My Little Daughter Born at 24 Weeks' Gestation Was Recognized as a Person and Given a Birth Certificate

THIS STORY USED BY ABORTION ADVOCATES TO EVOKE SYMPATHY MIGHT BE TRUE, BUT DOES BEAR CHECKING

 

So I like to check stories to see if they are authentic. When I first looked on Instagram, as you might, while I can find the person loririviere who purportedly liked this post (along with a million others) -- with a sonogram and a comment from a very rare sort of case (as I know from experience), the person who allegedly posted it chloe_a (https://www.instagram.com/chloe_a/?hl=en) does not appear to have the same picture, or be the same person, or to have that post on her Instagram account or anything like it. Frankly, it's very common to fake things like that for the sake of a cause campaign so it's worth checking.

 

So let's take a second look. Here is the post on Twitter:

 

Here’s how the abortion laws affect pregnant women who want their babies. For those still refusing to see how this affects ALL women, read Chloe’s story: pic.twitter.com/Jmpoyd1pEu

— Marlena Stell (@MarlenaStell) June 30, 2022

And read this woman's story while you are at it.

 

Those of you more adept at Instagram can come along and tell me it is possible for more than one person to have the exact same system name (not display name, system) on Instagram; Twitter and many services don't allow it.

 

Someone then told me that the name has to be spelled with three underscores. I still didn't find it -- and again, I believe in checking social media, from long experience working in the media.

 

Of course, one has to wonder why this person is shown with an infant, supposedly incompatible with life, is shown smiling, dressed, not in the NICU, and apparently healthy, but ok, I'm sure there's a good explanation -- likely it was another child.

 

VARIOUS ELEMENTS OF THE STORY CHECK OUT, BUT THERE ARE HOLES -- AND DO READ THE OUTCOME

 

So here's the link -- you don't have to wait long on social media! So Chloe, in a picture posted 7 weeks ago, as you learn from the service, was holding a young infant who looks to be less than 3 months old -- clothed, healthy, and smiling, and not in the NICU, is obviously NOT the infant in the sonogram.

 

But then...how was she able to immediately get pregnant and have another infant already at 25 weeks? That was awfully fast. I think the story bears checking. Let me think. I suppose she could have been pregnant with twins. It does happen very rarely that you give birth to one twin, and the other remains in the womb. Not an ideal situation.  She could have in theory had the healthy baby, then immediately gotten pregnant again but that would be an 8 week old gestational age, not 25? OK, I'm not good at math, you work it. I think it doesn't add up and there is either more to this story, or it's fake. Now that we have more data, we can geolocate her sonogram to Arizona, which only permits abortions up to 20 weeks, so that part checks out, and the sonogram was taken in a facility for high-risk pregnancies.  One Twitter user scanned her feed and came up with the alleged factlet that the baby in her picture before the sonogram post was born in August 2021, and the picture may not have been taken 7 weeks ago, when it was posted, but still, those pregnancies are awfully close together, and no one seems to have had a thought in their heads about the benefits of birth control.

 

NO WORRIES, THIS MOM WAS NOT FORCED TO ENDURE HORROR BUT RAISED FUNDS TO PERFORM AN ABORTION IN A NEARBY STATE

But in any event, no worries, Chloe has raised $20,000 on GoFundMe to pay for "the procedure"  -- hotel and medical costs in another state which she claims was "$17,000" at that gestational age. Oh? Well, there could be complications we don't know about at that later stage. She does admit she will have a "lot" left over to presumably support her other, healthy and live infant but she is going to generously give the $8500 she received from "another fund" to "someone else who needs it."

 

Ok. From what I can tell with cursory research, it seems there is a person who already has a child, and had this terribly fated pregnancy, and was not allowed an abortion in her state, but did go to the next state over. None of that story emerges from the first posting which has millions of views, and few will bother to track down the rest of the story. Nor will they admit it is RARE.

 

Perhaps, given the high amount of circulation of that post -- a million likes on an account with only a few hundred followers still -- journalists both pro- and anti- abortion will get to work on it, and perhaps some day we will get the story, for better or worse as it appears to me now -- still with some holes but possible -- or utterly debunked. That's social media for you.

