This is the third part of a multi-part answer to Andrew Haslam’s post Ten Questions For Pro-Choice People. Part 1 is here and will link to the other parts (although I’m doing them sequentially, so, unless that changes due to anything unforeseen, you could also just click along the ‘Previous Post/Next Post’ links). I’d recommend starting with Part 1, not because I feel any great need to stick with convention but simply because it covers some key points about why I believe what I do.
I’m answering the questions in reverse order; this post covers 5 and 4.
5. Why don’t we talk about the fact that many women suffer unbelievable guilt after having an abortion?
Because of the frequency with which pro-lifers will do exactly what you’re just about to do; claim that this is evidence that abortion is wrong.
(By the way, years of reading pro-life writings have convinced me that this is a no-win conundrum. If women talk about their experiences of having an abortion and feeling guilty or regretful or sad about it, the pro-life response is that, since abortion is such an awful experience, women must clearly be prevented from choosing it for their own protection. If women talk about their experiences of having an abortion and not feeling anything negative about it, the pro-life response is that they’re clearly conscienceless sociopaths who can’t be trusted to have a say in making the laws. So it’s a case of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’.)
[footnote] The most comprehensive review of the evidence in 2013, incidentally by a pro-choice psychologist, found that there is no mental health benefit to abortion and there is an increased risk of psychological problems following abortion including anxiety, substance abuse and suicidality: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23553240
That isn’t particularly related to guilt, but I thought it worth saying a few words about this as it’s an example of how research findings can get misrepresented. In that review, the author looked at how the mental state of women who’d had abortions compared to the mental state of women who’d had initially unwanted pregnancies but had chosen to continue with them. (He also looked at comparisons between women having abortions and women having unplanned pregnancies that they were pleased about, but did separate out the results in discussion.)
The problem, of course, is that the two groups aren’t properly comparable. While there are many reasons why someone might go ahead with an initially unwanted pregnancy, and sadly those reasons do in some cases include being forced into doing so (as per the article you linked to in question 4 about reproductive coercion), in most cases the woman’s decision to continue the pregnancy is going to be because, having weighed up the situation, she felt that she would rather do so than have an abortion. It’s also probable that the women facing more difficult or insurmountable problems would be less likely to feel this way and more likely to choose abortion (this wouldn’t be an invariable thing by any means, just more likely overall).
This means that the comparison here isn’t just between a group of women who had abortions and a group of women who didn’t, but between two groups of women of which one probably had a higher level of background problems than the other group. And that, of course, means that we can’t assume that the higher rates of mental health problems seen in the group who had abortions were due to the abortions rather than to the other problems.
Anyway… back to the topic of guilt.
So why do we ignore the fact of guilt after abortions? Is it because the admission of guilt is the admission of wrongdoing?
No. As I said, it’s because pro-lifers will claim it’s the admission of wrongdoing. But there’s also an important flaw in your premise; guilt frequently isn’t ‘the admission of wrongdoing’. Yes, sometimes it certainly is… but what about abuse victims who feel guilty because their abuser has browbeaten them into believing it’s their fault? Rape victims who feel guilty because society’s biases have left them thinking they somehow invited the rape? There are people who feel guilty about wanting to convert to Christianity because the religious tradition they grew up with teaches them that converting to Christianity is wrong; do you believe their guilt means that they’re doing something wrong in converting to Christianity, or just that they’ve been taught that they’re doing something wrong?
Then there are the people who feel guilty over not being able to live up to their own high standards, or to the high expectations others have for them. If your parents set their hearts on you going to university but instead you choose to become a plumber in the face of their visible disappointment, you’re probably going to feel guilty; but is that because you did something wrong, or because others have inappropriate expectations of you? I’ve grappled with guilt over not being able to solve the problems in my children’s lives. Or, in the past month, over not being able to do more to help with the COVID crisis. Does that mean I have something to feel guilty about… or does it mean that my expectations of myself are unrealistically high?
If we’re going to talk about guilt after abortions, then let’s also talk about the fact that it typically occurs in the contexts of groups or societies who transmit powerful messages that abortion is wrong/sex is wrong/women should be superbeings who can manage any and all responsibilities, however many and however heavy, without batting a (perfectly-mascaraed) eyelash. When women in these contexts feel guilty about abortion, is ‘admission of wrongdoing’ really the most likely reason? And what about the converse; when women who’ve chosen abortion don’t feel guilty about that choice, is that a sign that it was the right choice for them and they’ve done nothing wrong? Or is the guilt=wrongdoing equation applied only selectively when it can be used against abortion?
