The Brownsville Herald shows some balance

On the abortion issue, no less!

Will wonders never cease? A MSM newspaper offers this fair account of the abortion issue in the context of the Brownsville area in Texas. Abortions there are low.

Usually, when I read these articles, I cringe. The pro-life position is usually littered with Robertsonian rhetorical bombs that grossly misrepresent ordinary people of Faith's perspective on abortion. This article avoids such a temptation from the very beginning:

Victoria was 23 when she made the decision. Karen was 19. Their choices sent them on wildly different paths, but both women have no regrets, no qualms about their decisions.

Victoria had an abortion. Karen didn’t.

....

When Victoria, now 29, found out she was pregnant following unprotected sex with her boyfriend, the two of them thought for a long time about her options, she said.

“I couldn’t see myself raising a child that really had no chance,” she said. “I was still living at home; I wasn’t set financially; I had a ways to go education-wise. I want to make sure that when I have a baby, I can give the baby everything that was given to me.”

Today, Victoria has a college degree and a job, and hopes to raise a child when she meets the “right person,” she said.

Karen, now 21, conceived after being raped. After the trauma of the rape, she planned to have an abortion, but once she saw the fetus during an ultrasound procedure she changed her mind.

“I couldn’t go through with it,” she said.

Today, Karen and her mother are raising Karen’s son, who is 15 months.

“I don’t know what it would be like without my son,” she said. “It’s such a joy to have him.”

Usually, the raped victim is the icon in which abortion supporters offer a

hagiography on the nobility of choice. Who would want to carry a child of rape

to term?" they ask. Well, apparently Karen did. Her heroism inspires me. She chose

not to be just another statistic.

The article is also even-handed in discussing the positions of advocates on both sides:

The decision to have an abortion — or not — is much more complex than many people realize, said Rosemarie Herrmann, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Cameron and Willacy counties.

Financial stability, relationship or marital status, educational and life goals, religious beliefs, family influence and age are just a few of the factors women must weigh, Herrmann said.

Valley anti-abortion groups, however, say the decision shouldn’t be complex because abortion is morally wrong.

“They’re trivial reasons compared to the great evil that’s being done,” said the Rev. Matt Shanley, head of the Diocese of Brownsville’s Pro-Life Committee. “They don’t have money, they want to go to school, they’re not ready for motherhood. If that’s the case, then adoption is the best option.”

Read the whole thing.