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My junior high school held a model United Nations, and I was assigned to a panel on abortion. A bookish, very virginal fourteen-year-old, I went to the library to do research and found about a dozen books with titles like Our Choices and The Ethics of Abortion. The librarian gave me a sympathetic look at the check-out, and I blushed.
But after I read the books, I wasn't embarrassed; I was convinced: abortion had to be legal in a society where women were valued. Abortion was inevitable, and had to be safe and accessible. I got all kinds of politicized and armed myself with statistics about back-alley abortion. As a high-school freshman, I went to meetings and demonstrations for the Women's Action Coalition and carried banners. I didn't know anyone who'd had an abortion, and I hoped I would never have one, but I was ready to defend our right to with every magic-markered poster at my disposal.
For the first two years of high school, I belonged to the women's-rights club and had a "Keep Abortion Legal" pin on my backpack. My friends and I took civil disobedience classes and one time went to a D.C. march determined to get arrested. Some anarchist friends of ours lay down in the middle of the street, but they weren't really in anyone's way, so the police just watched them shiver on the cold pavement.
But then, at another demonstration — I think it was in Union Square — a guest speaker ascended the podium and claimed that she'd had seven abortions. My friend and I looked at each other and furrowed our brows. Really? Seven? We didn't cheer for her and left early. Young and poor women who couldn't in any way
handle or afford to have a baby, that's what we had in mind. This abortion-as-birth-control activist lady? Not so much.
Shortly thereafter, I got distracted from my political inclinations by drug experimentation and sex. I used condoms. So did my friends. There were a few pregnancy scares, at which point abortion was discussed as one of several legitimate options. But none of us ever had to make the decision, because none of our furtively purchased stick tests ever came up pink.
Then, when I was seventeen, someone close to our family got his girlfriend pregnant. Steve was two years older than me, and at college upstate. His mother, Sarah, called my mother and asked if his girlfriend, Andrea, could stay with us when she came to the city to have the abortion, because there was no place for her to have one anywhere near where she lived. I wasn't particularly into the idea of sharing my room with this quasi-stranger and her friend for four days, but I was ready to be supportive and to defend her against every protestor in New York.
When Andrea and her friend showed up at our apartment that weekend (her boyfriend "couldn't make it"), my mother and I were shocked to see that Andrea actually looked pregnant. Talking to her that night, it was hard not to keep looking down at her stomach, thinking that what was inside soon wouldn't be there. I wondered how many weeks along she was. My mother's friend hadn't said. But thinking about her stomach going from round to flat made me feel a little sick. I tried to make small talk about Steve and the city. I think we played along with Wheel of Fortune on TV.
On the appointment day, my mother, Andrea, her friend and I took a cab to a clinic in midtown. There were protestors. My activist training had primed me for such an eventuality, but I didn't need to lock arms or anything. Someone from inside came out and ushered us in. The protestors left plenty of room around the door. They shouted things like "Don't kill your child!" while brandishing sweet photos of bouncing babies and gory ones, too, of aborted fetuses in trash bags. I hoped Andrea wasn't too upset, and tried to stand between her and the yelling. I secretly hoped no one on the street would think it was me who was getting the abortion, then felt ashamed for being so vain.
We sat in the waiting room until Andrea was called. There were women of all ages there. She went in and wasn't inside very long before she came out. "That was it?" my mother asked, surprised. "I have to come back tomorrow," Andrea said. When my mother asked why, Andrea said, "Because I'm at five months. They do the dilation one day and the extraction the next."
My mother — a pro-choice feminist who marched in demonstrations for the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell and is one of the bravest people I know — turned pale. She
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This is what I had shouted for at all those demonstrations?
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could hardly speak. We left the clinic, through the gauntlet of protestors, and took a cab home. That night, we were watching TV in uncomfortable silence when the phone rang. It was Steve.
I took the phone into the bathroom. "Steve," I hissed, "why aren't you here? And why is she showing?"
"We didn't know until a couple of weeks ago that she was pregnant!" he yelled. "I saw the bloody tampons in her every month. I swear to God! And where do you get off? You won't even get her pot."
"What?"
"She told me she asked you to buy her weed and you wouldn't. You're so selfish."
