How would you react if you found out an ex-girlfriend had an abortion?

Please see that you don't.

@Kathleen B. As some other people said, how the father reacts to this situation is going to be a defining moment for the character. There's so many things you could do.

 

I agree with everyone who said it really depends on what sort of person your character is. Anything from mortified to relieved, angry to indifferent, anything goes, as long as it's consistent with his values, character and motivations. As for how I'd react, I'd be concerned for my love and how hard it must have been for her. I wasn't carrying that child, I didn't even know, she had to go through everything alone.

 

Yeah, calling it "baby killing" and "murder" is fine, nothing controversial there. But politely and cautiously presenting the other side? Out of bounds, absolutely.

 

Just don't turn it into a debate. This is a writing thread. I know you can do it!

 

Disclaimer - I'm not against abortion. I see it as a tragedy but nonetheless sometimes a necessity, and I would advocate the freedom of choosing an abortion. Eg. I believe abortion facilities should certainly be available and legal so women can always choose.

However, having said all this, I do think it is too harsh - far too black and white - to say the father of a child should not get a say, not get a choice, is not even entitled to have any say, on whether his child should live.

Yes, it's the woman's body. But yes, it's also the man's baby.

I don't pretend to have a solution and I'm by no means saying a woman should be forced (there should never be force) to keep the baby. But at the same time, I must vehemently disagree that a man is not entitled to and should not be allowed to have a choice or any kind of say in the matter.

 

A say--as in, he should get to make his case--I can certainly see. But there really is no way to give the man a choice. He can't volunteer to carry and give birth to the baby. I'm sure that many men would, if they could--I'm sure that they don't want a woman to undergo a major physical trauma in order to carry out the man's will. But it's biologically impossible, so he can't have that choice.

Now, the opposite choice--"I don't want this child, and if the choice of abortion were up to me, I'd make that choice, so I don't want the responsibilities of being a father" is biologically possible, and therefore we could make it legally possible, and that's actually something that I'm tentatively in support of.

But the opposite choice, we just can't give. It's not fair, but biology doesn't accept appeals on grounds of fairness.

 

I know the lady was technically an adult at that age, but being so young, I couldn't hold many decisions against her fifteen years later. I think he'd only be angry at her if he had something he just wanted to be angry about, and used that as a conduit—some people are like that. There's undoubtedly some guilt attached to abortions (whether its the right thing to do or not at the time), and she'd feel pretty awful about not telling him. I'd react by trying to comfort her, tell her it's okay and it must have been tough having to bear that for so long.

 

I think between life and death, I'm always going to be in favour of life. In my head - like, all the greys and ethics and choices and morals aside - in my head, if even one parent wants the child, I think the child should be born. You could always relinguish your parenthood of the child once the child is born and give the other parent, who did want the child, sole custody. 9 months is not so long in exchange for a new life. You can wash your hands clean of the child afterwards if you're so certain you never want to see it, get to know it, love it, form a relationship with it, and etc - it would make little difference. But to the parent who did want the child, it would make a lifetime of difference.

Ideally, there would be mutual agreement on whether BOTH want the baby or not. If both say they don't want it, then abortion it is. If both say they want it, then keep it. But the ideally I'd say there would be no abortion, that every child ever conceived is wanted and that there're no circumstancial, financial or medical obstacles in the way that make an abortion necessary.

Anyway, I do understand what you're saying. I'm not entirely sure it is possible to give the man the choice of keeping or aborting the baby based on the fact that he's not the one having to make the sacrifices. But I do believe it is kinder to give birth to the child if the father really wanted the baby - like I say, you can wash your hands of the child afterwards and leave the dad with sole custody. It would be as if you never had the child.

 

Well, that's legally unlikely. It depends on jurisdiction, but it's really not as easy to 'give away' responsibility for a child as you might think.

Regardless, though, you're starting from the assumption that the fetus is a life, and aborting the fetus is a death. That's a hell of an assumption. I have no idea if 1234... has any actual authority for his nagging about avoiding debate here, but in case he does... this seems like a question that we could debate forever and still not resolve.

But for the record, I don't accept the premise of your argument, that abortion is killing, and I don't accept the details, that it's easy to surrender responsibility for a child after it's born.

(And this is without getting into the effects of pregnancy on the woman's body).

 

Be nice.

 

He doesn't need "authority" to point out that a thread is going explosively off-topic and will probably be closed my moderators if it gets any more heated.

