Gays Leave the Closet, Abortion Moves Back In

With Connecticut last week becoming the third state to allow same-sex couples to marry, a group once very much stigmatized becomes more and more mainstream, writes Ellen Goodman in the Boston Globe. But even as homosexuals step out of the closet, women who’ve had abortions are stepping in. While nearly everyone knows someone who is gay, we don’t always know that we know someone who’s had an abortion.

While acceptance of homosexuality has flourished, abortion has, if anything, become more stigmatized, leading women to be intensely private about the decision, though one in three women has an abortion by age 45. "The more private it is, the more we think it only happens to someone else, someone 'unlike us.' " Goodman writes. "The more unlike us she is, the less public support there is for the right."

(More abortion stories.)