Lexi4529

This post could be about me.
I had my two children while still in my teens, and then had an abortion in my early 20s, when I became unexpectedly pregnant again as a result of birth control failure (I was married at the time; my husband did not want any more children either and was supportive of my terminating the pregnancy).

I don't know how you can best be supportive of your mom; apparently, since she told you, she does want to talk about it. Otherwise, there is no reason for her to have ever told you.

We are living in a difficult time right now; it is a hard time, socially and politically, for women who have terminated a pregnancy. We can hardly open a newspaper these days, hardly turn on the television news, without seeing ourselves reviled as irresponsible sl*ts and "child murderers".

I suspect that the way you can best help your mother is by telling her that you are willing to listen to and accept her reasons for terminating her pregnancy, if she wishes to talk about them.
I imagine that, like me, she ended her pregnancy because she felt she had to, in order to conserve her physical, emotional, and financial resources for taking care of the child she already had... in this case, you.
If that is indeed her reason, it will probably comfort her to know that you accept that and understand it, and that (regardless of how you feel about the issue of abortion, per say) you appreciate the fact that she's been a good mother to you.

Nobody can really know anybody else's reasons for anything, since we have not lived other's lives and faced the same hardships and struggles.
In the current social climate, there is a lot of judgement toward women who have had abortions; I've heard people saying they should be arrested, that they should be imprisoned, that they should have their children taken away from them, even that they deserve to die.
But the fact is, more than a quarter of all women in the United States have terminated at least one pregnancy during their lifetimes. It's far more common than most people realize. Most women don't talk about it; if they did, then we'd probably realize that we all know someone in our own immediate circles, in our own families, even, who has had an abortion. That's how common this is.

All I can say is, when you talk to your mother, try to approach the issue without judgement. If you can't do that, then try never to speak about it again.
There is too much judgement going around these days, too much hatred, too much anti-woman sentiment. Women do not need to face retribution from their own children, in their own homes.

Good luck with this.