The OP wants to know how you'd react, not what's right and wrong. This is in the Character Development Section, not the Debate Section. If you guys really want to argue about it, could you please start a thread in the latter section?

 

Well, I'd say "Please see that you don't" sounds more like the voice of someone claiming authority than the voice of someone concerned about someone else's authority. But, whatever.

The problem is, the way someone reacts to the scenario in the OP is obviously going to be predicated on their attitude toward abortion, right? So it's the kind of question that's pretty hard to answer without referring to attitudes.

I tried to stay out of the thread even as I read the "killing" and "murder" comments because clearly those people's minds are made up. But I think if the OP is genuinely trying to explore different reactions to the scenario, the OP needs to decide whether his character thinks abortion is murder or if the character has different views. And the OP can't do that if the only view being presented is the abortion=murder perspective.

 

Slightly disturbed and not sure how I should feel about it, but not angry or upset. I think most guys (unless they're intensely opposed to abortion) after fifteen years would just be like " ...wow."

 

I disagree, and I'm perfectly content to discuss this if you'd care to start a thread in the debate forum, and I'm confident that we'd both manage to keep it a civil discussion. Or even discuss it in IM, if a discussion in the debate forum feels too much like "abortion debate--bring your flame throwers here!!"

But I think we're straying too far off topic in this thread, so I won't respond here.

 

True story: a girl I dated in high school and later broke up with re-ignited with me a few years later. There's a whole book in that alone, but I digress... Anyway, on Round Two with her she confesses to me that she is a) pregnant with some other scumbag's kid (he really was a douche) and b) has decided to get an abortion. She can't face her mother, has no car and asks me to drive her to the clinic. I was immensely disappointed in her being a) so stupid and b) so weak not to keep the kid and at least give it up for adoption. But, I knew if she kept it her life would be effectively ruined as she had no support network to speak of. I begrudgingly agreed to drive her to the clinic but would not go inside with her, such was my disapproval. That may make me some kind of a##hole; you can decide for yourselves. At the time, that was my reaction to a problem I wasn't really mature enough to handle (slightly past legal drinking age).

To this day I regret not having done...more, I suppose. We did not stay together long after that debacle for other reasons, but I consider it a personal failing on my part to not have tried to do something other than give her a ride to have the deed done. I consider it one of my great failings in life.

Applicable to this character we're discussing? Don't know, but offered for your consideration. What flippant things we think at a young age may no longer apply once we are older and more emotionally mature. I can tell you that most women who have abortions are troubled by them, even years later. I've known a few of those, and a psychiatric professional I know has backed this up. It may seem like an easy thing to do at the time, but guilt is a powerful force.

 

There's self-selection here; women who bring up the subject or see psychiatric professionals about the subject may be the women who are troubled by that subject. I don't think that's evidence for "most."

 

I have a good friend who had an abortion a few years back and seems absolutely fine with it. She didn't have the stability in her life to give the child what it needed and she says it was the perfect option. Being as close as we are, I'm sure she'd tell me if she had any guilt over it. Nothing but positivity about her past and her future. I've known plenty of women who've had abortions at some point in their lives and only one of them said she regretted it, though she'd come to terms with it in the end.

 

Gwen knows James pretty well. Why didn't she tell him? How did she think he'd react?
Find this out -- she might not have guessed correctly, but you'll have some insight into him, given that Gwen knows him well.

 

There's a big movement right now of getting women to tell their abortion stories, to get rid of some of the stigma and getting people to understand all the various circumstances in which abortion occurs. BUT, the OP is seeking how a man would feel, which is different.

A man could find himself surprised to be sad, even though he fully supports abortion rights and intellectually understands that it's a woman's body and therefore her choice. Conflicting emotions would be expected. (And of course, he could be anti-abortion, yet realize that this happened to this woman he loves, and that it was indeed the right choice, and knows this woman is not "evil," etc.) There are all kinds of possibilities, and a huge number of "right" or possible reactions.

 

I also note that the OP hasn't been online since the thread was started, over a week ago!

 

Grrr... I just hate that. Why ask if you don't care about the responses?
Maybe stuff came up. Hopefully OP comes back.

 

Oh, I'm aware. That comment was in response to someone stating that 'most' women carry regret or sorrow over abortions. It was slightly off topic.

 

I am glad that you and @ChickenFreak responded to that point.

 

It's called 'contrast'. A bit OT of the original post, agreed.