Pressie writes:
She regrets the abortion, but realizes that it was to her best interest. Was she wrong or right to have the abortion?
Nobody knows. There's not enough information available to tell.
Some of the information is completely impossible to find out.
That's why it's such a tough decision... if it were easy to know, it wouldn't be difficult.
Some ideas to flesh out the point I'm making:
-If a non-abortion had of resulted in a more-painful death (or life) of the fetus/baby anyway... then the abortion was a good thing for the baby
-If a non-abortion had of resulted in a good/wonderful life of the fetus/baby... then the abortion was a bad thing for the baby
-If the abortion resulted in her life having the ability to make other people's lives happy/better (possibly even other children-of-hers) in a way she would not be able to if she had the abortion... then the abortion was a good thing for these other people (and possibly her other children)
-If the abortion resulted in her life not having the ability to make other people's lives happy/better... then the abortion was a bad thing for those other people.
-If the abortion allowed her life to be happier/better... then the abortion was a good thing for her
-If the abortion led to her life being worse... then the abortion was a bad thing for her
...
This list is not exhaustive. I'm sure there are plenty of other effects that could be listed, I'm just showing how complicated the "was it good or bad?" question is.
On top of all those possibilities... it needs to be understood that each item
can quite possibly be independent from the others.
That is, it could be that the abortion was good for the baby (would have died worse anyway)... but bad for her (her life turned out worse because of the abortion). Or any other combination... maybe good for her, and good for others around her, and good for her future children (who might not exist without the abortion occurring)... but bad for the aborted fetus/baby. How do you weigh those against each other? How can you do it when all the "future possibilities" can't possibly be known at the time when the decision has to be made??
Such weighing is required to know if the abortion "is good or bad."
But such weighing is impossible at the time the decision must be made... because it all happens in the future. Some of the important results may not be known until decades into the future.
I hope this is enough to show that a single, easy answer for "Was she wrong or right to have the abortion?" is simply not available.
It's one of those super-hard decisions where we just have to do whatever we think is best based upon the information (and whatever future-prediction-abilities we have) at the time.
THAT's why I think the decision is up to the woman-in-question, and no one else.
She is free to search out information from any and all sources (family? friends? anywhere?) but... even THAT is up to her.
We can all judge her as much as we'd like.
But, to me, I think anyone judging harshly on someone making such a decision (forced into it or not) speaks a hell of a lot more about the character of that judgey-person than it does about the woman-in-question.