 

TAKE THE MORAL AND FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR ABORTION CAMPAIGN, DON'T JUST DEMAND ANTI-ABORTIONISTS PAY FOR UNWANTED CHILDREN

 

But here's my point about all this. If you want to campaign for abortion, please take all the moral and financial consequences for doing so. Don't sugarcoat it. Don't cherry-pick edge cases like Chloe's that you think are compelling and will win Republicans over to your side. They won't. Who would ever want a pregnant woman to suffer in this way, carrying a baby who has either died or whose condition is incompatible with life?! But the GOP members are not all stupid yahoos as you imagine (I myself am a straight-ticket Democrat).

I know women who suffered such fetal demise, as it is called, but didn't instantly demand an abortion -- simply didn't want the extra trauma of a C-section -- trust me, if your baby has died in the womb, it will not take long for it to be stillborn. While it is theoretically possible for babies with conditions "incompatible with life" to go to full term, it is extremely rare for them to do so. So let's not use edge cases like this -- let's be truthful. Most abortions do not involve a case like this, and those who advocate abortion shouldn't cloak that fact.

 

IF ABORTION IS HEALTH CARE, SO ARE SUICIDE AND EUTHANASIA

Abortion isn't "health care"; it's not like removing a fibroid tumor. Especially at this later stage, it's far more traumatic, despite all the brave things its proponents, often people who never faced pregnancy, will tell you.

 

It's especially traumatic if you come to the realization that your baby is either disabled, or in a state incompatible with life, or even dead -- but that's not the reason for most abortions, and we must not pretend it is.

 

Even if you believe that a fetus is not a person even at 39-40 weeks right before birth, or isn't a person at 24 weeks or 32 weeks or whatever cut-off you design, you have to concede that removing that much tissue from your body is not something you merely fix with brief scalpel work and then a band-aid.

 

And ultimately, if abortion is "health care," then so is suicide, so is euthanasia. Again, have the courage of your convictions, and let the country and states divide, I'm all for it. Abortion is a solution. A solution for women whom you desire to have full autonomy that even cancels out the autonomy of their unborn child -- whom you have concluded is not a person. You have this position because you don't believe the fetus is a person. That's how you can live with what seems like a grisly belief system, and I totally respect that as a modern, Western liberal.

 

But here's my main point: You simply have to be willing to concede that a woman who wishes an abortion at any stage for ANY reason should be allowed to do so -- six weeks or 40 weeks.

 

We have known since the 2019 abortion in New York State that your concessions about limitations on abortion were just that, tactical. Not your actual belief, in life with the recent Harvard/Harris Poll.

 

That reason may be judged by society -- a reason like "my career" or "to hang on to a man I hope to convince to stay with me" or "so I can fit into my dress for the prom". ANY reason. Because "health of the mother" is NOT defined in New York State and many states and could be just about anything, when you factor in mental health. So if you want abortion, please be morally consistent and don't play up rare, terribly tear-jerking cases; admit that someone whom you find to be a "Wal-mart" shopper who could have gotten on the bus to the next state 3 months ago -- or ordered birth control online from Wal-mart, for that matter -- is going to be the primary beneficiary of this right you promote, and for reasons that may not make your cause look good. Have the moral consistency to admit that.

 

WHY DON'T ABORTION ADVOCATES MENTION BIRTH CONTROL, EVER?

 

I think many American Catholics, who use birth control and openly promote birth control as the lesser of two evils according to their faith, accept that abortion is the law of the land -- not as "a form of birth control", although it can be that, but because -- all kinds of reasons, good and bad.

 

And every Catholic I know from my church or network of friends and family is bewildered as to why the pro-abortionists never promote birth control, when even they, as Catholics, accept and use it, that's the fact. If the Pope ever decides to really crack down on this issue, he will find himself with a new American Catholic Church and likely other splinter churches as well. It's like how Putin, invading Ukraine and perpetrating a genocidal war, found himself not with a subdued part of Russia, but two new NATO members -- Finland and Sweden -- and another on the way to the EU -- Ukraine -- and likely NATO, too. 

 

And we have to conclude that abortion advocates never campaign for more and better birth control, because they don't want to concede that abortion is not so much a "choice," as it is the end state of a life without support from families, and without responsibility and planning.  Contraception can fail, but if that were the only reason for an abortion, and everyone used contraception, there would be orders of magnitude less of them. Pro-abortionists want you to take on the expense of care of infants and children; Democrats have never wanted to admit there's an expense on their end, as well, of young girls, single mothers and others who don't organize birth care or abortions before 15 weeks.

