Country Gal - nice to meetcha and great post. I meant to say g'day earlier but didn't have enough post or time allowance to do so.

Fractelle - thanks for the advice and hullo to you.

I am not really new; I just haven't had as much time as I'd like to post and such; but I am not familiar with many of the IDs anyway.

I think you're right. Almost a waste of time *however; if I have time it's kind of interesting to respond:

1. There's a human there somewhere - maybe one day something will spark some understanding or interest.

2. When someone like that is aroun; it gives the rest of us an opportunity to respond and so state our case.

I don't know if I'll always have the patience or be bothered to respond, but it's ok for now. Let's see what happens :)

thank you :)

Grieving and personal growth - this could be true, but I don't see it, I do see lifes experiences in general leading to personal growth but grief in my opinion doesn't. When people loose close family members or friends there is no personal growth except for finding ways to deal with the grief and those tactics some people find to deal with it quite often isn't personal growth and in fact can be quite devastating.

The foetus, whether you call it a toe nail or a lobster(hmmm),that's terminated is quite often not thought about very often let alone grieved over, let alone had much guilt feelings attached to the termination. If someone who terminated the child felt pushed into the termination I would imagine there would be some qute disturbing feelings attached to the situation and that would be awful.

However, I feel that counsellors who work in these clinics should pick up on this and it is their responsibility to ensure no termination goes ahead if their is any doubt about the procedure from distinctly the mother and/or the father of the child in the making.

Life is one long rd of making choices and we don't always get it right and can't expect to, I say think very carefully and know your capabilities. Children born who are not wanted or mistreated is more devastating in my opinion, and I would imagine that adoption would attract more grief and despair. Would be shocking to return to the days where women weren't given a choice over pregnancy and return to backyard jobs.

Lucinda9798 - you said in your post; "The foetus...that's terminated is quite often not thought about very often let alone grieved over, let alone had much guilt feelings attached to the termination."

I feel compelled to ask how you know such a thing? For whom do you speak? Certainly not for me.

I think women (and men) can be under so much emotional pressure at the time of considering abortion of a foetus that they cannot possibly know the effects of their decision until months, years, decades later.

But grief is grief. No matter the circumstances of the loss.

I thought the original article was excellent.

lucinda9798 You answer your own question

"personal growth except for finding ways to deal with the grief "

Understanding how to deal with grief is the personal growth which will help the individual to deal with any sort of loss later in their life.

I can think of several anecdotal experience of people in my personal life who have to deal with the "grief" resulting from broken longer term relationships.

The stimulus might be different but the "grief" is remarkably similar.

However, whilst I would never assume the competing merits of orphanhood, parental mistreatment verses abortion for the fetus, I agree with your view of the personal choice being wholy the pregnant womans.