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When a child is abused, it's much worse than an adult's excuse or a bad habit.
The abuse becomes normalized. Only strong minds are even able to recognize that their "normal" is wrong.
Most often, the child grows into an adult who doesn't know what a normal life should be nor how to achieve it. They have children, and the cycle continues.
Jenny continuously made bad choices. Yes. She never learned what choices were good.
It was never her excuse for bad choices. She tried making the right choices, but with a broken compass, she never had a chance.
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Jenny was sexually abused by her dad.
Forrest shows up, and after having sex, she feels like she might have done the same thing to Forrest. In her mind, she sexually abused Forrest because he is not mentally capable of consenting. Do you see the parallel there?
That's the root of her internal conflict. She's terrified she's going to become her father and continue his cycle of abuse.
She eventually comes to realize that Forrest is more capable than she thought. However, she's a walking bomb of self-destruction at this point, and she knows it.
With the last ounce of selflessness she could muster, she leaves her child with Forrest. It was painful for her to lose the only two people who still love her, but any other action would ruin the child's life. At least, this is what she believes.
In the end, Jenny is a selfish and destructive person, but she abandoned love itself in order to save her child from her cycle of abuse. >

For the most part I agree with what you're saying, but what you're saying is the explanation for why she did the things she did, not justification for those things.
Someone can have really shitty reasons to do a good thing and really good reasons to do a shitty thing, but the end result is whatever actions were taken.  "Perception is reality" and "actions speak louder than words" basically, because ultimately we can't get in to other peoples heads for the exact reasons or motivations why they did something.  Sure we can guess, even take an educated guess if you know the person well and/or are a mental health professional, but no one except the person who's the subject, really knows the exact details of why someone does a particular thing.
The reasons explain the why, but they don't necessarily justify the actions.  Outside of her relationship with Forrest, Jenny continually makes really bad life choices and shows her self as someone who doesn't seem to place much value in others or herself.  So when you combine those actions with how she treats Forrest, while she may have reasons to do the things she does, the things she does are still ultimately pretty shitty.