This is the fourth in a series of posts in Q&A format.  It’s an experiment; readers, do you like it or hate it?  Though slightly edited, the questions are from real letters.  By responding to just one letter per post, I can also post more often.  Coming Thursday:  The ITC statement on natural law.  Coming next Monday:  Points of no return.

Professor:

Could it be that the typical elective abortion is not a happy exercise of unfettered personal freedom, but rather the result of coercion?  I think the abortion lobby’s widely trumpeted assertion that abortion is an essential exercise in freedom of choice is an appalling political lie.  How many mothers would rather carry the child to term, but abort because of economic or social pressures -- especially pressures from males who occupy positions of ostensible authority in these women’s lives?

Reply:

I agree.  Pressures from other women too.  When my wife used to do crisis pregnancy counseling, she told me that the most common source of pressure to have an abortion wasn't the man, but the young woman's mother.

Some  -- not all -- of this pressure probably results from the fact that so many of these women’s mothers have also had abortions.  If a woman has had an abortion, then to encourage her daughter to have her baby is to admit, even if only to herself, that she should have had her own baby too.  This requires courage.  It is a difficult thing to do.