I was fleetingly impressed that he cared enough to be concerned about her stress level, even if he was hundreds of miles away.
"She's stressed out," he said, sounding stoned.
"Maybe she's supposed to be!" I yelled back. "Maybe this isn't supposed to be easy!"
Immediately, I felt guilty. I did know people who could get her some pot. My mother and I weren't being as comforting as we could be. But then I saw Andrea in the living room, flipping through magazines and joking with her friend, her stomach pushing past her unbuttoned jeans, and all the disapproval came rushing back. This is what I had shouted for at all those demonstrations? This girl, chain smoking and doing her nails and seemingly fine with her decision? Steve's right not to interrupt his busy pot-smoking schedule to take care of a baby that was only four months from being born?
The next day, we took her back to the clinic for the second part of the procedure. It took longer. We went back to the apartment and she stayed on the couch for two days watching TV. Then she and her friend took the bus back upstate.
Andrea and Steve broke up a year or so later. No one ever spoke about it again, until a couple of days ago, when I called my mother.
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If there had been a Bible in our home, I would have thumped it.
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"Did that really happen?" I asked her.
"Yes," she sighed. "When Sarah called, I didn't ask why they couldn't do the abortion upstate. I didn't know until she came out of that clinic room and said she had to come back the next day. I didn't know people even got abortions after six weeks. I'm pro-choice, and I know it's always such a hard choice, but what that girl did was murder. And I helped her. That will stay with me for the rest of my life."
In Salon a few months ago, Ayelet Waldman recalled her own second-term abortion and said that she felt she had "killed" her fetus, but had no regrets. "Listen to the pregnant woman, and you cannot help but defend her right to abortion," she wrote. That's probably true, but looking at Andrea, I felt revulsion. Politically, I still felt I had to defend her right to do what she was doing, but personally and morally I felt it was wrong. Even though I was a godless, liberal native New Yorker, I saw second-term abortion as a sin. If there had been a Bible in our home, I would have thumped it.
I've never said this out loud before, that I have such reluctance about abortion past a certain point — which in my case is definitely before Andrea's five months, when the fetus kicks, has a heartbeat, and sucks its thumb. Being pro-choice with reservations is taboo. It is to wrestle with guilt and doubt and feel that you must be silent. And I understand why. Last year, my colleague Lynn Harris wrote a great essay about how she and her husband help women get access to second-term abortions. I hear and agree with everything she says. I see how it's a class issue, and I appreciate the many totally legitimate reasons why many women can't or don't get them before they're so far along. I applaud Lynn. But privately, I still can't get over this deep moral anxiety about it. And I think that's something we should talk about. At the same time, I fear that by saying such a thing I'm stoking the fire of the fundamentalists, giving comfort to a political enemy that would also restrict access to safe and effective birth control if they could.
My husband grew up in a very small, very devout conservative town in Texas, where contraceptives and abortion were difficult to obtain. Like many of his friends, he had a baby and got married at eighteen, making ends meet by going on food stamps and working as a pizza delivery boy and then, blessedly, getting a college scholarship. The result is we have a bunch of amazingly great preteen kids in our lives. I adore my stepson. He was born a few months after Andrea's visit twelve years ago.
Would Andrea's hypothetical child
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"What if you're aborting the next Einstein?" pro-lifers sometimes chant. I hate that. It's so Sliding Doors.
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have had a good life? Almost definitely not. I suspect Steve and Andrea would have been less-than-stellar parents. Their child would probably be an adolescent mess right now. But I don't like to think about that kind of thing. "What if you're aborting the next Einstein?" pro-lifers sometimes chant. "It could be the next Hitler, too!" pro-choicers inevitably shout back. I hate that. It's so Sliding Doors.
