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 abortions by saying "[they]will not let you forget." She first states all the things that she, as the mother, would miss out on. They are "singers and workers" whom the mother will never be able to comfort or protect by "silinc[ing] with a sweet" and "scuttl[ing] off ghosts that come.
             The second stanza begins with the mother stating how she is punished for her "dim killed children." Again the speaker reiterates that she has taken something away from the unborn children. She refers to herself as a thief saying she "stole" their "games," "marriages," and even "deaths." She goes on to say although she had the abortion and does not regret it, she was not "deliberate" in killing them. Again she struggles to 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.
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