Two SWFL women on opposite sides of the abortion issue have one shared experience

Tuesday was an emotional day for women across the nation. A leaked Supreme Court draft opinion shows Roe v Wade could be on the verge of being overturned.

Now, people on both sides of the issue are even more passionate about the fight for rights. One for women’s rights, and the other for the rights of the unborn.

Amanda Peterson of Fort Myers said, “I don’t know, that it’s such an overwhelming feeling. [I’m] angry. I’m sad. I feel defeated.”

Yvette Benarroach of Marco Island said she had mixed emotions. She believes the Supreme Court’s draft leak pointing toward the overturning of Roe V Wade shows a greater injustice.

“We see how the sanctity of the Supreme Court has been violated,” she said. “So it’s kind of like scary.”

But to Peterson the scare is personal, “It needs to be there for everyone. It’s nobody, nobody’s choice but your own. I feel very blessed that I had those choices.”

Peterson made the choice to have an abortion twice. First when she was 18 and a second when she was 27.

And she wants every woman to have the same options she had.

Peterson explained, “I’m picturing the case of the 15-year-old who had a violent pregnancy or a rape and our government is going to say we know that you’ve suffered enough PTSD from the actual rape, but now we’re going to put you through delivery and labor and forced pregnancy and forced delivery, which is traumatic in itself.”

An option Benarroach finds ungodly. “I will continue to fight because I don’t think any young woman, or any woman for that matter, should have to carry the burden of knowing that you killed a child.”

While these women are on opposite sides of this very divisive issue they do share something in common.

Benarroach said, “As a teenager, I made a mistake. I had an abortion, and I have regretted it every single day.”

She says she lives with that pain and she’ll never know the life her child would have had but accepts it’s a choice she made.

It’s a choice Peterson made too, that she believes saved her life. “I received an abortion. I went for follow-up care two weeks later, and that’s when they found a rare form of cervical cancer that most certainly would have killed me … I went on 10 years later to become happily married, travel the world, and have this beautiful, healthy child now that I most certainly wouldn’t have, if I didn’t have the medical care I received.”

Benarroach now has two healthy sons as well, and it’s her mission to hope and pray that no woman feels the way she does.

She said, “There are other options, that a child is not a burden, that, you know, your circumstances now are not going to be what determines your future.”

But whatever someone’s future might hold, all Peterson wants to fight for is a chance to choose. “This is your life. I will never be okay with other people making medical decisions for other people.”

Keep in mind if Supreme Court ultimately overturns Roe v Wade, it does not mean abortion becomes illegal.

Florida law currently allows an abortion up to the 24th week of pregnancy. On July 1, that changes to 15 weeks.