“Rare is the story of a woman holding her newborn baby in her arms saying she wishes she had aborted him/her.”

It is very common for older children as soon as they are able to comprehend to be told by their mother “I wish I never had you!” This can have a devastating effect on a child to hear from its own mother that it is not wanted. Most advocates for anti- abortion who are not religiously aligned come from this background. They are not fighting to protect a child or a pregnant woman – they are lashing out at their own mothers who rejected them.

There are no good reasons to deny the right to abortion so there must be bad ones. It is much easier for women like this to attack the whole option for abortion than it is to confront their own mother for the pain she has caused them.

It's interesting that an opinion advocating for more supports for women is copping so much negativity.
It makes me wonder, whose ideology is really showing here?
I know lots of women who were put off by the negative response of their doctor to a pregnancy announcement (even when the doctor had been giving them advice on increasing their chances of falling pregnant!), and a lot of them decided to find alternative care. As is their right. But these mums were surprised that doctors were assuming that all pregnancies must be questioned, and it surprised me too. If anyone knows of any research or statistics in this area, can you post some links? All I have to go on is these experiences, but I’d like to find out more.
I also know women who have successfully combined paid work and motherhood, usually due to a very supportive workplace and family. And you can keep breastfeeding; why the "sucking on a teat" remark was made before I really don't know?? Were they saying you can’t breastfeed and go back to work?? (You can you know, but it takes extra effort and may not suit all mums and situations. And some workplaces make it hard, which is wrong and there are discrimination laws about that, but that’s a whole other issue). Anyway, surely wanting mothers to have good support and be able to more easily make the choice to return to work or study if they want to is a good thing?
Some commenters are asking the writer to defend what she’s saying. Are you really questioning coercion occurs? Really? Maybe we don’t have fully “forced” abortions like in China, but I’ve known many women who experienced very real and strong pressure to abort. Then someone said she didn’t define coercion. I though that was part of the point? That coercion was difficult to define, because it’s not always obvious, or recognised as coercion.
Why isn’t wanting better support for women greeted with better support? I think it’s strange.

Disregarding the pros and cons of abortion, the overall number of abortions in Australia does seem to be significantly higher than either its supporters or opponents would ever have predicted.

Why is it so?

It is a national tragedy that so many women find that they must delay until it is very late for their biological clock, and they face serious risks and costs they would have planned to avoid if they could. However the social and financial changes wrought in the name of progress - unintended negative consequences of 'Progressivism' - and poor planning by government, have forced them along a path they would not have taken otherwise. Then there are the flow-on imposts on the budget from fertility interventions and negative outcomes of late pregnancy.

Why is there an open checkbook for promotion of immigration and for endless 'diversity' and multiculturalism with both public and private agencies gobbling up taxpayers' money doing that, when so many of the taxpayers themselves are putting off children and not having the children they want because of social and financial pressures?

Why should young women and couples be working so hard to pay taxes for infrastructure for a 'Big Australia' and Centrelink forever for economic migrants when they themselves are effectively being excluded from choosing the children they want and when they want to have them?

Again, to be very simple and plain so there is no easy misinterpretation of what I am asking, I am not opposed to birth control or abortion and nor do I have any religious interest.

It is simple enough: women who want children themselves must pay higher taxes for immigration and policies associated with it such as the millions spent every year on multiculturalism and in promoting 'diversity', but they themselves are not being encouraged to have the children they want and in fact logs are being rolled in front of them.

K8TIE

‘It's interesting that an opinion advocating for more supports for women is copping so much negativity.’

Read those comments again. The ‘negativity’ the author has copped is not directed at her arguments for more pregnancy support; it’s directed at her sloppy, unsubstantiated and deceitful examples/quotes from supposed real life.

Not only that, she goes out of her way to state that the situations she describes are ‘typical examples, not extraordinary scenarios’. Peppered throughout the essay are words/phrases like ‘commonplace’, ‘are routinely told’ and ‘the default response to every pregnancy’ to build a very dubious scenario of coercive officialdom.

No matter how much pregnancy and child-rearing support is available, every child born to a woman will cost her – and her partner if he is around – at least $150,000 to raise, and will significantly compromise her life goals and plans for at least the next 20 years. Of course, the significant people in her life (along with the medical staff she encounters), are going to express their concerns and opinions about how the pregnancy is likely to affect both her and them.

Any woman who chooses to view this as 'coercion' seriously needs to toughen up

I agree, when pregnant with my son, the first words out of my GP's mouth were "I'm assuming you want this?" She has known my family for years, knew we got married and that we aren't in our 20's...of course we were trying and had been so for 6 months we were over joyed!
A friend of mine wasn't so lucky, she wanted very much to keep her unplanned baby, but her husband refused. Said he couldn't cope (they only had a 4 year old at the time) she was gutted and went through with the termination to please him. That's not choice! She fell pregnant again a year latter and she stuck to her guns...had a little girl, but their marriage has suffered not because he doesn't love his children or isn't a good father, he is. But she deeply resents him for making her go through with the abortion!

Dear Pat,

<<Interesting article, I think it shows how abortion defines western civilisation.>>

The characteristic of western civilisation is wilfulness: abortions are only a symptom. That the women in question went to see a doctor for their pregnancy is in itself a property of western culture. They were not coerced into it, I presume, so had they not visited a doctor they would not have been offered an abortion. If you take going-to-a-doctor for granted, it's only because you would be part of western culture.