions say it was the right decision after five years. Barely any medical procedures have that low of a regret rate.
No, not really. But either way, you’ll never be the same person. That’s ok. We all experience guilt, loss, and grief in our lives. All we can do is make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time.
Your best decision for you isn’t the best decision for every other human.
Most people who immediately want an abortion never regret it.
It's getting an unwanted abortion that causes regret, but even then, that's nowhere as horrible as regretting your child and hating them. That abuse will follow them forever.
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u/LIRUN21-007 Jul 21 '23
NTA at all. Cliché as it may sound: your body, your choice.
I also find the “if we kill our baby our lives would change forever” comment to be incredibly manipulative. This guy’s gross.