abortion

I've recently been unable to put down The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler. (It's a tough month for my bedside table, which has had to bear the physical and emotional weight of that book, as well as bell hooks' All About Love: New Visions, Jackson Katz's The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, and Susan Griffin's Woman and Nature.)

It's hard enough to stomach this administration's claims of a "War on Terror," when fighting that war (as if that wasn't ironic enough already) involves taking water and work away from civilians, and thousands of deaths and injuries for Iraqis and American soldiers alike.

But when, today, the Supreme Court negated federal protections for abortion clinics against violence, when the Bush administration supported a "pro-life" group with a validated history of a wide scope of clinic violence, including bombings (again with the irony), all one could really ask oneself was...

If an average woman feels guilty about an abortion, due at least in part to numerous negative and pervasive cultural influences -- including those which both idealize motherhood and which demonize abortion -- but largely interpersonal or very immediate messages and influence, how might an "average" woman feel if at least half a nation, in 1973, made her the poster child as the most known "babykiller" of all time, and she was since held historically in that regard?