terminate once more: blog for choice

Today is the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision known as Roe V. Wade, the ruling that made abortion legal in America. Over the past thirty-five years, access to abortions has slowly eroded as individual states began to put roadblocks in the way of women desiring a safe, legal, and medical abortion. Today, only 87% of women living in the United States live in counties with an abortion provider, a statistic means that only 13% of all of the women here in America can easily get an abortion on demand.

I have written twice before on abortion. It’s no secret that I’ve had seven abortions, which is, I admit, a lot. I have narrated my abortions in stark detail, and I have discussed how people who identified themselves as pro-choice castigated me for my recurrent choice to terminate my pregnancies. Looking back on my life and the fifteen-year period of these abortions, I believe that my choice to abort was absolutely correct, even if my fuzzy choices that led to my getting pregnant were not. Faced with the same decision again—an unlikely scenario as I’m now about as likely to get pregnant as I am to die in my bathtub—I would unhesitatingly choose to terminate the pregnancy.

I’ve written about how difficult it was for me to come forward and tell the story of my abortions. I haven’t written so much about how rewarding it has been to hear from other women who have suffered as I did in the shadow of their silence. These women were afraid of voicing their experience of choosing to terminate a pregnancy, just as I was. We all lived in fear of being judged. Reading my story, many women came forward and thanked me.

Lots of them sent gratitude in the form of comments to one of the two posts I wrote. A few, however, also wrote me emails. Most of the emails have vanished over time, but I have a couple of recent ones. One woman wrote this:

I could have written it. I too am a smart self destructive woman with a past that includes eight abortions. Two failed marriages, and two children. At forty two I am wise, successful, and in control of my life.

My abortions are something I live with and the shame of them is a heavy burden to me some days. I commend you for being so brave, you have spoken directly to all of the feelings that I haven't had the courage to write about, let alone tell anyone….

I often say as humans we are more alike then we are different. Today I feel that to be truer. Thank you. Thank you for telling the truth. Thank you for helping me find my own voice the on deep inside of me that is silenced by guilt and shame. Thank you for the reminder that we are only human. And our imperfections are the very things that make us perfect.

Another wrote to tell me this:

Mostly, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for your honesty, your courage, your stoicisim and your sincerity. It was such an honourable thing to do.Thank you for making me feel better about something I didn't know I felt badly about, didn't know was upsetting me so much on one level while politically, intellectually I felt utterly fine about it.

I had my first abortion almost a year ago, and since then, three more. I'm 30, been on the pill since I was 18 and not missed one for as long as I can remember. I don't know why I got pregnant; neither do the doctors. As you say: simply exceptionally fecund, maybe….

What I really wanted to say was what I started off saying... that you have made me feel better both about feeling bad about it and not feeling bad. I don't mean guilty - I actually wish it were that simple (almost). But you make me feel ok about the huge, horrid, hurt that digs away despite everything.

I feel less alone, which is such a gift. Thank you, again.

For years, I would lie about how many abortions I had. I’d size up the person to whom I was talking and I’d calculate a number I thought the listener could deal with. One, maybe two was the usual figure. Occasionally, when I was feeling bad-ass and bitchy, I’d make an off-hand remark about filling a mini-van with my aborted fetuses and I’d watch for the predictably shocked reaction. I couldn’t be honest without cynicism because I felt ashamed.

No more. I will never feel shame about my choice to have abortions, and if you’ve ever had an abortion and have felt shame about it, I urge you to let go of that shame too. I’m not suggesting that every woman who exits a clinic with a maxi-pad in her panties should fist-bump her caregiver (though if that emotional response works for you, rock on), nor am I suggesting that a woman who has had an abortion shouldn’t feel a sense of loss or sadness about it. It can be a tough thing to go through and sadness or loss is natural.

What I am suggesting is that when I—or any other woman—experience shame for exercising my choice to terminate a pregnancy, then I have given in to those forces—political, religious and cultural—who tell me that what I have done is wrong. My abortions may have been painful, they may have been necessary, they may have been problematic, they may have been something I wish I hadn’t put myself through repeatedly, but they were not—not a single one of them—wrong. And I will stand up and say so, though it is difficult, though emotion chokes my voice, though I take a risk and though it frightens me, despite all of the impulse to hesitate, I will say I had abortions and I feel no shame because this is something I know to be important and true.

I have two people, one I know and one I don’t, to thank for this recent realization. One is Susie Bright who wrote about her happy, shiny, warm, fuzzy experience at a San Francisco abortion clinic; the other is a commenter who wrote about her pragmatic and compassionate experience getting an abortion in Germany. Both of these women’s stories helped me recognize what is wrong with the pro-choice movement today and that is that condone women’s feeling embarrassed or shamed over their choices to terminate. We need to stop judging other women for their choices, and we need to stop now.

