When I was a brash 19 year old, with a fast car, and a real fast love for life, I took the advice of the Eagles and lived life in the fast lane. I had a 16 year old Girlfriend. We just really started dating at the time and she was my 1st real girlfriend. We were young, and when you're that age you tend to take risk that others with more experience tend to avoid. Anyway, I ended up getting her pregnant, (She was my 1st experience) and we panicked. We ended up getting her Aunt to tell her parents about the pregnancy while we took a nice ling cruise in my car to think before we returned to face the music. Yeah, we were scared at the time and really didn't know what to do. TO our surprise, we sat down with her Mother and had a nice rational talk about things and we all knew that me and her were way too young to be parents. Hell, she hasn't even finished High School yet, and being a 16 year old mother would have been a real hardship on her and me too. It came down to the fact that she and her mother decided to have an abortion. Deep down, I knew it was the right thing to do. My feelings about it at the time, well, I never really thought about it until I was faced with it. I know that a persons attitudes and positions can change and evolve over time depending on external, and internal factors. As for myself, I'm against abortion except in the most extreme cases such as rape, incest, and the likes. But that's just my personal opinion. Abortion is a very personal choice that can affect people on many levels, and even though I'm against it, I feel it must be up to the parties involved to make the right choice for them depending on the circumstances. We have enough information and resources today that abortion should be a rare, with education and the involvement of parents, teachers, clergy and others, I feel it can be, but until such time, it's just an unfortunate reality that we must live with as a society. We can't make choices for others, but we can be involved with offering others all the options that are available to them such as adoption. One other point I'd like to make is, I feel that the government. on any level, has too much power today over our personal lives. It shouldn't be up to anyone in government to make personal choices for anyone about anything.

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