Something more than hormones

I wonder if pregnancy hormones can make feelings of regret, sadness and guilt last for 18 years.

From a new blog by Completely Brunette:

It is only now, eighteen years later, that I see the contradiction. Women must have the right to "choose". Yet, I felt my only choice was to have an abortion. Where was my "choice"? I was a teenage girl from a middle class family. My parents were educated and well respected in the community. Girls in my situation, my social status, did not have babies.....

Abortion is a dirty word. The waiting room is grim. The operating room is an emotional nightmare. The recovery room is full of grief, numbness and despair. It is a funeral with no service. It took the courage of a close friend voicing her feelings to me, who had also had an abortion, for me to admit – to myself, even- that I believed what I had done was wrong. For eighteen years I silently damned myself.....

I was given the impression, as a young woman, that I could have an abortion and everything would go back to "normal". Now, I believe that for most women, once you have carried a child in your womb, there is no going backwards, no matter what the "choice". Once you conceive you give up control, you give up your "choice" and are suddenly a mother....

Abortion is wrong. It is not a political issue. Not an ideological value. Not a "choice". It is simply wrong. We are, literally, as women, as mothers, sacrificing our children for ourselves....

Abortion is the antitheses of "choice". It is an ending.

(Emphasis mine)

HT: After Abortion