Last week was the 37th anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision.
It's a time in our history when the emotional support of a woman's right to choose is still uneasy and unsettled, and insurance coverage for abortion is an active battle fraught with contention.
In many ways politics have removed us from women's personal experience.
In the Abortion Questionnaire of my Women's Realities Study women are making clear the individualized seriousness with which they contemplated their decision to end a pregnancy. They also reveal how personal a decision it is to live with. The choice can be heartbreaking, but if we lived in a society without the ability to make that choice, imagine how much more heartbreak there would be. Here is a representative sample of the range of responses to the question:
What do you want others to understand about your experience of abortion?
- That women do not have abortions out of carelessness or because we enjoy them. We have them to get out of the trap that our own body sometimes sets us. If society valued women and children more, we might not feel as if motherhood would back us into a corner.
- That it was OK. I don't regret it and it doesn't haunt me. It helped me make some hard choices which have ultimately improved my life tremendously.
- It's a horrible, degrading, stupid thing to do.
- I want others to realize that many women have had an abortion. I want people to realize that just because I support abortion, that just because I had an abortion, does not mean that I am proud of my decision. I want people to realize that they should not talk about abortion indiscriminately, because they don't know who is in the room. Several times since then it has come up in conversation with people who do not know that I have had an abortion, and each time, I want to ask them, "How do you know I haven't had one?" I don't, of course...
- Birth control failures can happen, even to well-educated and well-off individuals. When they occur, pregnancy is a natural consequence. Ending a pregnancy is a very personal decision. Reasons for doing so are not something that can be fully understood by anyone but the woman involved. It is MY body and therefore I should decide what to do with it. I decided to have sex before marriage, and I decided how to deal with the consequences. Better to have two less babies in the world than to have three miserable people now. Being a mother is not all about raising children - it is about the emotional and physical bond that forms during pregnancy. I didn't want that bond.
To that end, I am ashamed at myself when I think about the shame I felt going through the procedure. I should have held my head up high. It's just so hard when you feel like everyone around you is judging you.
- That not everyone who has an abortion is an unwed teenager. That one out of every couple hundred pregnancies involves a chromosome abnormality and that no one takes lightly the decision to end a pregnancy.
- It is not something that any women I know take lightly or use as a form of birth control. It is a major tragic decision that no one wants to make, but some of us are forced to. I never thought I would be someone who had three abortions. I did not have sex until I was 18, I used birth control always except one weekend (yes it is true), I did not want to watch my child live in pain only to ultimately die a painful death from a severe heart defect, I also did not want my older daughter to watch her sister die, I did not want to bring a sick child into this world that would be in chronic pain and fight an illness for the rest of his life, I did not want my other children to loose their mother because I was off caring for a sick child all of the time. I made these choices out of careful thought and love. I do not regret my choices.
- It sucks! You never fully heal. It is so much better to go through the hassle of safe sex than to live with the feelings.
I went to confession about 25 years later and the priest, who was a very good man, asked me if I had ever thought of a name for the baby. And I said yes, I thought I would have named him Michael. He said that was the name he was thinking at that moment as well. This brought me some level of peace.
- Even if it is a choice we can make, it is an extremely difficult one. Seek the support you need.
- I am a bright, college-educated woman and found myself pregnant. It was an agonizing choice, but a choice that my mother helped me make.
And to remind us that this isn't a always a decision women make alone, in my entire study of over 1,200 questions, the only question to receive 100% unanimity was this:
Q: If married or in a committed relationship, was your partner supportive of the abortion?
A: Yes.
Living in a culture in which women can carry shame or feel vilified for having an abortion, it would serve us well to remember this is very often a decision made in concert with men. The silent partners of abortion.
In college I was staunchly against legalized abortion. (Fast forward) I did a term paper on the topic and changed my mind. Just educating myself about the issue I was able to see that under several circumstances abortion should be legalized and fiscally supported by government.
(Fast forward again 10 years) my live in girl frienc, the love of my life for 10 years became pregnant, we were careless. She was adamantly against children from day one that I met her and knew she would not have the baby. I secretly wanted the child but said nothing.
