Changing the Narrative About Abortion
I come from the Our Bodies, Ourselves generation. This seminal women-themed collection, first published by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective in 1970, explored relationships, sex education, homosexuality/gender identity, birth control, and – gasp! – abortion. My mother conveniently left the book on our coffee table for me to peruse as I approached adolescence. Yet, perhaps due to her liberal ideas about hippies and Vietnam, juxtaposed against her old-fashioned morals pertaining to sex and marriage, my stance on abortion was always ambivalent.
Later, as a teenager living in the ‘80s in liberal and progressive Santa Cruz, California, I always flippantly assumed I would have an abortion if I found myself facing an unexpected pregnancy. After all, this was what educated and enlightened women did. Women who had children before they were financially secure and in stable relationships were clearly ruining their lives and their chances for future success. I went to college, practiced birth control, got married, got divorced and didn’t really think much about abortion until I was in my late 20s. I still considered myself pro-choice; I also wanted children someday. Would I ever have an abortion? I was ambivalent.
Bay Area-based Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, known as PAAU, supports all the usual social justice causes: they are pro-women's rights, pro-trans, and pro-black lives. While their name may capitalize on abortion ambivalence, this group of self-described feminists are unapologetically pro-life and in favor of eliminating the "Abortion Industrial Complex" throughout the land. No ambivalence there.
Is all their talk of human rights, as they enthusiastically hail the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, disingenuous and hypocritical, or is it a recognition of that spark of humanity, ignited even before the day of our birth? Before I consider their seemingly contradictory stance, let me provide some background: I consider myself an open-minded gal. Depending on the issue, I vacillate between left, right, and center. As for abortion, my sentiments fall outside this linear thinking. To understand why my feelings about abortion are so nebulous and complex, I will offer three very personal stories.
When I was 27, I found myself pregnant and in a relationship where the level of commitment was lacking. As the hormones kicked in, the previously indoctrinated abortion narrative began to unravel. In contrast, my boyfriend remained a true believer and began pressuring me to terminate the pregnancy. To quote the tired cliche, he wasn’t “ready” and he didn’t think I was ready, either. I won’t go into the sordid details. It was an unhappy period of my life, and the dark veil did not lift until, after a long night laboring, I birthed my precious 8 pound,14 ounce daughter. I can honestly say the day she was born was one of the happiest days of my life. Because I am a forgiving person, loved her father, and desperately wanted to be a family, we later married and had two more children (not in that order). We finally divorced after a tumultuous 30-plus year relationship.
My second story is about that daughter, my first born, who grew up to be a talented, musical, intelligent, opinionated, and very confident young woman. She graduated early from high school, entered the University of California at the age of 17, married at 18, and became pregnant shortly thereafter. When my happily married daughter got the results of her pregnancy test, she absolutely wanted to keep her baby. She and her husband were young and poor but very much in love. Imagine how shocked she was when the health center worker at the university presented abortion as the logical and appropriate next step. After all, how could she possibly complete her education if she were to have a baby at the age of 19? Feeling insulted and deeply offended, my daughter gathered her things and walked out of that clinic. She had a healthy home birth and went on to receive her bachelor’s degree at the age of 20. She gave birth to my second grandchild and received her master’s degree by the time she was 23. The stereotype of the drop-out teenage mother may be partly based in reality, but I always thought stereotypes were meant to be challenged, not affirmed. I am forever proud of my daughter for defying this stereotype and for defying the health care worker who was perpetuating the stereotype.
My final story involves my maternal grandmother, whom I never met. My mother frequently told this story during my formative years. I still am not sure how it shaped my views on abortion, but the story was a constant reminder of – something – growing up. At the age of 41, my grandmother was dismayed to be pregnant again. She already had three daughters. Back then, it was not movie-star cool to be a middle-aged mom, and 40 was more like the new 60. Anyway, the story goes that she begged the family physician, an old-school country doctor, to give her an abortion. This was the mid-1940s, and abortion was illegal, so her request was denied. My grandmother gave birth and had such severe and debilitating postpartum depression that she was unable to care for her baby for several months. My mother filled in as surrogate mom for her brother who was 18 years her junior.