But I do wonder if maybe we pro-choice advocates aren't more conflicted than we let on, and therefore if maybe pro-life advocates aren't as well. Maybe the deal is that pro-choicers have to say, "Allow abortion up until the ninth month! Free and on every corner!" And pro-lifers have to say, "We can never, ever allow it, even in cases of rape and incest, even if the mother might die!" That way, we meet in an awkward demilitarized zone, the first trimester, with restrictions and obstacles that hurt the poor and the young. And so we fight back and forth and make it easier this month and harder the next, so everyone's almost okay with the way things are, but no one really is. n°
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©2005 Ada Calhoun and Nerve.com
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Commentarium (32 Comments)
your article voices the opinion of many people, i believe. unless the woman is a girl who's just started having her periods, most women know when they've skipped a period ( or two or more). abortions after the first trimester are just so disturbing because, as you said, there's a heartbeat, movement, expression, etc. i can sympathize that coming to the decision to have the child or not is not an easy one if the pregnancy was unplanned, not in the right circumstances, etc. but allowing abortion to happen at any time during a woman's pregnancy feels immoral. a woman has several months to make the decision, it does not have to be a snap decision, so for a woman to wait until she is showing her pregnancy demonstrates something about her moral character.
What an excellent article.
a brave, thoughtful, and comforting article. it's nice to know i'm not alone in my feelings about this. thanks!
I too was an activist in my virginal teen years. I too managed to NOT GET PREGNANT when I was in college. So I believe a woman could not know she was pregnant. When I finally got pregnant by choice, I knew immediately. I was sick. I was tired. I didn't have periods.
I know there is a difference between a wanted and unwanted pregnancy. BUT. Most women feel the baby kicking during the fourth month. Most women are showing by the fifth. It's a lot harder to believe it is a ball of cells at that point. It is a lot harder to accept that the mother's life is more important than the baby's; she has already made it to month five, would it kill her to sacrifice another four and then give the baby up for adoption?
I'm kind of in your boat on abortion. It makes me deeply uncomfortable (I believe it IS murder) to abort a fetus, even early-ish on, and downright ghoulish later.
It also makes me deeply uncomfortable to make it illegal/unavailable/someone other than the theoretical mother's decision.
I would be happier if abortions were available but if there were really viable alternatives available as well. Right now, all the advertising equates pregnancy w/ giving up your life. How fair is that? If people don't want girls to have abortions, let them have their babies and a life as well.
Let's see some high school and college programs that allow you to have a baby and also have some self-respect and reasonable living circumstances.
It seems like the same parties who are so against abortion are also against social programs which might make it easier for young women to give brith rather than abort.
Thanks for the article,
Zach
Wonderful article! I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who believes that there should be SOME restrictions on abortion, though it should still be legal, and I defend that opinion shamelessly. It's not a black and white situation that any woman finds herself in when she realizes that she's pregnant, and her options aren't black and white either, and I think you expressed that gray area beautifully.
Thank you for your excellent article, you beautifully expressed many of my own conflicted feelings about this. This is one of those issues that you sometimes feel can never be resolved dispassionately - but maybe if more pro-choice folks speak up about their reservations, some kind of balance could be reached. Now, if we could only get the pro-lifers to try to meet us half way...
Abortion, like sex in general, can't be legislated for in any real sense -- it's going to happen. I'd say many or most pro-choice folks agree it should always and only be a last resort -- as such we can only try to educate, and try to make it as safe as we can.
Don't believe in abortion? Don't have one. But don't turn your "opinion" into the law of the land. Particularly when it is based on an ancient, mistranslated book which "teaches" that women come from ribs, that people live to be 900, and that Jonah lived in a whale. Give me a break.
I totally agree, and see 2nd and 3rd trimester (without medical reasons, or other extenuating circumstances) as wrong. But support is support, and unlike some, I will not force my private views upon the masses.
I really related to your article. I was always VERY pro-choice until our own baby was stillborn in the sixth month of my pregnancy. I opted for a D&E instead of delivering my baby and still feel guilty about the choice a year later.
I am pregnant again (almost done!!!!) and have had about a billion ultrasounds throughout this pregnancy. The baby was definitely "babylike" by about eleven weeks. I am no longer personally comfortable with the idea of abortion past the 2nd or 3rd month of pregnancy except in unusual circumstances.
Of course, one thing my loss taught me was how complicated the issue of abortion is. I have met numerous women who discovered around 20 weeks (at their routine ultrasounds) that their babies were "incompatible with life" and had to make decisions to carry the babies to term or abort or induce early. The babies would die no matter what. It is a horrible choice to make and I realized that it is for those women that abortion should not be regulated by the government. A family is in so much pain at that point...it's a choice that needs to be made by a woman/family and her physician.
