i call them bible-thumping jesus freaks who were brain damaged at rebirth.

i have to say i'm opposite: i'm anti-abortion, but pro-choice. that is to say, i fully support a woman's right to have the choice, to make the decision that's right for her, and to be able to make it safely, effectively, legally, and without coercion.

on the other hand, on a personal level, i find abortion an abhorrent practice. i can't see myself counseling a woman to have one, when there are other choices to be made.

that said, i only offer my input when it is solicited (or when it might be my child), and if the woman in question makes a choice i disagree with, i fall back to my belief that she should have the choice to make, and have (and would again) accompanied her to the clinic if she chose to have my support.

i also try very hard to not judge women who've made a choice i disagree with.

the one thing i'd point out is that, in my observation, having an abortion is never easy. i've met many women who have had them; to a one, it has never been without consequence for any of them. while some regret having done it, and some others regard it as the worst mistake they've ever made, some do not regret it. but they all wonder, and i think they are right to.

a high school principal once pointed out to me that any time you have sex with somebody, there is a consequence. sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. sometimes it's foreseen; sometimes it's not. but it is always there, even if you never see it. pregnancy, intended or not, is one of a range of those consequences. if we turn sex into something that has no consequences, then it indeed becomes something of no consequence. when that happens, i believe that we have lost something important as emotional and sexual beings.

while i don't begrudge anyone the right to make their choice freely and without coercion, all choices have consequences. i think it would be a disservice to ourselves if we tried to divorce this choice from its natural consequences.

"all choices have consequences. i think it would be a disservice to ourselves if we tried to divorce this choice from its natural consequences."

So when someone chooses to smoke, and develops the foreseen consequence of lung tumors, should we try and dissuade him from surgery to remove them?

I know plenty of women, myself included, who have had abortions and not suffered because of it. Is there pain included in the decision? Certainly physical pain, yes, and perhaps emotional pain too, depending on the circumstances. But I know as an adult that just because I make a decision with painful consequences does not mean that I have made the wrong decision.

Only a culture in abject denial attempts to avoid pain at all costs. The true cost of this, sadly, is suffering, and anyone who wants to encourage a woman to suffer rather than experience pain needs to check his motives. I'd rather do the hard thing and live an easy life than do the easy thing and live a hard life. I cannot imagine counseling anyone otherwise.

Chiming in here after a long absence from your blog:
We have had years of anti-choice swill to confuse us.
Ages ago I read a lot of freshman essays. One of them was by a woman who had had an abortion. She did not think of this as a moral decision at all. What annoyed her were the crazies around the clinic who were trying to stop her.
My mother had an abortion after having two kids already, a not uncommon occurence. She did it because her birth contral failed; she could not afford another baby. This was before abortion was legalized. I call her decision responsible.
My dopey neighbor who does not have a bean has decided to go ahead and have her fourth kid with a completely irresponsiible and violent partner because she LOVES him. How romantic. I talked her into taking Plan B once or she would be having her fifth kid now. She does not understand the part about how there is no AFDC any more for her. She used it up. Her mother raised five on AFDC and she somehow believes that the money will drop from heaven onto her sweet and wonderful head.
My kids with good jobs and stable relationships struggle to bring their kids up. It's a very expensive proposition.

"So when someone chooses to smoke, and develops the foreseen consequence of lung tumors, should we try and dissuade him from surgery to remove them?"

we should respect his choice to accept or reject treatment. we may, if he solicits our input, attempt to influence his decision, but we should respect his choice once made.

all choices have consequences; in your hypothetical, the lung cancer is a consequence, but it also in turn presents its own range of choices, each of which, in turn, has their own range of consequences.

my point was that frequently there IS an emotional consequence to choosing to have an abortion (even if you do not feel that there was any such consequence in your situation), and that i think it's inappropriate that we try to turn having an abortion into something that is inconsequential. it can be a momentous, life-altering decision, no matter what the decision is. maybe it wasn't for you, and that's all well and good. my suggestion is that it is wrong to add additional stressors to an already difficult situation (thus, i am pro-choice), but we're not deciding on how long our fake fingernails should be.

