A New York Magazine article titled "My Abortion" featured the personal stories of 26 women who have had an abortion. The article began by noting that abortion "is something we tend to be more comfortable discussing as an abstraction; the feelings it provokes are too complicated to face in all their particularities." So the article explored specific women with specific stories. The women profiled represent diverse ages, socio-economic backgrounds, circumstances, and feelings. Even so, an overwhelming sense of despair emerges from each story. Not one of the women celebrates exercising her right to abortion as one celebrates exercising one's right to worship or vote or marry.

For instance, Nicole, aged 19, begins her story with her dread that the aborted baby's due date is coming up. She didn't want the abortion but rather wanted to show her boyfriend she "loved him enough to do it for him." Janet, 48, had an abortion at 18 after being drugged and raped. She says, "The staff was very matter-of-fact, no kindness. A nurse said, 'It looks like it was a girl.'"

Lauren, 34, wonders after miscarrying another pregnancy following her abortion, "Am I praying the price for what I did? I believe in a God who wouldn't punish that way. But when you don't want a gift you're given, will the universe offer up that gift again?" Heather, 32, is married and has had two abortions and says that if her family knew, her relationship with them "would be gone." Alex, 24, has had two abortions. "It does affect you," she says. "Sometimes you regret and sometimes you feel good. You think, The baby would be a year old now." The article ends with these haunting words.

These gut-wrenching stories show that even after decades of legal abortion on demand, our collective denial of its grief is finally starting to break. Stories like these show that all of our lives have been changed by abortion.