About 1.37 million women obtain abortions each year in the U.S. It’s estimated that 47 percent of American women will have an abortion by the time they reach menopause. I have never been one of these women. Through luck, good planning or divine intervention, I’ve never had to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy.
I mention my own case, because for an issue like this, I think it’s important to let people know where I’m coming from. I have never had an abortion, and now that I’m in my mid-20s, I probably never will.
Abortion is legal. It should be legal–yes, for cases where girls are raped by their fathers and other horrors, but also for when having a baby simply isn’t the best decision. Some people shouldn’t be mothers. Some bodies can’t take the stress of pregnancy. There are many valid reasons why one wouldn’t want to carry a pregnancy to term.
As a society, we’re divided into two extremely polarized groups: pro-choice and pro-life. Personally, I believe that women should be able to choose whether they want to have a baby or not. But I also believe that choosing to have an abortion is a hell of a lot more serious than simply eliminating a problem.
It’s not as simple as knowing there’s a life growing inside you, and deciding to get rid of it. There’s a lot more to it than that.
What I mean to say is that I belong to neither group. Or maybe both.
At what point does a fetus become a baby? At the beginning of the second trimester, beyond the point where outpatient abortions are usually performed? Or does it take as long as several months, at which time a prematurely delivered baby would have a fair chance of survival? When does this inconvenient, rapidly expanding ball of cells become a baby? When does the termination of your mistake become something more serious?
Say you take the morning-after pill. All that does is keep the egg from being able to embed in the uterus. You’re never pregnant, so you don’t have to make any difficult decisions. It’s hardly a morally trying choice for most people.
But what about RU-486? Taken in the first 49 days since a woman’s last period, it forces a miscarriage in 92 percent of cases. Apparently, there’s a course of two slightly different pills that cause the fetus to leave the womb. This is not a painless process. There is blood and cramping and contractions. It can take days-weeks sometimes-for the bleeding to stop. And it seems that this would make one acutely aware of what she was doing. Rather than posting a “no vacancy” sign like the morning-after pill, RU-486 is more like handing your fetus an eviction notice.
And of course, there’s clinical abortion. It’s invasive enough getting a pelvic-exam or a pap smear in a cold, anonymous room while lying on a paper-covered table. Doing something as life-changing as terminating a pregnancy seems like it deserves more dignity than that. More subtle lighting. Warmed blankets. No stirrups whatsoever. Having never been in one of those rooms for that purpose, I don’t know the level of care the clinicians show. Are the women sedated? Are they allowed to nap afterward? Does the clinic call them a cab, or do they need to take the bus home?
It would make a lot more sense to just take precautions ahead of time. Use condoms and a back-up method like the pill or the NuvaRing. Get an IUD, they’re a lot safer than they used to be and work for up to 10 years. Don’t get pregnant in the first place.
But if something happens-something tragic, something unplanned, something unwise-and you have a decision to make, don’t be fooled into thinking abortion isn’t a big deal. It’s not antifeminist or anti-choice to decide to carry your baby to term. And you’re not a monster if you decide that this isn’t the time or the circumstance in which you want to have a child. You have the power of choice, so make your choice carefully.