Abortion is a widely debated issue. However, those who are for and against abortions agree on one thing, the decision to have an abortion may be the most difficult decision a woman may have to make. In Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “The Mother” the speaker directly address her dead children and struggles to apologize to the children she “got but did not get” without feeling regret. In the first stanza of the poem the speaker personifies …showed first 75 words of 276 total…

…showed last 75 words of 276 total…reason with herself as to whether or not the “crime”, the abortion, was even hers by saying “anyhow you are dead” and “or rather, or instead, you were never made.” She then concludes that her attempt to justify her actions are “faulty” because the children “had body” and “died” but its just that they never “giggled or cried.” In the final stanza the speaker begs her unborn to believe she “knew” and “loved” them all.