This young girl is in tears over how attached she is to the zygote, but somehow manages to justify her decision to abort it extremely easily (“everyone is telling me that being a mom will suck at first but then it will be wonderful. What if it’s not? I want to do something I enjoy for a change, something for me!”). Attached to the zygote? But able to abort? Really? Maybe her story is a good example of why women experience poor mental health as the result of an abortion.

Once I came to the decision to terminate the pregnancy, so much of the guilt and sadness I’d been feeling melted away. …In some ways, I feel like I’ve given up. I didn’t want to go down without a fight, I wanted to be a tough mother who braved the world for her child.

Now I was raised by tough and courageous parents, who moved across the ocean to escape an immoral regime. Maybe that’s why I find I’m often short on the sympathy file. If you claim to want to do the right thing, then just do it. Don’t write long meandering tracts on how you wanted to but couldn’t possibly be brave. (The article also points out she was offered every help in the book.)

You know what I’m sorry about? (Because I’m not feeling sympathy for her right now, to be sure.) I’m sorry a person can be so spineless as to kill her child in favour of a Masters degree. And then claim “it was the right thing to do” to the nodding affirmation of New York Times types.

…but don’t take it from me. Take it from a woman who has had two abortions:

So much of life is a gamble, and I think I might have had as good a chance of staying together with the first guy as I did with my ex-husband. And I am not sure that my life would have turned out worse if I had had kids early. I am not sure it would have turned out better. I’m not even sure it would have been that different.

You never know, not really. There is little certainty. But there are some certain truths: It’s very hard to have an abortion. And, there is not a perfect time to have kids.

Life is a gamble, and yet we all seem to want to sign on the dotted line: Successful career by age XX, husband by age YY, 2.5 kids precisely when I am ready. I don’t think it works this way.

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Brigitte couldn’t agree more: I can’t even manage to get rice pudding right – it’s either too thick or not enough, I never get it just so. And it only involves a handful of ingredients on a stove over which I exercise full control. Imagine trying to micromanage Life…

I’m not dishing dirt, but rather reviewing it. Or reading a review of it. There’s a book out called Dirt and Wendy Shalit, who I like, has written this review:

Ms. Lewis’s anthology ­offers a series of lively essays about “who wields the vacuum and why.” Subjects range from household help to a widower who realized too late how much his wife did for their home. Some authors are baby boomers, others are in their 30s or younger—but most are women who brag about not wielding a vacuum and an inability to keep order.

I do not brag about an inability to keep order. Au contraire. Everything has a place, and life is good when my tiny apartment is clean and organized. Like a ship. Life gets even better if I remember to buy flowers, just because they are pretty.  (Not like a ship. I don’t imagine there are flowers on the high seas.)

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Brigitte would like to illustrate another point of view… (I’m not proud of it, I’m just trying to be honest)

Read the voice of a young woman who wants to provide abortions though she doesn’t think it is morally right:

I agree that ending an unwanted pregnancy is a tragedy. When I advocate for reproductive rights, for choice, I don’t claim that abortion is morally acceptable. I think that it’s a very private, intensely personal decision.

I think this sort of argument does sway a lot of people. She’s making the case for compassionate killing, and if we as a culture didn’t think abortion was compassionate, I don’t think we would offer them.

This blog post is not new, but a friend who is a teacher forwarded it to me:

It is far better to not be in a relationship, wishing you were in one, than to actually be in one, wishing you weren’t. Be willing, I pray you, to be single for the rest of your life, if that’s what it takes to not settle for second best; as that would be far better than marrying a man who cannot love you.

And I thought that is good advice for girls/women, who, at times make bad choices with precisely the opposite idea–that it is better to be with someone, no matter who it is or how they treat you, than to be alone.

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Véronique adds: That’s always my piece of marital bliss advice whenever I’m asked by a single person: don’t settle. Marriage is a lot of work even when the person is your dream-come-true so imagine being married to someone who leaves you lukewarm. As the mother of 4 daughters, I have sympathy for arranged marriages on a theoretical level (as in: “In theory, I would like to spare my daughters the pain of marrying losers by choosing their spouses for them.”) But I think that in today’s age of instant gratification and Hollywood romance, the odds are tightly stacked against long term commitment and the inevitable grind of living in close proximity with someone else. Being swept off your feet is a must, in my humble-but-somewhat-educated opinion.

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Rebecca adds: A friend called Tanya (not our Tanya) told me this, a decade ago, and it stuck with me.  “You are created a cake, a whole, perfect, delicious cake that is enjoyable all by itself.  Now with the right icing, a delicious cake becomes even better.  But the wrong icing is not only unenjoyable in its own right, it spoils your enjoyment of the cake.  It is far better to be a delicious cake without icing than paired with the wrong icing.”  Silly, but it gets the meaning across very well.

Put another way, being lonely when you’re single is unpleasant. Being lonely when you’re in a bad relationship is worse.