 

Pro-abortion campaigners -- we now longer have to hide behind the euphemism of "pro-choice" because they themselves have dropped this euphemism -- still don't want to concede that the beneficiaries of their desired right look bad because their choice didn't start with the choice of contraception for all kinds of complicated emotional and social reasons that generally are not really about the lack of access to contraception, which anyone can purchase online at Wal-mart. Or get from Planned Parenthood. Remember Planned Parenthood?

 

That would undermine their cause.

 

And 24 weeks rather than 40 seems "reasonable" due to the notion of "viability" -- but here's where my story and the issue of personhood comes in.

 

$500 FOR AN ABORTION OR $110,00 FOR NEONATAL CARE?

 

I can tell you that 30 years ago in 1991, we spent more than $110,000 trying to save our daughter born at 23-24 weeks' gestation -- who died after one month due to complications of prematurity -- rather than opting to spend only $500 two blocks away from the hospital to have an abortion (or to accept even Beth Israel's offer of an abortion, which they will do in an extreme case of placenta abruption and other "threats to the life of a mother."

 

That's why, if we're all going to trade profoundly traumatic and intimate experiences here, I get to share mine, too, and force you to think of the implications, just like you wanted me to think of the implications showing me this post on Instagram and Twitter above. 

 

Today, the price of abortions have gone up to at least $800 or more, and the price of neonatal care, like much medical care has skyrocketed, and is now more likely half a million or more for the equivalent services of 30 years ago. Advances in neonatology haven't kept pace with the price -- while a small percent more of severely premature babies can be saved -- and have good outcomes! -- it is really not so great because of the hard facts of biology: an infant at that age does not have mature lungs, even with additional medications to assist maturity and using respiratory therapy on them leads to complications. I was among the first persons to sign for experimental use of surfactant to assist my premature child; today it is routine.

 

CASES LIKE CHLOE'S OR MINE ARE VERY RARE

 

But...Do you have any idea how rare it really is to be in a situation in which a mother's life is actually threatened? Or to have a fetus that did not already automatically self-abort in miscarriage, which is common in general for pregnancies?

 

Let me suggest I do know what this situation is like after being held upside down in the Trendelenburg position for 3 days, on an IV with magnesium sulfate, unable to eat and later not allowed to drink, suffering from massive loss of blood. Even so, when nurses and doctors were arrayed before me like a Greek chorus offering either abortion -- which they legally performed at that gestational age -- OR the NICU and a possible life of profound disability for my child, I chose the NICU, because my child was born alive, crying aloud, kicking her tiny legs and arms, and had good APGAR scores.

 

I know at least some percentage of the ardent but abstract pro-abortion campaigners, had they stood next to me in that maternity room, might have had some qualms about their beliefs, looking at my child who was born alive. Fortunately, they are almost never put to the test because such cases are rare.

 

A US CITIZEN AT THE AGE OF 24 WEEKS GESTATION

 

As they rushed from the room, the doctors froze for a brief second and asked me her name. "Anna," I said -- and she was given a birth certificate and became a citizen of NYS and the US, and later had a baptismal certificate, of which I was proud. My daughter, who could have been aborted then and there, or two blocks away -- that's how you need to understand the profound contradiction here, if you can face the truth. Because the US postal service works so terribly, I had the trauma of receiving her birth certificate -- and the card on which her tiny footprints were stamped -- in a big envelope stamped 'DAMAGED DURING DELIVERY' which was more true than they knew.

 

I assure you we all treated as a person this little baby who in fact looked like her father. Why wouldn't we? It wasn't abstract. It was real. All my relatives and co-workers -- some of whom were pro-abortion -- came and donated blood because constant blood transfusions are required for these cases.

 

I tell you this so that you realize that this gestational age is indeed a person that anyone, even those who prefer not to grant a fetus personhood, would agree is a person, and the state of New York, in issuing her a birth certificate, agreed as well -- although to abort this infant at the exact same gestational age was also legal. Yes, it was a borderline case and rare -- like the cases pro-abortion campaigners use now to engender sympathy for abortion.

