Dear OP,

I don't know you at all. In fact, if we were to be completely accurate, we should at least contemplate the option that this post is just a sadistic joke from one of the many trolls that we can find on the Internet. But it may also be the case that your problem is bloody real. In fact, what I am going to say is under the assumption that you are a real woman (or at least, adolescent) in real distress.

Before you read the whole post, let me clarify my intentions. I am not going to say "well done! Go get it" as most of repliers seem to be doing (most and not all, since I have seen some deleted comments). If it is the case that you only want to hear that kind of thing to reassure your posture, you can delete my comment right now. But if you want different opinions so that you can make a better informed decision, this is what I recommend you to do: copy-paste my reply somewhere else as soon as you see it, delete my comment on the post, and read the copy-paste when you can/want (it's not short).

The things that I am going to say are for you to think about them, not for others to start a moral/ideological debate. Some have replied here because they think they can provide you with something useful: information, support... I just want to do the same, because maybe that what I have to say might help you. I won't judge you. I won't tell you what to do. I won't threaten you. If you agree with these premises, please, keep reading.

As I said, I do not know you, so sometimes I'll have to make assumptions about you, with better or worse accuracy, in order to develop my ideas. This is the first one: you are concerned about doing the right thing. What do I mean with that statement? I'm assuming that part of your distress involves wondering whether what you want to do is the right thing to do (as opposed to the wrong). Right might refer to right in the sense of physical health, in the sense of psychological health, in the sense of moral righteousness, or even in a practical/pragmatic sense. I make this assumption because you say that you feel uneasy "I never thought it would also be this hard" "I am not sure how safe they will be" "I am worried how this choice will affect me".

What I am going to expose are things mostly related to the morals implicated in what you are about to do. So, if you are not at all interested in that aspect, or you think there's no doubt, or you just don't care about that dimension of your behaviour, you might (again) delete this comment.

When you ask a friend whether an outfit suits you well, you can be asking for two different things: support and reassurance on your view, e.g. please tell me I'm pretty in this dress even if it isn't true because I like it so much; or you can be asking for a truthful answer, e.g. I am not sure about buying it, what do you really think about it?. This is a rather meaningless example, but we can also look for opinions regarding more serious things: what do you think about my boyfriend? Do you think this career is for me? Should I sell my house? My father abused me, what should I do?

All this questions can be asked from both attitudes. The first one will just convince us about whatever we already wanted to do, or we thought it is better to do, or the right choice. The second one can make us face some inconvenient facts, opinions, realities... that might be true or not. But if you want to make the right choice (my first assumption) it is always better to listen to sincere opinions, the more diverse, the better, so that you can choose which arguments seem more valid for the situation and for yourself. That's why I think you should read this, even if in the end you just discard everything as stupid, incorrect, or not valid for you.

Abortion is not a problem with an easy answer. If it was, it wouldn't be generating so much debate and controversy in so many countries right now, so whoever pretends to approach it as a white/black problem is either an ignorant or an arrogant. The discussion about it usually focus on whether it is a moral thing to do or not, rather than about procedures, which is the best centre to do it, etc. Therefore, the problem is in what we consider right and wrong. What is it that some people consider wrong about abortion? That it involves killing a human being, most of the times in the absence of a dichotomy like: it is either the mother's or the baby's life. That would make it less problematic, but it is not the case.

Now, you say in your post that you are pro-choice, so probably some of the most recurrent arguments of pro-choice defenders are right now popping up into your mind, aren't they? Let's go through the ones I have listened more often, and allow me to express my view on them.

1- It is not a human life/ it is not even life, so getting rid of it is not killing, and therefore, cannot be regarded as wrong.

This concept relies on a series of conceptions about what being human means. And that is not an easy question, isn't it? The more we improve our understanding of the brain and replicate some of its properties within computers and robots, the more we are called to ask ourselves what a human being is, and what isn't. The implications of this question go really far, since it will determine who is under the protection of the human rights, and who isn't; who has a right to vote, and who hasn't; who should access the resources available, and who shouldn't, and a long etcetera. I'm sure you get my point.

1.1 It is surprising how many people say it is not a human being just because it doesn't look like a human being. This argument then bases the concept of being human on something as trivial as appearance. If you don't look like human, you are not human. Is it really that simple? First of all, who decides what a human does looks like and what a human does not look like? If someone is horribly disfigured to the point that barely looks like a person, does it mean that he's not a person anymore? What if you lack a limb? Does it make it you not worthy of the right to live? Does it mean that is ok if someone takes care of you, but it isn't a moral obligation?

Maybe being human is not dependent on the shape you have right now, because a) your shape might have looked like human once even if now it doesn't; b) your shape might look like human in a near future even if now it doesn't; c) being human is more than just appearance. If it was just appearance, would an incredibly realistic looking robot be human? Would a statue be human? Would one of those modern inflatable sex dolls be human? Sure, they might look like a human more than some real humans but... who in his right mind would say that one of those dolls is human?

1.2 It isn't able to survive by himself, so it isn't a human being yet.

People that use this argument somehow compare an embryo with a hair or a nail, or even to a piece of your skin. It may be formed by living cells, but if you take it out of your system, it dies. Nobody would consider getting a haircut as murdering your hair, right? However, there's an important difference when we talk about human embryos.

First, babies cannot survive on their own if nobody feeds them and takes care of them, and that doesn't make them non-human. We now regard practices such as the ones carried out by Spartans or Romans centuries ago as barbaric: they abandoned children on the wilderness or directly throw them from cliffs, when they were unwanted or too weak, ill or "imperfect" to become strong soldiers. How different is that from what we are doing nowadays? If the criterion to determine whether a person is a person is about surviving on their own, babies wouldn't qualify; and what about disabled people? If they are not able to survive on their own (paralytics, mentally challenged, war amputees...) they would fall into the non-human category.

Second, a nail or a hair won't fully develop up to turn into a complete human being, even if you take care of it and provide it with all the nutrients and environmental conditions it might need. You can keep your hair uncut for the rest of your life, and it will never grow to be a person. But an embryo will. Provided that he/she is fed, and taken care of, one day will leave his/her mother's body, and develop into an adult human being. Again, spermatozoids or eggs themselves, wouldn't qualify as human beings because no matter how long and how carefully you keep them alive, they will never become human beings (unless fecundated; then, it wouldn't be a plain spermatozoid or egg).

This is pretty important and involves a concept that comes from ancient Greek philosophers: act and potential. Act is what things are now and here, while potential refers to what things have the capability to become. E.g. a seed is not a tree in act, but it is a tree in potential. In this case, even if you do not consider an embryo a human being at a certain point in act, it is a human being in potential: it will become one day a human able to survive by him/herself, if nobody does anything to prevent it. This is something to think about when talking about abortion, because even if you don't think that what you have inside is a human life different from yours, you must know that it willl become a human life if you let it do it. Actively preventing that from happening is subject to moral judgement, and a decision that shouldn't be taken lightly, don't you think?