Barrett’s suggestion that women who find themselves unintentionally pregnant can simply carry their babies to term and then easily surrender them because they are protected by safe haven laws are forgetting that some women and girls who want to keep their children are forced into giving them up either by their families or by socioeconomic or other circumstances, causing them irreparable pain and loss. Adoption isn’t simple on any level, and suggesting it can be a replacement for abortion reinforces the misconception that it is.

I love my life now, so of course my current answer is that I am glad I wasn’t aborted. But I do wish my mother had been allowed to make her own decision, even if that decision had resulted in an abortion or better use of birth control so I’d never been conceived in the first place. I wish for a world where women and girls, their bodies, their babies and their choices are not left to the courts to be batted around like badminton birdies. I wish for a world where no woman has to surrender a baby unwillingly. I wish my mother had felt empowered, not shamed.