Why would a healthy, affluent, college-educated 22-year-old woman decide to abort her child when there are thousands of infertile couples clamoring for newborns and adoption agencies offering to pay all expenses during pregnancy and birth?

There are three major reasons:

1. Childbirth, even when it entails no further responsibilities, awakens femininity. Two people are born at birth: the mother and the child. This awakening threatens the single-minded obsession with the masculine pursuit of career. 

2. Pregnancy and childbirth, even in an age of sexual freedom, are shameful for unmarried women of a certain class. They are low-status events when not surrounded by the trappings of marriage, baby showers, the painstakingly decorated nursery, comfortable living conditions, etc.

3. Childbirth is contrary to an ethic of self-fulfillment. This radical change means confusion and ostracism in a culture of youthful narcissists.

                          — Comments —

Karen I. writes:

Emmie’s story turned my stomach to read. What sickened me the most is the way she said that the baby she had in a few years would have a better life than the one she was aborting. The whole thing was about her, never about the poor baby. 

I find it interesting that a woman who has made so many mistakes already at 22 thinks she has her future all figured out. She’s going to graduate from that program, find a good man, then have a baby. What a perfect life she has planned. But she is wrong about that, too. She is on a path that will never accommodate a child. No matter when she wants a baby, it won’t be the right time. Right now, the excuse is graduate school, later it will be “but my career is just starting”, then “I cannot possibly take time off from my important job” or “we just bought a house and we have so much debt” or “I still have so many loans to pay off.” She may also think “I have worked so hard for so many years, I deserve some time to myself.” The time will fly by and she may well be facing infertility before the time seems right. She will likely look back then and realize if she had the baby at 22, it would already be grown up. What a tragedy. 

As for Emmie’s excuse of a mother, I suspect the abortion would have been avoided altogether if she had handled things differently. As it stands now, she was complicit in the murder of her grandchild.

Laura writes:

The mother in this story is so vividly familiar. I have met her counterpart many times: the older middle-aged woman who stands by passively and watches the lives of her children spiral out of control. The truth is she is too caught up in herself – her career or travels or impressive pursuits –  to care. Or she is simply unable to rise above the emotional relativistic creed by which she lives. Her children announce they are homosexual or living with someone or getting divorced and she murmurs momentary amazement that so much has changed.

She is not a mother, but an accomplice. A “facilitator.”

Where was the father in this? He probably left it all to the girls; expressed no anger toward the young man involved; and considered his daughter’s sexual life of no significant interest to him.

He is not a father, but a man-child.

Sheila C. writes: 

What horror: A young woman whose conscience is so stunted that she casually snuffs out her child’s life and insists everything is fine. Yet this modern day Pangloss sees no conflict in her desire to have a marriage and family (after her much more important education and career, of course) at the time of her choosing. Such a deterministic view of life – how will she ever cope when things just don’t go according to her plan? She’ll blame her future problems on the environment, or indignantly declare she was never told she might have problems conceiving. A friend of my youth had a few abortions prior to her marriage, and then, with great reluctance (and after fertility treatments) had one child. I cannot conceive of looking at one’s child and knowing that others, just as extraordinary and unique, were destroyed because they were inconvenient. A life, a soul, is casually conceived and casually disposed of, and our evil society proclaims the victory of choice. The layers of sin here appal me. You’re so correct, Laura, in labeling her mother a mere facilitator, not a parent. A parent would grieve her daughter’s moral destruction and her grandchild’s physical destruction, but through the looking glass, everything is all right because the putative father provided a ride to the abortion clinic.

Michael S. writes:

I’m sick to death of the word “prestigious.” Are you?

Laura writes:

Prestigious is a nauseating word, the preferred descriptive term of technocratic snobs. But it’s the only word to use for Emmie’s graduate program. You see, the child might deserve to live if Emmie were going to community college or a low-grade grad school.

Michael writes:

I’ve been reading the comments over at nytimes.com, and all I can say is: This is a nation of perverts, a nation of twisted wills. Lord have mercy on us.

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