Hold on, that's not the way I characterized it. I didn't say she merely had a political agenda. I did say that she had a political goal in mind. Which is undeniably true. Here's a direct quote from the original piece:

"This was undoubtedly the hardest decision my husband and I would ever have to make, but it was ours to decide, granted to us alone in a state where abortion is still legal. Only we, the parents of the pregnancy, could decide what we felt capable of providing our child. If we lived in Texas, the state could force us to give birth to an ill baby, spend everything we made on drugs, specialize schools and care, and damn us to the unbearable torture of watching her struggle daily, likely for the rest of our lives."

The agenda is politically relevant. She isn't just sharing a personal story, she's sharing a personal story on a public platform with the goal of trying to influence people. That may not be her only goal, but it's certainly a goal.

I'm curious, just for the sake of consistency: If a woman wrote a story on Medium about how she was pro-choice until she had a miscarriage and now she's pro-life and thinks everyone else should be to and you saw that some man had left a comment like "you can't tell other women what to do with their bodies" would you respond to them the same way you have responded to me? After all, they are clearly lacking in empathy. They're responding to a personal story. If you object to what I've done, you would have to object to this as well.

Of course, my position is that everyone that enters their voice in the marketplace of ideas is open to challenge. I am free to challenge the original author, and you are free to challenge me. And you should. If my ideas don't hold up, I want to discard them.

What is your evidence that I haven't brought an open mind to the discussion? As far as I can tell, I have entertained criticisms of my comments in good faith and good humor. And I'm perfectly willing to change my mind. After all, I was once pro-choice. It's just that it takes substance to change my mind.

My mind was actually incredibly open when reading the original piece. But having read it, the inconsistencies were glaring. And someone should have enough compassion to bring these to the attention of the author.

I mean, this is an actual sentence from the original piece: "Doubting our own abilities to provide for a sick child pushed us into the decision that to this day, 20 yrs later, I still find shame in." Why would you be feeling shame 20 years later if you made the right decision? It's possible to have second thoughts about decisions that you made that were right, but it's hard to see why someone would use the word "shame" in such a situation. There are things that I have done that I am ashamed of, but I'm ashamed of them because I know that I was wrong. In your original comment, you said "Matthew, I too am genuinely curious to learn how even someone so appallingly self righteous as yourself could think it appropriate to impose such hurtful comments three times in quick succession on a person who is honestly trying to cope with what is necessarily a difficult and tragic situation." I had responded that I'm trying to help, not hurt. And I am. The only way to help someone in this situation is to tell them the truth. And remember, it's not a truth I'm imposing on her. It's in her own article, in her own words. All I'm doing is pointing out the inconsistencies. How can she cope with what happened when she can't admit the hard truth to herself? I hope she finds healing. But I don't see how that can happen as long as she maintains the "I feel shame in making the right decision" contradiction.