I'm confused

I've always considered myself a feminist, I've been pro choice all my life, until recently. Even after having my first two children I considered myself a person who thought abortion was a personal decision to be made by a girl or woman and that the woman was the only one who could make that decision. But in the last few years I've changed my mind, and that scares me. It was easier to believe that it was a woman's individual decision to make, it meant I was saying well I think it's morally OK if you can live with that decision but personally I wouldn't do it. Now though, i think it's wrong, and if I think it's wrong can I stand by while it's happening? Should I grab my picture of aborted foetuses and my rosary beads and head out to Grafton Street? Am I less of a feminist now because I think abortions should be illegal everywhere? Am I just getting older?

I have an aunt, she's my dad's sister and my godmother, she is a mother of five and a grandmother of ten. She loves to cook, they have always had an aga and her brown bread and cakes are legendary, she is a great knitter and never went anywhere without the bag of wool and needles, clacking away, she worked outside of the home when her kids were in secondary school, she was a leader in the scouts at that time too, she loves to paint and when her kids were grown up enough that the financial strain was easing on herself and her hubby she retired early, to paint, which was her passion. Six months later she was diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease, look it up on the Internet, it's a degenerative disease, it's the disease that a lot of people who campaign for euthanasia have. She has had it for nine years now, outliving her initial prognosis of 7 years, she can't do much, all of her passions are beyond her now, she still eats solid food, which is unusual but she refuses a tube in her stomach. My aunts family take amazing care of her and medical advances mean that new drugs and treatments have kept her moving and breathing, she can still talk although her voice is slurred. She can still make it to the bathroom in her wheelchair but there are times when she has to wear nappies, these times are getting more frequent. Eventually she will lose all these things that make her human, and she will die, mute and suffocating as her lungs will be no longer able to inflate. I think this wonderful woman who lived her life to the full, (she has, still, an amazing laugh, I've know she was somewhere in a building just from hearing that laugh)I think she should be allowed to die with dignity, don't you? But this is illegal and unthinkable, but in most countries in the west it is legal and acceptable to chose to end a perfectly healthy life once it's before week 24 of existence?

I know this is an emotive issue on both sides, that's probably why I am posting it on my personal blog here and not on the group blog I post to. As I said I was extremely pro choice, getting into arguments with anyone who'd suggest anything else, but now I feel the opposite. Obviously having children has changed my views, feeling a baby move at 18 weeks, panicking if you have a cramp or a spot of blood, you realise how fragile life is, how amazing it is that we manage to reproduce at all. I watched a few programmes on abortion recently, "Travels with my Camera", where someone pro choice visited the US and spoke to people on both sides of the debate, and the Dispatches on channel four last night which covered the issue of the 24week cut off point and showed several late (after 12 weeks) abortions, and whether or not the fetus felt pain. Tiny hands and feet, crushed skulls and spines, is this what life is worth? Are we animals? It was horrendous.

Don't watch it then you say, look away? But isn't that just what we do? To be able to live with ourselves? If we are OK with it then we should be able to say, "it just looks like a human, but it isn't really, it's just a cluster of cells shaped like a baby". When I was in school we were shown a film on abortion called "The Silent Scream", it showed an ultrasound of a fetus being aborted, the doctor said it was screaming in pain, now I was pro choice then and in my Catholic school I knew they were showing us propaganda against abortion, but it just hardened my resolve (if the nuns said it was bad....)Now of course I know the fetus wasn't screaming, but it was reacting to what was happening to it, it was dying.

Now I know a few women who have had terminations, it's not something that comes up easily in conversation is it? I seem to have a kind of sense about these things and people talk to me about it. Maybe it's just the women I know but nobody has ever said, "It was totally the right thing to do", many of them never tell anyone, I'm the first person they feel they can tell (usually cos I've picked it up), it hurts, the scars stay with the women for their entire lives, never healing. I have a daughter, she is nearly 4, in the future if something awful happened, she was assaulted and she got pregnant, or her contraception failed and she got pregnant, or she got pregnant and the baby was disabled I don't know how I'd feel if she wanted an abortion, there are so many couples who can't have families of their own who would love the chance to give a baby a home, so I suppose I would guide her toward that. It's unfashionable in our society of "If it feels right do it", to say something is wrong, but we all agree murder is wrong don't we? If my kids are a pain in the ass or my husband beats me should I kill them? I know it's not a black and white issue, but I think in this day and age of advances in contraception and the dangers of STD's meaning everyone should be using barrier contraception, is it acceptable to say "Oops, I'm pregnant and it doesn't fit into my plan", sorry if you choose to have sex as recreation when the end result (children) is unacceptable and you wind up with one in the oven should you just go to the doctor to have it removed?

Arse, I'm sorry about this post, I don't want to think it's wrong, but I do. I feel like an idiot, all those years of fighting the righteous fight for choice and now I feel like a turn coat. I suppose in my youth I just didn't appreciate life.