 

Again, read up on this topic and you will find that while there is significant progress made in rescuing severely premature infants, and I have friends who have made it through this incredible ordeal with children more or less intact and developing normally, it still is an enormous risk and the outcomes are not at all guaranteed (as I have colleagues who are enduring those outcomes as well -- children who are blind, unable to breathe on their own, and mentally disabled). If you feel compelled to tell me the story of how your uncle was put in a shoebox and kept warm and still lived, do have the courtesy to note that he wasn't at 24 weeks' gestation. If you want to tell me about how your baby made it out of the NICU, do be honest about his or her gestational age and chances -- likely it was at 28 weeks or later, which is a WORLD of difference. Did you know that 30 years ago, this is how the survivability rate was explained to me, in terms of race, going from most chances to survive, to least: 1) Black girls 2) white girls 3) white boys 4) Black boys. That tells you everything you need to know about our society and the great disparity in health care and much more. I have no idea if this grim statistic has changed. Likely not.

 

THE TORTUE OF THE NICU

 

My daughter died after one month of intensive treatment in the NICU, of complications of prematurity. I have seriously considered whether I made a tragic mistake in clearing her for takeoff to the NICU, given what amounts to the actual torture that constitutes treatment of such profoundly small infants. But I had never heard of an NICU and its works before and it wasn't in all the pregnancy help books at the time. 

 

To give you just one story out of a hellscape of 30 days: when my daughter had to have a serious operation called a "cut-down" to install a feeding tube directly into her forearm, because her little veins had collapsed at that point, I wanted to be present because I was told she would likely die on the operating table. By that time, she had already had several pneumothorax incidents (collapsed lungs from air pressure while on a respirator puncturing a lung). She had already had her heart restarted several time -- a process that on this tiny a creature involves only a light massage of a doctor's single finger. I was told of course I couldn't be present. So I hid in a treatment room, right next to the NICU where the operation was taking place, a treatment room with a window and a curtain over it, which you could still peak through. I watched with a terribly sinking heart my tiny girl turn blue, as six doctors worked on her in a room with the temperature made cold. They believed she was a person they had to save by that point, not a mere fetus they should have let go -- or should I say, they were mandated by law in the Reagan era. After about 30 or 40 minutes, I saw they were finishing up and hurried to exit out of the side room before they caught me. As I reached the door, the chief physician walked by, his face looking utterly worried an exhausted, as he said:

 

"The instruments they make for the NICU are not small enough to use on an infant of that gestational age."

 

Imagine how I felt hearing that information. Rationally, I would then comment that therefore, you must not perform such operations and declare them futile, a medical concept often invoked. That wasn't the culture of NICU doctors, however; I was shocked when I got a mass mailing from the hospital seeking donations, saying they were able to save infants as low as 1.5 lbs at gestation, which was their latest historical record. That was my baby in that junk mail, "Superwoman," as the doctors dubbed her. Although not for long.

 

This rather heavy handed cut-down installed with an instrument too blunt for the task at hand bought my daughter another few weeks of life -- and all this time there was always the hope and the progress report from doctors that she might turn the corner as she began to regain her birth weight. I was pumping and freezing my milk. Nurses began to tell me that they were going to move her from the isolette -- a hell-box with glaring lights and literally plastic wrap over it to make it easier for for doctors to quickly reach her -- to another kind of incubator with a proper cover, less light, and less noise in the corner. Her brain was not damaged from IVH.

 

Yet.

 

Then some time later came the news that our daughter suffered an IVH, and now was expected to suffer from cerebral palsy and brain damage from "iatrogenic treatment" and indeed, her tiny legs now ceased to move vigorously, and moved stiffly if at all, as if in a slow motion movie. I put my head down on the doctor's desk and wept, as did her father. Ultimately, she died of what is known commonly as "thrush" -- a healthy baby gets over a common nursery infection. A sick baby who has undergone multiple procedures does not -- even her heart muscle was infected.

I assure you I will never forget the most powerful force I have ever experienced in my life -- my tiny daughter, gripping my finger with her tiny hand in an infant's reflex.

 

I was fortunate that after that ordeal -- fast forward -- I had two more "take-home babies" who are now in their 20s and have careers and partners and full lives  -- and they even mainly sleep through the night, although it took some doing! 

 

SHOULDN'T ABORTION BE KEPT AVAILABLE FOR RAPE VICTIMS AT LEAST?

