I just read this again! You are so right. A fetus is not a person. The mother is the person whose life will be destroyed by having a baby she is not prepared to have, has no support, no money, no dad for the baby. No hope for the child. And yet, for a careless coupling with a man who likely disappeared soon after (if not immediately) she must now give up her life.

I never understood why the impregnator waltzes off without any obligations, financial or otherwise. No bloody abortion, no coat hanger, no damning by society.

Why is not the man sterilized, I often wondered? Why must the woman pay the price? Be bullied and shamed and tormented by all the holier than thou judgmental people for getting an abortion? The man made it happen!!! I thought that back in 1974, when I was a teenager, same age as your mom.

An age old question with no good answer. I will never forget being at some cocktail party back in the nineties and overhearing a man say, joking with other men, in the context of some story about a botched circumcision: "I would rather be a man without a penis than a woman!" And the other men all chuckled and agreed. Ya, you got that right!

I have thought about that comment a lot, and still do, so many years (decades) later.

Why is that Mommy? Why are women shamed and men applauded?

Why did I have a sister, but you, Mommy, only ever cleaned our brother's bedroom when we were little?