Letters to the Editor
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I know an antichoice woman who had an abortion.
She is a Baptist and attends church regularly. She became pregnant accidentally by her husband. Because she has a serious chronic illness and would be unable easily physcially care for a child (sometimes she is well and sometimes she is not) and because the pregnancy itself presented some physical but not a mortal risk to her, she allowed her husband and her doctor to talk her into having an abortion. I believe she was afraid, not only of her own deteriorating health, but also of her ability to care for a child. You can wait and clean the bathroom for instance when you feel well, but children cannot be cared for on a schedule of convenience. They must be fed, changed, and bathed as needed. This involved lifting. Toddlers dead lifted from the floor are heavier than many people realize.
So this woman agreed to the abortion, but not without many regrets because she had always longed for a child.
Abortion is an intensely personal decision and one which I am glad that I never faced. This woman, a friend, has many times been sad and depressed about the lost "child" but it is difficult for her to see how she could have made any other choice. The idea that this is not a legitimate matter of privacy that should be constitutionally protected is absurd. It involves many levels of privacy. Our bodies are very private to us. We can decide to whom we shall grant access and to whom we shall deny access. It is difficult, for instance, for me to to see how someone can oppose rape and yet demand that they have any say one way or another in a woman's decision of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. It is a horror to force a woman to bear a child. It is an equal horror to force a woman to abort -- as has been done in China.
Beyond bodily integrity, another level of privacy is involved and that is the privacy of one's own thoughts. We should not be allowed to force others to reveal their thoughts to us. When the state intrudes in that decision, they intrude upon the privacy of a woman's thoughts. She may have may feelings about her body and pregnancy that will bear upon whether or not she wishes to carry a child to term. She should not be forced to bare those thoughts to the cold scrutiny of the state for examination of whether or not her reasons for seeking abortion are "legitimate."
Another level of privacy is that of the the relationship. How nuanced may be the emotions in which a man and a woman may make this decision together. On no account should they have their relationship laid bare for disinterested parties to probe and judge this most personal of decisions.
Yet another level of privacy is medical privacy. We value our right to keep our medical information private. We are punished sometimes when our medical information becomes public knowledge. We can best make our medical decisions with the help of our physicians and, even then, we have a right to change physicians and seek new counsel.
Our bodies are our own. They simply cannot and should not be subject to the demands of others in this matter. If we do not have these choices about our own bodies and this right to protect our privacy, many, many other rights could be imperiled.
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Keeping Us Intact
So many of thr letters here defending "choice" fail to mention the ugly reality of what that choice entails. How can an act of despair be referred to as a "choice"? Women can sacrifice their life plans or they can undergo a humiliating, invasive operation and have their own child die. It's a lousy choice that women shouldn't feel forced to make.
We should be able to keep both mother and child's lives and bodies intact, as thankfully, millions of American woman have been able to do: women who have attained high educational achievements, smashed the glass ceilings, worked hard at meaningful jobs, given and received love and loyalty in marriages and partnerships and families and friendships, without ever, ever rejecting and killing a developing child.
You think women can't do that? That too many lack the supports and the networks that would empower us to give a kindly welcome to our own babies? If that's the case, we've wasted our time over the last 35 years developing an abortion-friendly society rather than a women and children friendly society. And abortion can be clearly seen as a symptom of women's isolation and oppression, not a solution to it.
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jlw
You make a good point.
But only to people who consider a fetus "their child".
And those people are unlikely to have abortions anyway.
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jlw -- an act of despair? Not necessarily.
I agree that none of the choices available to a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy are ideal. And I agree that we should concentrate our energy on helping people to prevent unwanted pregnancy from happening in the first place -- comprehensive sex education combined with reliable and affordable contraception are the best ways to reduce the abortion rate.
That having been said, I don't see abortion as necessarily an act of "despair," nor is it necessarily "humiliating." The degree of despair or humiliation (if any) varies widely among individuals, I am sure. For example, I would find a coerced pregnancy and childbirth against my will far more humiliating than an abortion performed by a doctor who respects my rights.