Hear, hear

Matthew Yglesias on abortion:

That legal abortion encourages premarital sex is feature, not a bug.

Meanwhile, Lizardbreath writes about the abortion she had once:

I've mentioned here before that I've had an abortion; I don't know how clear it was that it wasn't a particularly sympathetic abortion. In spring 1995, I'd just started having sex with a new boyfriend. We were using condoms until I could get on the pill, and either one of us screwed something up, or there was a leak, or something happened, and I got pregnant. I had an abortion as early as I was able to schedule it, didn't find it a particularly upsetting experience... and haven't regretted it since then.

I'm sure someone will pop in and tell me why, exactly, LB is to be abominated. But until then, I really think this is key:

Continuing that pregnancy wouldn't have been an epic tragedy for me; any proposal for abortion rights that requires abortion to be permissible only when the only alternative would be starving on the streets would leave me right outside.

But man, did I not want to be pregnant. I did not want to be locked into a minimum eighteen-year relationship with someone I'd been dating for a couple of months. I did not want to be responsible forever for someone who didn't exist yet. I didn't want to be physically pregnant. I had no idea of where I was going professionally -- I was a temp receptionist, thinking about maybe taking the LSATs -- or of how I would support myself or a child, and had no idea of how I'd find my way into a career with a new baby. The only thing being able to get an abortion did for me was give me some control over the course of the entire rest of my life.

Forced pregnancy strips women of control, of their rights, and yes of their lives. (A woman is more likely to die in pregnancy than from an abortion.) I don't know why any man would want to do that to a woman he knows, much less women he loves.

And I'm absolutely baffled that some women continue to wish it on each other.