I'm sorry that you've experienced that pain. It's devastating.

I'm not sure I can agree that abortion is a woman's issue. If my math is correct, fully 100% of aborted children had a father. And I would guess about 50% of the children aborted are male (although this figure might be less accurate than the previous one).

It seems to me that abortion is a human issue. The child is human, the mother is human, the father is human. You could also call it a reproductive issue, which makes it universal. When it comes to the future of the human race, literally nothing is more important than reproduction.

I get that you can't imagine sharing anything but empathy to a story like the one I was responding to. I certainly feel a great amount of empathy. But expressing empathy doesn't necessarily help in this situation. The author pretty clearly expresses mixed feelings. In fact, I would argue that based on her presentation, the evidence is pretty strong that there's a deep part of her that knows she made the wrong choice. But there's also a part of her that is wanting to justify it. In my opinion, the most caring thing you can do with someone who made a wrong decision is help them see it. After all, she already put it on "paper".

The other reason why I responded the way I did (and likely will continue to), is because this is a public forum. When you try to convince other people of something (like your belief that abortion should be legal), you can expect some people to disagree. I post things that give my point of view and I get responses. Critiquing each others' stances is how public discussion works. I'm curious though, if someone wrote a personal story about a miscarriage that led to them becoming pro-life and they argued that abortion should be illegal, would you refrain from responding critically because of your unwavering commitment to prioritizing empathy over all else?

I think you and I have a very different meaning of what it means to "hurt" someone. Sometimes what's in someone's best interest is to tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. They might not like it in the short term, but it's better for them in the long run if someone will tell them the truth.