 

If you want to have abortion for rape victims, I can help you there, too. I have looked into the face of hell. I will never forget a small elementary school girl, no more than 12, in a New York psychiatric hospital who was severely psychotic, raging and screaming. She had been raped by her stepfather, and was very close to childbirth. If ever there was a case for abortion even at a late stage, that would be it, but in that era, not only NYS law forbid abortion past 24 weeks, the Reagan Administration had passed a law that in fact was a form of disabled rights, ensuring that infants suffering from disability would not be deliberately euthanized or left to die. In a case where a child is bearing a child, you'd want to make that exception, no?

 

If you feel that society can take on the care of her child born in such horrific circumstances, what's your plan to care for her, too? Shouldn't you have one?

 

How about an infant born without a brain at all? This does happen, although rarely. I saw such an infant allowed to die by being moved from the NICU to a step-down room from which he never stepped, given only hydration, with a blanket put over his incubator so no one watched. That's how it is done. And that's rational, because it's not like any amount of intervention is every going to make up for the lack of a brain. Or are you for keeping such a profoundly disabled infant alive forever, spending hundreds of millions of dollars? 

 

BE HONEST ABOUT THE REASONS FOR ABORTIONS

 

So I'm not without sympathy for exceptions; I just want to ensure that you grasp them and realize they are RARE -- like abortion itself should be. I just want you to read up on the actual customers for abortions. They aren't these cases. They are, all too often, as I know from my own girlfriends and family, women who are actually in a place of profound, profound, unchoice. They are trying to hang on to a man. If you think this isn't the case in our day and age, you are being dishonest. That's my experience, and it is valid, just as your Googled-statistic showing a variety of reasons, not just that one. Individual experiences are valid, remember? You are promoting an extremely rare case of an individual with a disabled fetus incompatible with life -- so even if you view my collection of stories from friends and family trying to compel a man to stay as "rare," you should accept it, right? Let's all acknowledge rare stories here.

 

Maybe that's why polls show that men are more likely to oppose the Roe rollback than women, you know?

 

Let's be adults here, too. Promote birth control. Promote women's rights. Make abortion "Safe, legal, and RARE" as Bill Clinton phrased it. Remember that RARE part of the "choice"? That's been dropped out. The "RARE" comes when a) you use birth control effectively b) you organize your abortion before 15 weeks. Even if you do not realize you are pregnant (and I know what that's like!), by 15 weeks, it is unmistakable, and easily confirmed with a cheap drugstore test. Again, the tiny percentage of edge cases that abortion rights' campaigners wheel out are not at all the norm even among their cohort of those who have had abortions. I'm not for letting them get away with propaganda. I want them to be honest about their cause, so that the people can decide this democratically.

 

MOST CATHOLICS ARE NOT ABSOLUTISTS

 

I think few people realize that Catholic are not absolutists. If I had opted to permit an abortion of my infant in my rare and severe circumstances, I do not believe my parish would have excommunicated me. Few secular influencers ever want to study actual Catholics, who perceive abortion not just as a matter of fetal personhood, but as a matter of preventing a lifetime of sorrow and regret for women. They don't see it as a dystopian world where unmarried, childless men who are child predators tell them what to do with their bodies. A church in my area regularly holds a ceremony of prayer for loss or unborn infants, and doesn't ask whether they died of abortion or rare situations like mine. The focus is on sorrow -- as part of respect for a woman's body that you imagine Catholics don't share. This is a very refreshing article -- wow, how did the NYT editors ever get that past their Slack Millennials? 

 

And Catholic ethicists are not the Medieval scourges many imagine. I consulted one at Notre Dame as I sat hour after hour with my very tiny infant in the NICU for a month, urged at times to sign a "DNR" order if needed. I didn't. My daughter died anyway. But this professor told me that the cost of sustaining such an infant can go beyond a half a million dollars, to a million -- perhaps more for life, thus causing severe damage to existing or future children and other family members, and that when this is weighed, the Catholic will not advocate extreme measures, even being pro-life. 

 

It's generally not the Catholics advocating that a child raped and expecting another child; a woman pregnant with an infant with no brain; a mother bleeding profusely from placenta abruption are all cases that you turn you back on and allow to suffer in the name of "life". My understanding is that the evangelicals are more absolutist about this matter but even there -- did you really ask them?

 

WHAT HAPPENED TO SAFE, LEGAL, AND RARE?