Good article, but I hope that this ambivalence towards early- and late-term abortion that is common among pro-choicers sparks something additional to discussion. This is a topic that begs for introspection and, maybe, reevaluation of one's stance on the issue. Perhaps a woman's right to choose may be a given, but with that freedom comes her responsibility to constantly reassess not only her own political and social motivation to opt for an abortion, but - often more importantly - her emotional and moral motivations as well.
This was really smart and thoughtfully written-- a topic I don't think we discuss often enough.
you are not as pro-choice as you think you are
I think this is a really muddied and fuzzy response to what's an important reaction. I recognize that the writer feels this way and has recollections that inform her view, but this stuff needs to be sorted out (not for the rest of us, but for the writer) in a longer piece by the writer.
I've never run into anyone, not on the internet or anywhere else, who would prohibit abortion even if it meant the pregnant woman's death. No one. People like that are a myth. And yet pro-choicers insist that fetuses are not alive until the second they leave the uterus and that to ban third trimester abortion would be akin to legalizing domestic violence. Bullshit, and luckily, the majority of Americans, Canadians and the rest of the world know it.
It is illegal to perform third trimester abortions. Very few (I won't say all, because I am sure there are some mistakes which are made due to calendar miscalculations) abortions are performed past 21 weeks. For those who know math, that is a whole 19 weeks before the baby is considered full term. so this idea that pro-choicers want to allow women to abort up until the moment of birth is, well, as clueless and misguided as the notion that there are pro-lifers who would oppose abortion in cases where the mother would die if the pregnancy were to continue. (For what it is worth, I have actually encountered some people on the internet who come dangerously close to advocating this--along the lines of "most mothers I know would give their own lives for their children. what sort of woman would choose her life instead of her child's?")
An abortion at 21 weeks is morally distressing enough for most people. No need to lie about the pro-choice movement (as many pro-life websites and organizations do) and push the number of weeks even higher. Oh yeah, I forgot, most people are actually pro-choice in this country (pro-choice with restrictions is still pro-choice. and as has been pointed out many times, the circumstances for which most people are pro-choice are 1) rape 2) incest 3) health of mother 4) me)
Like the author, I guess I am a 'Godless Liberal' too. But I really don't feel the need to moralize this issue. Like someone else here said . . . if you don't want an abortion, then don't have one. Whether or not you think it's right or wrong for someone else to do something that ought to be private is your perogative, but their choice is THEIR choice. You don't have to like it. You don't have to agree with it. And you know what - you don't have to LIVE with it, either. Yeah, abortion sucks. It would suck to get pregnant when you really didn't intend to. But the voice I felt so very lacking in this story was that of Andrea. I am quite sure there are exponentially more women who are relieved they had abortions than those that feel they are 'haunted' by them. But that's life, and people have to live with their decisions.
There's nothing wrong with having conditions on your support of abortion rights. Personally, I recognize that abortion needs to be legal since we can't (or won't) control the circumstances into which a child is born. We can't protect all pregnant women, particularly unwed teens, from disapproval, abuse, poverty, and a host of other social and health problems.
But I can't consider abortion simply as a method of birth control an ethical choice. Sex carries an awesome responsibility wtih it, the potential to create new life, and people should live up to that responsibility when they have sex. I think there is an ethical problem when you feel you must sacrifice that new life to live the life you want to live unless there are dire circumstances involved.
The writer sounds very naive. I realize that her experience with the subject is limited (she had never known anyone who had an abortion, and then she based her world-view on one stranger who had one), but she really needs to broaden her perspective when it comes to this huge, complex issue. I was pregnant, and contined to get what I thought was my period every month. I am 5'10" thin, and I realized that at 5 months. My body felt normal, I was at a normal weight for my height. I was also 20 and single. Suggesting that someone should "wait out the 4 months" and give the baby up for adoption?? That is a much more excrutiating decision, one that you would surely regret when you got older. Sounds like the author has lived a rather sheltered life, and needs to have more life experiences before sounding off on such a topic.
You have articulated to a letter exactly how I feel. Wonderful article.
I'm pro-choice, and yet at the same time, I am SO grateful that my several furtive episodes with a pregnancy test in the bathroom -- all which involved this or that useless boyfriend -- did not end up in an unwanted pregnancy...
