Gabriel Mizrahi

I recognize that.

She might say, well, I didn't realize that terminating the pregnancy was wrong no matter what, so my reasons really don't matter.

But I guess what I'm getting at is, is deciding whether this was ethical by reference only to her religion...

Is that also short-circuiting a really important process, which is making room for a mother, her, who didn't want to bring a child with severe challenges into this world and panicked and made a call that made sense to her at the time?

My sense is probably yes, that is going on.

I also find it really interesting that she can't discuss this or she doesn't feel she can discuss this with her close friends, with people in her community.

Right.

I don't know.

That's sad.

She even said that it feels off limits to even think about it because the moment there are things that are off limits just to talk about, let alone think about.

I don't know, man.

I just I find that suspect and a little concerning.

Look, our friend here is writing in to us and she is being very open about this.

So clearly she is allowing herself to talk and process some of this, which I'm very happy about.

Also, to be clear, I'm not saying that, you know, anything goes and there's no morality whatsoever and terminating the pregnancy didn't matter.

It matters.

But if you can't talk to your own community about something really difficult, something very human, and also something your system is hopefully designed to help you make sense of, then what does that say about the system?

Yeah, something else I would explore.

Again, zero shade on your faith or your community, but here is one value that I would explicitly encourage you to embrace.

Being able to acknowledge difficult, morally complex stuff without the fear of judgment.