Again - why all this talk of her life being 'destroyed' by having an abortion as a result of adult pressure? We project our opinions onto our children all the time, and put pressure on them where choices and behaviours that will affect their life and their future are concerned - why should this be different?
She is a child! She needs to be told what's good for her! Should she be respected in her choice to get into a car with three drunken 18 year olds? After all, it may change her life forever. What about if she suddenly decides at 14 that she wants to drop out of education? Leave home to live with a 40 year old man? Start taking class A drugs? Should we just sit back and 'respect' her decision to make choices that will almost certainly have a detrimental effect on her?
An abortion will only destroy her mentally if she is encouraged to persist in the delusion that having a baby while she is a child is a good thing. She may have already googled all the pregnancy cupport groups and charities, and she may have been brinwashed inot thinking that she will feel violated, not respected, and blackmailed into giving up something utterly wonderful and perfect that would have made her idyllically happy, that she will never experience again.
It's all about how it is sold to her. Instead of being packaged as a 'huge loss' it should be seen as a lucky escape, and second chance - an opportunity for her to be the best mum she can be - in a few more years, under more appropriate circumstances.
For every girl who says she's 'grieving' for a baby she wanted to keep, there are probably a hundred more living a full and happy life, enjoying their carefree youth, completing their education or building a career and not looking back. And another hundred living a frustrating unfulfilling half-life, either alone, or with some feckless twat of a boyfriend who would rather be out with his mates, no money, no light at the end of the tunnel, no respect from anyone because she is seen as a fool, and a burden on the state, and living with the knowledge that her child is considered by the authorities as 'disadvantaged' because of the naive ill-informed choices she made.
It should be explained to her that post- abortion she may experience a hormonal response that will be like that of miscarriage, and that she may go into a short term depression or post traumatic stress, but that is a perfectly normal biological response, and should not be confused with being depressed beacuse she has made the wrong decision. Forewarned is forearmed. I think in the past too many girls may have had terminations like having a tooth out, without any thought to the fact that they may need support afterwards for a bit.
What I find amazing is the counselling and assessing you have to go through before the docotrs will agree that you are strong enough to 'cope' mentally with the enormity of the decision to terminate - yet no-one bothers to do the same when you want to bring a baby into the world, which is BEYOND enormous in comparison. You can be as emotionally fragile and ill-equipped as you like and it doesn't matter a jot. You are perfectly within your rights to make that decision all by yourself. But if it turns out you are not up to the job you can have you child forcibly removed, which will do untold mental damage to the woman AND the child.
That's arse about face to me.
People who say their lives were ruined by being pressured into termination are probably people who were a bit emotionally unstable and needy in the first place.