I found this thread from the Gossip Rocks health and fitness forum from a woman who came across a diagram of a dilation and evacuation abortion of a 23 week old fetus:
Abortion is not something I think about too often, i just came across this and it made me feel sick even though its not that graphic. It’s just a disturbing image I think.
The comments in response to this diagram, probably by people who would consider themselves to be “pro-choice” but never actually considered what abortion really was, were most interesting. This was my favorite:
of course the procedure is gross and/or disturbing, particularly at later stages. What did people think, that the fetus was magically wished away?
Here are some of the rest:
—I just found it disturbing, gave me a sickening feeling. Illustrations like that do it more to me than real pictures, oddly enough.
—I made the mistake…of googling abortion. Those pics are truly horrible.
—Wow, I’ve always been curious about how abortions were done…
But right now I am absolutely horrified and disturbed beyond belief…
I knew I shouldn’t have clicked on this thread…
—I’m pro-choice but seeing pics like that are really upsetting, it’s just not a nice thing for anyone to have to go through.
—i would hope that in the case of abortion there is some way to make the fetus not feel any pain.
I guess even diagrams are just as powerful as the post abortion pictures. Though, most of these people, while finding the abortion procedure “disturbing” and “horrible” still consider it acceptable in “necessary” situations.
One pro-choice woman, who had had an abortion, shares her serious concerns about these mid/late term abortions:
It’s an interesting moral/philisophical point. People don’t have a ‘problem’ with aborting a cluster of cells or ‘unformed’ embryo but as soon as the baby develops in a recogniseable human being we get a bit squeamish about it. Yet we are killing both. You then get into the debate about what a human life actually is…Don’t get me wrong, I am in favour of abortion provided it’s done for the right reasons and at the right time and I had one myself at 6 weeks which I’m not happy about but it was the right choice for me and my circumstances. But the brutal reality of how mid-term or late abortions are done isn’t something we can ignore as part of the whole debate…abortion is a pretty brutal business no matter what your personal stance on the morality of it.