I have heard the abortion argument time and time again. As a matter of fact when I was pregnant with my son a doctor in the same building with my obstetrician did in fact perform abortions. Protestors would always line the street and part of the walkway. There were times when someone would rush up to me and ask why? Why what? I would ask they assumed I was going into the building to have an abortion. I felt violated. Not to the extent of them grabbing me. That just made me angry. I felt like my privacy was being violated. Here I am going to an appointment and a protestor with a picket sign with an aborted fetus that is larger life attacks me. I can see where in this passage Ellen Willis uses emotion because as I read the words something in me was evoked. They evoked memories, which evoked my emotions whether it is anger or compassion.
The right-to-life movement wants one to believe that no matter what the circumstances are, no matter what condition a woman is in she must go forward with a pregnancy of an unwanted child. In Ellis essay she states "the growing fetus makes considerable demands on her physical and emotional resources culminating in the cataclysmic experience of birth." Cataclysmic a term that describes an experience that is momentous and violent, an event marked by overwhelming upheaval and demolition; broadly: an event that brings great changes. Of course becoming a parent will bring great changes to one's life. A woman that was at first only concerned with herself is not to be condemned to be solely responsible for another human's well being. What happens to a child that grows up with a mother that does not want them? Who's to say that the woman will not love that child but she is human and if you don't want to be a part of something it will show one way or another. Why hamper a child's" well being by not giving that child all the nurturing it deserves. Ellis attempts to bring realistic sense of torture to one's thought by describing birth as a catastrophe.