Right on Diana regarding the movie Juno. I felt the same way. What no abortion? WTF! The last thing I wanted to do was go to H.S. period let alone go pregnant. I thank goodness my abortion was safe and legal and I never for one second had any regrets. BTW- my procedure was complicated but I was so grateful to the professionals who took care of me and yes, my boyfriend at the time drove me.

Right on Diana regarding the movie Juno. I felt the same way. What no abortion? WTF! The last thing I wanted to do was go to H.S. period let alone go pregnant. I thank goodness my abortion was safe and legal and I never for one second had any regrets. BTW- my procedure was complicated but I was so grateful to the professionals who took care of me and yes, my boyfriend at the time drove me.

So glad to see new posts from you, Diana! I, too, was disgusted w/"Juno": all I could think of was the untold multitudes of copycat behavior it would encourage...[P.S. I haven't regretted any of MY abortions either]

Dr. Blaine, haven't checked in on your blog for some time (since I was still @ SC in fact), but had to clear a few things up here.

While I agree with much of what you're saying, your research was a little sloppy and you mis-attributed your quotes (from knocked-up) and completely missed the point of that scene. The stoner's friend is saying smush-smortion because it is riffing on the joke of the whole film that the other friend is too much of a pussy and can't even hear the word abortion, yet he himself is advocating the procedure. If she had actually had the procedure, the movie would've been 30 minutes long and about as funny as the Marquis de Sade.

I suggest we not look to lame hollywood comedy for our morals and our role models, rather that we educate our children as to the many options available to them in such a situation.

As for Juno, it sucked for all of the above and more. I absolutely hated that movie, the soundtrack should've been one long rim-shot for all the crappy Ed McMahon-y one-liners it threw at us. It wasn't charming, it wasn't funny, it wasn't insightful. It was nothing more than an excuse for an ugly stripper to use her new macbook.

i just found your blog and was happy to have.

i'm also in the pro-choice, but not necessarily pro-abortion group. i believe there are so many great people out there who want to adopt, that most of the time it is THE better alternative.

btw, not all of hollywood is "Liberal" ... not by a stretch.

and for RainbowWarriorTX, not all anti-abortion folks are bible-thumpers or jesus-freaks ... there are plenty of folks from other faiths and some who don't even adhere to a particular belief that oppose abortion vehemently.

Yes, those were the good old days. From Fast Times to Juno? How far we have fallen.

Just found your site, and how refreshing!

"So when someone chooses to smoke, and develops the foreseen consequence of lung tumors, should we try and dissuade him from surgery to remove them?"

I am pretty far left in my politics, an athiest, and I am pro-choice in the sense that I have little interest in poking my nose in other people's personal business, but as this is a public forum i felt the need to comment on your comparison of a cancerous tumor and a child. They couldn't be further apart and I was actually somewhat offended - and believe me, this is tough to do - by this analogy. I am not a "proud parent" either, so there is no sentimentality here, but a child is not a cancerous tumor, it is a child. As I have been guilty of making poor analogies I am not going to get hung up on this point.

Also, removing consequences from our actions is a very slippery slope. Sex is an action. There are consequences that occur as a result of this action. If we are unprepared to deal with the consequences we should think twice prior to partaking in the activity. Personal responsibility is grossly lacking within our culture because we have removed consequences.

I am also a naturalist and am very wary of modernity in general. We, as a species, have done all we can to separate ourselves from the natural order of our world. Cause and effect are powerful natural tools, educationally speaking, and it is dangerous to just allow modern medicine to remove the effects of what we cause. You seem to want hollywood to be responsible for advocating abortion as a good choice. Perhaps the good choice would have been for these characters to have not engaged in an activity that you are fully aware of the consequences of but are unwilling to accept. Just a thought.

And back to the tumor business... I am not a fan of modern medicine. A smoker new the possible consequences of their actions. Cause and Effect. Our curing of diseases has led to a massive overpopulation problem. For some 3.5 billion years disease has been a major controlling factor in the population of a given species. The arrogance to think that we should just jump in and stop this process is misguided.