Karen Mahoney, I am a 61-year-old man who participated in an abortion in 1974 when I was 20 years old. The abortion was medically recommended because the pregnancy was dangerous and potentially deadly for both the mother and the child. The mother — my then girlfriend — had an IUD that had dislodged enough for a pregnancy to occur, but still remained in place enough to require removal. The catch: you could not leave the IUD in place because it would wick infection into the womb and you could not remove the IUD without causing an abortion, so aborting the pregnancy was the only safe option available. The trauma, devastation, and lingering aftermath distress of that abortion destroyed my relationship with my girlfriend, and we soon thereafter parted ways permanently. I suffered a full-blown nervous breakdown in the hours after bringing my girlfriend home from the abortion clinic. I rarely think about my old girlfriend anymore, but I frequently think about our child — our nameless child.