And yes, first trimester does seem so much more acceptable, doesn't it. But allow for any moral questions, and it does feel like you open the door to the anti-abortion wingnut contingent, doesn't it?
For me, I suppose it all comes down to viability, personhood, and when that happens. To me, by the beginning of the second trimester, you're reaching that point...
I married at 34, had my first baby at 36, and at 40, I had a 2nd pregnancy that ended in a 10-week miscarriage.
As odd as it was, I felt very much that I lost a little life in that 10-week old fetus. It was hard enough at 10 weeks.
I can't even imagine losing a child, or terminating a pregnancy at 5 months, 20 weeks, well past the point where you can feel the child moving, and getting close to the viability stage...
There will always be insensitive people who don't bat an eyelash at something like a 2nd trimester abortion. But those same people probably wouldn't be particularly sensitive parents either.
That leaves the rest of us to agonize...
Why are you ashamed when the whole point of prochoice is for you to have the freedom and choice to make the decision. I have been prochoice since i was very young i think I was 12 or 13 when I wrote a school article on the subject and admitted my feelings towards it...being prochoice.
BUT what people don't realise is that I have never had one nor will I ever unless I have been raped and made pregnant OR other medical issues to which unless I'm in the situation can't really know what choice I might make at that moment...remember it's called Pro Choise NOT Pro abortion...the freedom to choose your own destiny!
Thanks for writing such a right-on essay. I feel as if everyone has to be so all-or-nothing about abortion, when it really is an extremely complex topic that isn't black or white. (sigh) I feel as if moderate voices get silenced in every debate...
What an amazing and well-written essay. I almost feel on the verge of tears. I have always been pro-choice and have exercised that choice. I remember after I left the clinic thinking my god how easy was that and how horrible it must have been for women 30 years ago. However I disagree strongly in late term abortion. I applaud you Ada Calhoun for having the courage to write and publish your essay!
Why on earth would you be ashamed to admit that a second-term abortion is wrong? I am pro-choice and when I was 19 I had an abortion. I was only four weeks when I showed up at the clinic and they sent me home and I had to go back two weeks later.
It was the most traumatic experience of my life. I have regretted it ever since.
I was raised in a Bible-thumping home and all I could think about was the shame it would bring on me and my family.
That is the biggest wrong we do to our children.
I would never in a million years take away a woman's right to choose. But pro-choicers have also got to admit that often abortion does hurt women and girls.
And the best thing to do is fight to keep it legal and also fight to help females of all ages understand its ramifications. We should educate our girls and boys as they grow up and work to implement programs that teach safe sex.
But those of us who are pro choice also need to help give women lots of choices, not just two.
I believe that there is no person until there is a brain and nervous system that can process stimuli and have consciousness. Until then, an embryo or fetus is a potential human being, but not a human being yet. I have read that until about 23 weeks an EEG of a fetus is flatline - essentially brain dead, no consciousness, no capacity to feel pain; any movements are not responses to stimuli, just spasms - like Terri Schiavo. After that point, yeah, I would have a problem with abortion,23 weeks semms like plenty of time to find out you are pregnant and make a decision and take the necessary steps. Not that I would ban so-called "partial birth abortions"; I have also read that the late term abortion procedure is rare and used in cases where the fetus has been found to have extreme defects which will result in its death and possibly cause danger to the mother to carry it to term. These are babies which were wanted, they are tragedies, already so traumatic to the mothers, who must on top of that deal with being labeled a murderer.
I'm a 38 year old woman who had an abortion at 27. I was 6 weeks pregnant and I promised myself I wouldn't go thru that again because it was pretty traumatic. I'm glad I did it though. Having that child (the product of a rape) would have been a way much more traumatic experience than the abortion in itself.
I feel extremely thankful that I come from a country were this is legal (Sweden) and were I have the right to decide what happens (and what doesn't) inside my uterus.
BUT I THINK a woman who waits 5 MONTHS to end an unwanted pregnancy has a psicological problem or is crearly iresponsible. The same thing goes to the chick who had seven abortions.
I'm pro-choice but I don't think I would have put with the crap the author and her mother went thru. Even though she was some friend-of -a- friend. O.k, Mother Theresa I'm not but people should learn to be responsible of their actions. Even weed junkies.