We also need to stop judging ourselves. We didn’t have an abortion because we were selfish—who would ever fault a man’s choice for not having a baby as selfish? We didn’t have an abortion because we were lazy. We didn’t have an abortion because we were bad women or bad mothers. We had an abortion because right then in our lives for whatever innumerable bundle of reasons, we simply could not bear a child. And that is all that needs to be said.

The theme of this year’s Blogging for Choice day is “why it’s important to vote pro-choice.” Everyone who writes about this matter will come up with various permutations of the same thing, but for me it comes down to this: it’s important to vote pro-choice because the personal is political. Only when abortion is safe, legal, and available to every single woman in the United States, only when we can all easily walk into a clinic without fear have we won.

I’m pro-choice and I vote. What’s more: I’m fearless.

NB: A friend of mine who has appeared on this blog under several names, not the least of which was Genny Talia, the name she said she'd give her daughter but ultimately did not, wrote in with this factual correction:

Guttmacher.org says:
"In 2005, 87% of U.S. counties had no abortion provider. 1/3 of American women lived in these counties, which meant they would have to travel outside their county to obtain an abortion."

Your blog entry says:
Today, only 87% of women living in the United States live in counties with (should be without) an abortion provider, a statistic that means that only 13% of all of the women here in America can easily get an abortion on demand. (Given the clarification about the number of women who live in those provider-less counties - 1/3 of American women - your stats aren't exactly correct, but all for a good cause...)

Thanks, Genny aka Jenny aka Whatever. You may be a frustrated wanna-be editor, but at least you're my frustrated wanna-be editor.

Comments

[Kiqe]

I truly do admire the size of your cojones.

[Valerie]

So well put. Thank you for this post.

[badinfluencegirl]

as a citizen of the country next door to the north let me just say that i am pretty much horrified at the goings on in the usa regarding people's rights and especially reproductive rights.

i read a piece in a recent vogue magazine about partial birth abortions and their use by opponents of abortion to slowly eat away at the abortion decisions.

needless to say, i'm pretty upset on y'alls behalf.

wish i'd known today was write for choice day before i read this post just now...

[minstrel boy]

very well said cg. i'm glad you were able to discard your shame and guilt. good, bad, right, wrong, all of those really have no bearing on the issue which is that you, and you alone were the person who was faced with, and made the choice. it's not my choice, not anyone else's. you made your choice and i am glad that you are at peace with it.

my sister, a nurse, says that there should be a once and for all referendum on the whole issue. one where only women vote.

makes sense to me.

[Alana]

I love you for this. Well I love you as a writer and activist for plenty of reasons. I love you for this. Thank you.

A

[Michael]

I really loved reading these entries, but what I love most is the fact that you are unapologetically refusing shame that can so often be found in the dialogue concerning reproductive rights. I think that women should never feel that they have to justify why they got an abortion, the number of abortions that they've had, or anything concerning their personal choice. It's sad that while so many encounter such animosity from those not supporting choice they also encounter such judgment from those claiming to be like-minded, pro-choice, and/or liberal.

[Rich]

At least you don't have seven live kids that you couldn't take care of. People forget the other side of the equation: the increase in humans. Each human takes up a certain amount of resources.

The United States uses approximately 21% of energy consumed in the world, but only has about four and a half percent of the population. We are therefore seriously "over budget." If we were to use energy at the same rate as the rest of the world, we’d have to cut back to about one fifth of what we currently use. To get an idea what this means, go around and remove four out of five of the light bulbs in your home. Pretend you don’t get to use them any more.

In order to solve global warming and balance energy use across the globe, we have to reduce our energy use by 80% plus we either cut another 85% of our remaining energy use by conserving or we switch to renewable sources. Take out another 8 out of 10 remaining light bulbs to represent conserving energy.

So, I'm glad you made a responsible choice.

Of course, using a little more contraception in the first place would help. But that doesn't just go for you. It goes for all of us. To make sure we still have a habitable planet in a decade or two, we need to make sure that we don't end up with the enormous expansion of population that a family planning policy of, say 8, would create. As the United Nations long-range report on population notes:

"...extremely rapid population growth is projected for the less developed regions, whose population rises from 4.9 billion in 2000 to 134 trillion in 2300, 115 trillion of which are projected to live in Africa. Indeed, a country such a Niger, whose total fertility in 2000 was estimated at 8 children per woman, is projected to see its population increase by a factor of more than 2 million over the next 300 years under the constant-fertility scenario."

They are talking about a population of 134 trillion with a straight face.

People get upset about abortion, but a population of 134 trillion would kill us all. Why aren't they upset by that?