Some of my drafts are just notes of an idea, like this. Others are a sentence, like August’s. I thought I’d show you this one because I’m not sure if I’ll ever have the courage to attempt fleshing it out into a story. For one thing talking about abortion from a woman’s perspective when a man has great potential for offence or error. Any thoughts?

Yes, write it. Challenge yourself to present this subject in a manner that doesn’t offend. You can make the reader think it’s not your main topic of subject.

’There’s nothing wrong with writing with a personal perspective, no one has a right to tell you otherwise

From where I sit, if I condensed your fragment down to a single word to indicate what the story would be about, the word that pops out is ‘regret’.

I agree with 32. Write it.

Thanks guys. Is it noteworthy that both these comments are from men? How do you girls out there feel about it?

I would say, if we’re taking this subject beyond literate value, that circumstance is everything. Don’t judge till you’ve been there. Which you never will, lads =)

Abortion is clearly controversial, but I don’t think that’s the crux of your idea. If you want you could change the subject to a man that regrets shirking a child he fathered as a teenager, but never settled down to start a family. Same premise, less baggage.

If you want to stick with abortion as a plot element, then: 1) was the teen pregnancy wanted and reluctantly terminated, or unwanted all along? 2) did she try to get pregnant later/start a family?

Part of that calculus is what you think is more compelling – regretting a past decision, or realization of loss.

Yes August, regret, very insightful.

Write the story with Regret as the main subject, abortion as the secondary issue. Maybe the issue really is that some abortions result in NO regret at all and those are the people who might be more apt to strike back. The issue is a personal one, and some people don’t like to get personal.

I would like to read a story from a male’’s viewpoint of losing his child to abortion. He’s begging, pleading for the woman he got pregnant not to do it. He tells her he’ll do everything, she wouldn’t even have to be in the picture. I’m sure it’s happened before, I’ve just never read a story like that.

Speaking as a father of three who has had five pregnancies with my wife, I feel that I can never know what a woman goes through at the termination of a pregnancy whether deliberate or not. I also feel that it is naive to think that the view of a teenage father who shirks the child is in any way comparable to the pregnant woman’s perspective. He never carried the child in his body, and had no operation to undergo; he also probably had some chance of going about trying to undo the damage and meeting up with the kid.

I would further say that in my opinion, regret may be the most obvious, but not necessarily the best, core to the story.

I think I will try to write it (in fear and trembling).

that’s why it’s “less baggage”. I wasn’t sure what you wanted to focus on.