In these three abortion stories an actual abortion never took place, but the specter of abortion was always present. Recently, a sponsored ad from Planned Parenthood that asked women to share their “abortion stories” invaded my Facebook feed. Very few of the comments actually involved personal stories about abortion. Most comments made by women (and a few men) only thanked Planned Parenthood for their pro-choice advocacy work. Some people expressed pro-life views, but out of hundreds of comments, I only saw a handful where women actually wanted to write about their abortion experiences. I find this telling. Most women probably don’t want to relive their abortions and the circumstances surrounding this often traumatic event. Abortion is not the type of happy occasion that women look back upon with nostalgia.
Last year, an acquaintance made a social media post where they listed abortion up there with a long litany of basic human rights – including education, universal healthcare, nutrition, and housing. It’s ironic that abortion is now being touted as, not only a basic woman’s right, but as a fundamental “human right,” when oppressive regimes, such as those in Nazi Germany and Communist China, used abortion, forced sterilization, and limits on family size (China) to subjugate women and their partners. Due to such one-child policies, infanticide and sex selection abortion were practiced, and sex selection abortion is still practiced in some countries. How paradoxical that we are now being advised, that in order to cast off the chains of oppression, we should celebrate and fight for the right to annihilate those who would inherit our DNA. You may ask: What could be more oppressive than the government forcing a woman to give birth? To which I respond: What could be more oppressive and significantly more damaging to the psyche would be if the government forced a woman to abort a much loved and desired child while it was still in utero.
If you are pro-choice and have read this far, I salute you. I am not your enemy, the proverbial pro-life zealot who loves babies as long as they are ensconced in the womb, but who doesn't give a damn about them once they are born. It’s more complicated than that, and if you don’t understand this, you, too, are subscribing to stereotypes. Abortion needs to remain legal, safe and accessible as a medical procedure. Because that is what abortion really is – it is a medical procedure, not a choice. Women facing horrific pregnancy complications have the basic human life-saving right to undergo this medical procedure at the discretion of their physician, whose professional opinion should not be second-guessed by politicians and lawmakers.
As for the rest of us, here is where my ambivalence fades: We are intelligent creatures who have the ability to be discerning, to have self-control, to understand the consequences of our actions. To be more explicit, we are humans. We have access to birth control options and, by now, we should know how to use them. Yes, men who don’t want children should have vasectomies. Yes, we need to have jars of free condoms available at every pharmacy counter. Yes, there are birth control failures, but a Guttmacher Institute study published in 2018 found that only half of abortion patients used birth control in the month before they became pregnant. That, in itself, should be viewed as a failure.
Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising views fetal rights as human rights. Progressive causes, from the abolitionist movement to the animal rights movement, have always championed the victim and given a voice to the voiceless. It’s curious that the pro-choice movement has silenced this voice and transformed the victim into the victimizer: a parasitic bundle of tissue that seeks to curtail the freedoms of its host. Does this mean I want abortion outlawed, except to save the life of the mother or due to rape or incest? I don’t know. There will always be a demand for abortion, whether it is illegal or not. But I wish we weren’t so fearful, because abortion is actually fueled by fear: fear of losing our carefree youth, fear of being poor, fear of being homeless, fear of being abandoned, fear of commitment, fear of responsibility, fear of childbirth, fear of pain, fear of death, fear of the unknown. The abortion narrative feeds those fears. When abortion is offered as a viable option, we can all breathe a sigh of relief, right? Problem solved. But this is a Pyrrhic victory.
Can we change the conversation about abortion? Can we allow ambivalence? Can we understand that this issue is gray, not two contrasting colors? Can we stop pitting the pro-this against the anti-that? Can we support and empower women who make the brave and life-affirming choice to birth their babies, regardless of whether they are in stable relationships or have an abundant financial nest egg? As a community, can we hold those men accountable who pressure women to have sex, to have abortions, who refuse to provide support, be it financial or emotional? Most importantly, can we stop offering abortion as an antidote to poverty, bad relationships, domestic violence, misogyny, and oppression? At best, abortion is a band-aid that will never cure the root causes of society’s ills. At worst, abortion is just another enabling mechanism that allows the dysfunction to continue.