In her article “Abortion Is Too Complex to Feel All One Way About” that appeared in the New York Times (March 13, 1986), Anna Quindlen attracts the attention of the global community to one of the most controversial issues of society today: the pros and cons of abortion. In fact, as made clear in the article, Quindlen seems to be extremely sincere when communicating with her readers about this important topic.
The article is devoted to the author’s personal experiences with abortion; she mentions many of her acquaintances of different ages who were pregnant and who could not have their pregnancies terminated due to a range of reasons related to religious identity or their specific circumstances and relationships with their families and parents. Personally, I suppose that the consequences of delivering unplanned and unwanted babies are terrible and that the topic raised by the author deserves significant attention. The duplicity of those who want to ban all abortion everywhere is obvious; contrary to the assumptions promoted by pro-life movement activists, the obligation to raise unwanted children cannot make young girls more responsible. Instead, the baby becomes just an additional problem.
In this article, Quindlen states that the problem of abortion is much more complex than it may seem to be at first glance. This is why there are more assumptions and facts that need to be taken into account by those people who consider themselves to be against abortion in any situation. When it comes to the specific circumstances that make pregnant teenagers, and adult women want to have an abortion, the author is not a strong supporter of the idea that a personal decision is appropriate in all circumstances. Having read this article, I suppose that she tries to act as a kind of mediator between the representatives of two movements with completely opposite values: pro-choice and pro-life activists. In other words, although she seems likely to agree with the pro-choice movement on many points, she still seems to deny the necessity of abortion in some cases. To her, it is not fair to equate pregnant women who have no money with those who have a “stable home and marriage” when it comes to the moral appraisal of the decision to terminate a pregnancy (Quindlen 2).
As for my personal opinion on the given article, I can say that there are a lot of ideas expressed by the author that I find to be extremely important. When discussing the style and particular linguistics choices that the author uses in order to make readers see that she is sincere and that this problem really bothers her, there is a wide range of adjectives and expressions that make this work both an article and a kind of literary work at the same time. Also, Quindlen highlights the duplicity of those people who beguile women out of having an abortion with the help of scary materials but then tend to ignore the pain that the children may endure “when they are unwanted, even hated or simply tolerated” (2).
In the end, this article presents an important discussion related to the issue of abortion. The author’s attempt to attract the attention of all those people who have a kind of one-track mind about abortion can really contribute to the resolution of this problem. Personally, I agree with many points raised by Quindlen, and this is why my response contains a positive evaluation overall.
Works Cited
Quindlen, Anna. “Abortion Is Too Complex to Feel All One Way About.” New York Times. 1986, p. 2.