Watching and experiencing her agony tortured my heart and soul for years. Her dread of the decision was nothing compared to the horror she took away from that day. I dont think she ever really was able to reconcile her soul and I felt responsible.
Years later she left me for another man and then later even passed away. She never forgave herself and it took me years to forgive myself.
I dont have the same thoughts about abortion that I did 20, 30 years ago. Not only should it be legalized and funded it should be taught and counseled so that a woman can be prepared for such a decision. Men too. Young and old.
I'm 50 now and have no children. Nobody calls me "Dad". But I wouldn't change how I handled it. It's a womans choice not an old white guy in Washington and its damn personal.
My future husband's presence during mine brought me peace of mind. It also brought us together in a bizarre way. We had Been Through Something Significant Together. Blood was spilled and its spilling was witnessed. You can't really understand no matter how I try to describe it because you weren't there. But he can. He was there. Holding my hand.
This was an unintended side effect of my asking him to be there. I asked because I was suspicious of the doctor. One of the traditional coins that back alley abortionists were paid in is sex. A woman who needs an abortion in a controlling patriarchy, after all, has lost her honor and may now be sexually abused at will.
In practical terms, if you are molested by someone providing such a controversial procedure you can't bring them to justice without publicly admitting you had an abortion. With all the social backlash that entails. And thats not even getting into the possibility that the doctor was an anti-choice plant that might fake the procedure to try to stall me out past the legal limit to trap me.
I wanted someone big and strong present to represent my interests. But his presence also changed the entire tone of the proceedings. I wasn't scurrying off in secret to do something so horrible that even my closest relation couldn't acknowledge it. "I" wasn't doing anything. "We" were.
But I prefer events exactly as they unfolded.
My dad treated my mother like refuse. He cheated openly, basically double dog daring her to acknowledge it. On at least one occasion that I witnessed giving her the soiled laundry from an extramarital encounter to clean up complete with the condoms. Why did she marry him?!?!?!?!
Because at the time he behaved differently, obviously.
Probably like how my boyfriend was behaving while courting me. Sure I loved him ... but Mom felt the same way about Dad initially. And I know how that story ended.
I didn't intend to die a virgin, but that isn't the same thing. I probably would not have married if no opportunity arose for a guy to prove to me that he could be trusted. The abortion provided that opportunity. I got to observe him in shock, under stress, and see those first, raw, unfiltered responses ... which were concern for and a desire to protect/support me. I suddenly had the option of building a future with someone instead of going it alone.
But my first pregnancy elicited an irrational emotional reaction that paid no heed to the facts. I was in my Senior year of college, dating my future husband. I'd left home at age 16 with burned bridges so I had no support structure. I needed to graduate and get a job ASAP. I. Would. Not. Be. Like. My. Mother. Trapped in an abusive, loveless relationship through bonds of flesh and the inability to provide for herself.
But when I looked at that thumb sized shadow on the sonogram I didn't see a mindless ball of flesh. I saw a person.
A person sucking my blood from the inside, devouring my hopes/dreams/future. Cackling evilly and crooning in my mothers voice about how I'd, "understand when I grew up". In short, an enemy. My adrenaline spiked, my teeth bared, the nurse stammered something and stepped back. They made me wait a week to think it over before they cut her out of me. A week of hell. Of being eaten alive. Of feeling my mind being *changed* by the hormones in my blood. Nesting impulses, behaviors and desires that were not my own trying to edge the real me out and replace her with someone else. It was horrible. The abortion was wonderful. Freeing. Cleansing. I was ME again.
I also didn't trust birth control anymore and my future husband had to get a vasectomy before I let him past first base again. Anyone who tells you vas's are not reversible is an idiot. We can attest to it.
And pregnancy hormones are not an assault on your soul if you planned the pregnancy. When you were already thinking nesting thoughts they are just a performance enhancer to what you were already doing.
The difference between chosen and forced pregnancy is night and day ... or sex and rape. The same physical action, but vastly different emotional impact depending on whether you choose to do it or not.
I have an 18 year old daughter and have been very open with her about my choices, and have helped her in every way I can to practice safe sex. I am committed to make sure she and other young women continue to have a choice, while at the same time hoping none of them are ever faced with having to make that decision.
Abortion needs to be legal and rare.