 

Even ardent pro-abortionists would have to concede that the edge cases they dredge up of rape victims and women with disabled fetuses are rare, and the measures needed to intervene beyond 24 weeks are extreme -- and also rare.

 

So abortions either have to really become rare -- something I see no signs of in the pro-abortion campaign any more -- OR they have to concede that they are not just for rare cases when a baby dies in the womb or a schoolgirl is raped by her father. They are now for anybody at any gestational age in NYS due to the broad notion of "health". Abortions are not just for cases of even children being raped. They are for anybody at any gestational age in NYS. Abortions are not just for cases when a mother might die from loss of blood. They are for anybody at any gestational age in NYS. These highly rare cases are the cases you cite, and even some states are going to take away those rare exceptions. But they are rare, so stop trying to gin up sympathy and disguise the nature of your movement if you are pro-abortion. And stop citing the mothers of other children who have abortions to devote what resources they have to their existing children.

 

IF ABORTIONS CANNOT BE RARE, THEY HAVE TO BE FOR ANY REASON FOR ANYONE

 

A large percentage of women who have abortions do not have other children -- 40% according to the respected Guttmacher Foundation, although the New York Times claims the "typical patient" is "already a mother" even admitting that this same typical patient is "in her 20s". Misleading, to say the least.  By using the term "typical," the NYT can evade the responsibility of admitting that as many as 40% do not have children -- "typical" can just mean "many". I'm sure if we keep Googling around we'll get all kinds of massaging of these numbers in different directions.

 

So let's cut to the chase and not play that game, please.

 

PRIVACY TRUMPS EVEN MURDER

 

If you are pro-abortion, you support abortions for any gestational age, for any reason, full stop. Few pro-abortion leaders are stepping out NOW and saying "except for XYZ" in a climate where even "XYZ" may not be conceded any more in red states. They have so emphatically dropped the term "pro-choice" that you have to wonder if they still believe it is ok for women to choose NOT to have an abortion, even if they find out they are expecting an infant with Down's Syndrome, or it's still ok for a family to support to term a child who has been raped and accept care of her infant. Do all women have autonomy over their bodies, or only Democrats?

 

Women are not required to explain why, under the Western liberal notion of privacy. They are not required to prove any exceptional status. Yes, as I have demonstrated, abortions do involve the murder of persons who could under other circumstances get a birth certificate. So if you want that kind of new world, be brave about it. And tell the truth. I can accept that we have different views and different beliefs about this matter and that it can be adjudicated by law democratically.

 

That's why I personally oppose abortion, but I'm fully aware that -- again, with the precepts of Western liberalism -- other people have very different beliefs and there has to be space in society for us and them. I don't look to Catholicism or any religion to take over all society and compel beliefs by force -- that are simply not shared. I think the problem of the public square is tolerance of pluralism, not the state taking on paternal responsibilities.

 

People have different belief systems and freedom of the pluralism of religion has always been the bedrock of America. Religious traditions have different beliefs -- if you don't like the Catholic judgement on LGBT, go over to the Episcopalians who are very similar, but tolerate even gay priests. And in organized religion or not, individuals have different beliefs. Like the Jewish woman next to me in the hospital who had what she called "a termination," and 10 years later, when she now had a job and a partner, had a little girl she will treasure. I treasured my little girl, now 26, enormously, too, having lost her sister. 

 

DEMOCRACY IS DEMOCRACY

 

You are for democracy, right? And truth and factual news? Because with the abolition of Roe, we aren't all donning white hoods and wearing red capes and sequestered in a dungeon forced to give birth after birth. What's happening is that some people will have to take buses, and will need support. A number of large corporations have indicated they will provide health care for this cost now of moving out of state for abortions. Various NGOs and no doubt even churches and other non-Catholic religious institutions will help, as they do with refugees and all the other vulnerable people in our society. Maybe by campaigning hard you might get those "red states" to drop their absolutism, but since you haven't dropped yours, maybe you should campaign for secession. In any event, I do hope you will get off your soap boxes and stop your screeching with edge cases, and get back to far more pressing issues with real masses of people involved: the war in Ukraine, the refugee situation at our border; the drug epidemic; even COVID. 

 

And promote birth control just as hard as you do abortion for any reason at any age. Because if you care about women's health and autonomy you should not put them through any trauma such as abortion at any age or any regrets, such as can come reflecting on a story like mine.