A short while ago, a pro-life person on this blog asked me why women get abortions. Of course, books have been written about the subject but I wanted to give her the courtesy of a public reply.
A little over one million women a year get abortions. Without trying to sound cavalier about it, that means that there are a little over one million reasons. Every time a woman picks up the phone to call a clinic for an abortion, she has her own, personal reason for doing so. Every woman has her own individual circumstances that led her to the decision to terminate her pregnancy.
Sure, it’s possible to generalize. The woman may have felt that she was too young to have a baby, that she did not have enough resources to raise the child, or that the father has disappeared. Then there are the even tougher cases, where the pregnancy was the result of a rape or incest, the women’s health or life would be endangered if she brought a child to term, or she discovered a fetal abnormality.
What is comes down to in every case, however, is that the woman decided that it was not the right time for her to bring a child into the world. And that is a decision that probably took her a while to arrive at.
Indeed, when someone asks me why women have abortions, I hear in their voice the assumption that the woman learned she was pregnant one day and an hour later she was on the phone making an appointment for an abortion. The fact is that EVERY pregnant woman knows that if she did not have an abortion, she would ultimately give birth to a baby. She considers the possibility of giving birth and having to raise a child. Of course, many women decide to continue the pregnancy. But there are others who decide – often in consultation with the father, her family, her spiritual counselors – to have an abortion.
Last week, I posted a note asking women to tell us about their abortion experience, including why they felt they needed to exercise that option. The stories are interesting and every story is unique.
A woman becomes pregnant, she knows she could have a baby but she decides to abort it. That is not an easy decision for anyone.
Who are we to challenge the reason?
Abortion - Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information 
March 16, 2010 at 5:06 pm
Pat, you’re leading with your chin again! The so-called “pro-life” movement has so well sold the public on the evil of abortion that what you’re going to get for responses from them are the usual freighted terms– “murder,” “innocent life,” “destroying an unborn child,” etc. The best they can come up with is somebody like Nancy, adoptive mother of 4, vegetarian, involved with the community, loves life, and even she could not bring herself to say other women had the right to make decisions different from hers.
The run of the mill “pro-lifer” is so emotionally dependent on needing to hate abortion that they see a piece like this as just so much raw meat. How you can keep plugging away in the face of non-communication from the likes of the good Rev. Bryan over at Social Justice [not Responsibility] Begins in the Womb, who gloats every time a woman turns away from a women’s health clinic, whether she’s there for an abortion or no.
Resolution to the conflict between those who care about life and those who care for it will only come when the public becomes aware of the movement’s true nature as a dysfunctional self-help program.
But keep trying! You’re a pleasure to read.
cg
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March 16, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Tiffany Campell’s story (from Daily Kos):
“In 2006 I became pregnant and was thrilled. After landing in the hospital with a severe kidney infection at 19-weeks gestation, I received my first ultrasound, leaving us shocked and thrilled to see we were expecting identical twin boys.
The joy didn’t last when our babies were diagnosed with Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome. Webmd.com describes Twin-Twin transfusion syndrome as “the most serious complication of identical twins. It starts in the womb when one twin gets too much blood and the other not enough. The outcome for both twins is grim.”
Severe TTTS has a 60-100 percent likelihood of fetal or neonatal mortality rate. We were sent to one of the premier fetal care centers in the country and told our only hope for saving this pregnancy was to have a selective termination on the one of the babies, and hope the other twin would survive….
“I never thought I would have to once again open deep wounds and share my deeply personal story, but then the Stupak-Pitts Amendment was added to the House version of the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The selective termination that saved my baby’s life would not be covered under the Stupak-Pitts Amendment.”
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March 17, 2010 at 7:38 am
CG, when you say I’m “leading with my chin again,” it implies I’m in some kind of fight. I dont expect to convert any pro-life person, but I do enjoy trying to understand and trying to make them a little less “angry.” I just want those who oppose abortion to understand the women who make that choice. If they understand, they may be less inclined to stand in front of a clinic and scream at them. As far as the pro-choice movement, we need to face and discuss the tougher issues. I have grown tired of people avoiding even saying the word “abortion.” Every movement needs to challenge itself every so often. It’s time we did the same….and my chin can take it..
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March 18, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Pat, we should really be de-emphasizing “abortion” and emphasizing the word “psychopathology.”
Despite a strong current of anti-Semitism in America, many, many people who visited Germany during the nightmare years realized a psychopathology was at work. It’s the same with the “pro-life” movement.
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March 19, 2010 at 7:29 am
Disagreee with ya, CG. Or maybe I want to say if you want to start a movement out there about “psychopathology,” go for it. You might get ten members to join! Abortion is a fact of life, we have only so much time on this earth. I choose to try to de-stigmatize the procedure as much as possible.
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March 19, 2010 at 4:07 pm
You’ve hit the nail on the head, Pat! I’ve been pointing out the psychopathology of the so-called “pro-life movement since at least 1993, and so far haven’t even gotten one other person to join. The good news is, nobody’s deposed me yet… You will never remove the stigmatization as long as one of them has a compulsion to yell, “Murder!” What is necessary is to have the public understand that they are working on an agenda to save themselves, not to save chldren, born or “unborn.”
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