Abortion just can't help but bring up strong emotions in people. Reading this story just a few days shy of the 3-year anniversary of the date of my first, very painful abortion I was connecting to the feelings of indecision and rage I felt at the time. I'm not a teenager, I'm not living in an area where birth control is limited, nor am I uneducated, but still I got pregnant and was not prepared to have a baby. I'm so grateful to those who have worked to make sure that I have the right to choose that for myself. As a lonely 16 yr. old living away from home, I found myself pregnant with the baby of a man I wasn't sure I wanted to be connected to for the rest of my life, one way or another, but I didn't feel I had any options other than to give birth to my daughter. I'm very glad she's in my life, but I'm sad that she's had the kind of life she has because of her parentage. I've learned since then that I have a mental health condition that makes it likely a bad idea for me to ever have children and I'm sure she'd agree with that.
Pro-lifers argue that its wrong to take the life of a child away, but in so many cases, I think the real crime is bringing a child you can't take care of or maybe can't even love into this world. Having seen it go both ways in my own life, I have a good example of what happens. I choose the child, the child lives and suffers. I choose an abortion and no more hurting children are added to the planet; I become older and wiser and protected with an IUD.
Yes, the first answer ought to be the healthy choice of when to make love or not, and to be responsible in what you choose. But the world isn't made up of totally healthy people who make love to connect and affirm, and ensure that no children are created until a place is secured for them. A lot of the activity going on is by people who are in need of something, affirmation, simple physical pleasure, punishment, protection...and there may not be the wherewithal to do so with a healthy eye towards the future and what might be created.
My choice on this one is to start making a difference with the life I created. I choose to teach my daughter (by example when I can) that she can have people in her life who love and support her and respect her needs. Healthy people make healthy choices much more often than needy ones. That's my contribution! Thanks to those that do battle for our legal rights as women.
I understand your point of view and respect your write to have it. I do, however, want to let you know that my husband and I had to go through the painful experience of a "partial birth abortion" and my explanation follows. Happily pregnant, married since 2004, never pregnant before, we were very excited. Went in for 18 week check-up and found out that the baby inside me was completely deformed and had a condition called fetal hydrops. The baby had large fluid-filled cysts all over, due to Turner's syndrome. Not very common, but there was no way this baby was viable and was going to die within weeks of birth, had it been carried to term. Of course we decided to "abort" or have a dilation and curettage performed. I had to wait 3 weeks to have it done (i live in New Mexico, and unfortunately there is a real shortage of health care workers throughout this state, so we had to wait this long for the doctor, 2 and 1/2 hours away in Albuquerque, to be available, really great and caring woman fortunately). What would you have done? The majority of 2nd term, and 3rd term, abortions are, as mine was, done because the fetus isn't viable. The people you describe sound terribly awful, and I don't know what kind of childhoods or psychological disorders they may have, but the vast majority of women do not take these things so lightly. Taking away our rights, as they have done in some states and that a "partial-birth abortion" ban does, affects responsible and heartbroken people like myself and my husband. So just be careful to find out the facts about these procedures and why they are done in the majority, vast majority of cases. Other women in my shoes have lived in states with anti-women laws, and have had to carry to term or until they sponatneous aborted, and I can't imagine the pain they must have suffered.
I found your article looking for evidence that there was another pro-choicer out there who felt uncomfortable with mid to late term abortions like I do. It's a seriously tricky area, isn't it? On one hand, we feel strongly in the importance of making abortion accessible to all women. Yet on the other it's hard to ignore the realities of the developing fetus that late in the game. I was pretty sure I wanted abortion, no questions asked, until I had my own children. And when a close friend of mine aborted a child who was kicking, healthy and oh so close to that point of viability that roe v wade talks about, it was heartbreaking to watch and no matter how much I wanted to suppress those feelings of disgust, I just couldn't imagine it. It's just so tricky. I do love the comment the women who had a partial birth abortion with a child that was not going to be viable - certainly helps me to understand why these may be important to keep in our society.
Yes, sure, I like it, Interesting and educational. Please continue to write more interesting post in your website.
Looks like, trackback doesn't work. Can I ping your text?
Whay are you don't publish actual news?