Psychologically, it makes sense that women who have had abortions don’t want to entertain the idea that this was anything other than completely necessary. The alternative would be opening oneself up to the possibility of a grave mistake, one that has no immediate material solution. Of course, people can learn to forgive themselves, and they can receive forgiveness from God (if they believe in God). But failures in parenting are among the most guilt-inducing and painful, and post-abortion defensiveness finds its context therein.
However, the argument that a woman somehow knows with certainty that having the child would be life-ruining before she has an abortion is absurd. It’s one thing to claim that women can be trusted to make their own decisions. It’s something else to claim that they can know the future.
In her statement on Dobbs, Michelle Obama wrote that she is “heartbroken for the teenage girl, full of zest and promise, who won’t be able to finish school or live the life she wants,” as well as for the “parents watching their child’s future evaporate before their very eyes.”
Watching the future evaporate before your very eyes is waking up from a daydream. All parents have to do this sooner or later. As they develop, children disappoint, turn out differently from what parents desired, make choices that their parents don’t agree with, and fail to meet expectations (reasonable or otherwise). Maturity and growth mean rolling with the punches. So does love.
Such anguish is not caused by the actual future — unknown and unknowable — but rather by its anticipation. What if having the baby turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me? Women who have had abortions don’t dare ask themselves that. Abortion advocates and activists don’t either. In doing so, they spit on hope.