EXISTENCE IS PAIN JERRY ! !<| sep |> I ' ve been thinking about this anecdote for the past few days . Yes , she is deserving of sympathy but I think its a mistake to treat this as a single situation . There is the Prebaby and the postbaby circumstance . Prebaby , my initial response is If you ' ve accepted the risks and taken them anyway and you lose , I don ' t feel compelled to give you sympathy although this wasn ' t a repeated situation so if its their first time making this mistake , I ' m willing to be far more lenient with my sympathy than if this were their second or third baby under these circumstances . Further , she went looking for alternatives or help why no one suggested Plan B is unfortunate , but this is a hypothetical anyway . Even though the advice wasn ' t ideal , she at least tried to reach out for help . I think mainly because this is the first time she ' s made this mistake assuming she see it as a mistake , otherwise she ' s not looking for sympathy encourages my sympathy and lenience . Now , Postbaby As long as she takes an active approach to raising the baby she deserves sympathy for her circumstance . If she constantly laments having the baby and the accident that lead to it , and doesn ' t take an active role in the babies life or , worse , looks at the baby as a reminder of her mistake then I don ' t have any sympathy for her . Sympathy , in this case , is deserved if the woman takes responsibility for herself and her baby and works to improve their circumstances . This is different than the options I ' ve presented because in none of those options do the people involved try to change their circumstances . They have created the misery or potential for misery by reinforcing the dysfunction that enables those circumstances . There is a point at which the person must take responsibility for their actions and show an interest in altering their circumstances . If they do no take responsibility for the position they are in , and continue lamenting the situation then I have a really hard time believing they deserve my sympathy .