4. Why is a woman’s body pitted against her baby’s?
While I really don’t want to get snarky here, all I could think of when I read this question was “Shouldn’t you ask your god that? After all, you believe that he’s the one who designed pregnancy.”
When a woman is pregnant, the only way for that fetus to survive is for her to allow it to stay within her body for months, wreaking what are typically considerable and sometimes medically serious effects upon her, then forcibly exit with, again, considerable impact and sometimes serious complications. In other words, biology has set up a system where a fetus is in conflict with the body of the person who must gestate it. There isn’t a way round that. If the pregnant person is happy with that – as, again, I was with both of my pregnancies – then that’s fine. If not, then that’s a very big problem for the person who’s pregnant.
The pro-life movement views both bodies as beautifully valuable. That’s why we fight for babies and for women.
Oooookaaaaay, I did already have my say in the last post about these sorts of general statements about the ‘pro-life movement’ as a whole that, in fact, are clearly not true of a sizeable proportion of pro-lifers, so… must… not… get…. back…. into…. rant.
I’m going to read this as your way of trying to say “I, as a pro-lifer, view both bodies as beautifully valuable. That’s why I, and many other pro-lifers, fight for babies and for women.” As such; well, that’s nice, I guess, but I do just want to point out that talking about how beautifully valuable you see our bodies as being doesn’t do much for the whole want-you-to-be-valued-and-empowered attempt. Er… thanks for trying, I guess?
We want women to be genuinely valued and empowered, but abortion doesn’t do that.
Being made to go through an unwanted pregnancy because any rights you have to bodily autonomy are considered to come in a poor second to an obligation to gestate really doesn’t do that. Speaking for myself, I support abortion rights not because I think abortion is inherently a wonderfully empowering experience that all women should have (although do note that for some women that’s precisely what it ends up being), but because I think that forcing women to go through unwanted pregnancies is vastly worse.
Why is it that seven percent of women have been forced into having an abortion and it’s used as a tool of coercive abuse?
The simple answer to this complex question is that it’s because there are a heck of a lot of abusers and control freaks out there, and recognition of the red flags in relationships, although improving, still isn’t widespread enough.
The thing is, banning abortion wouldn’t actually solve those problems. I’m not even sure that, overall, it would reduce the number of women who are forced into having abortions; I think it’s a reasonable assumption that someone who is willing to coerce someone into having an abortion against their wishes is, in most cases, also going to be willing to break the law to do so. So, if abortion were made illegal, then most of the people experiencing this sort of coercion would instead be bullied into going to a backstreet abortionist rather than a legal clinic, or whisked away to a country with different laws and forced to have an abortion there instead (or, in particularly horrific cases, subjected to the abuser’s version of a DIY abortion; content warning for abuse and grooming discussed at that link).
While there would be some cases in which this didn’t happen,because the abuser either didn’t want to do something outright illegal or didn’t know how to go about it, that would be counterbalanced by the number of women in this situation who would lose the chance to get help and support from an abortion clinic that might have prevented them from being forced into abortion. The article you linked to talked about how careful abortion clinics are to be on the lookout for this sort of coercion and about the help and support that they can offer when they find out that this is the problem. In some cases – such as that of the woman referred to as Leila in the article – this has led to women being able to avoid the coercion and exercise their choice to continue the pregnancy. Since backstreet abortion services in a climate of illegal abortion would be completely unregulated, it’s considerably less likely they would offer such counselling and support. They also wouldn’t be able to offer methods of tamper-proof contraception, which clinics currently offer and which can protect women who can’t yet leave an abusive situation against further unwanted pregnancies.
So, although banning abortion would prevent some cases of coerced abortion, it would also prevent the very mechanisms that are currently helping to prevent many cases of coerced abortion. It’s quite possible that that factor would actually outweigh any reduction in coerced abortions that a law against abortion would bring about, and that there would be an overall increase in coerced abortions as a result. It’s impossible to know whether that would be the way it went, but it’s a possibility that at least needs to be considered.
Even if the overall effect on coerced abortion of anti-abortion laws did turn out to be a slight decrease in the number, there would be a terrible price to pay for that even if we think only about reproductive coercion and not about other pregnancies. That article also discussed the other side of the coin; women who are coerced into becoming pregnant or continuing their pregnancies, often as a ploy by abusive partners to make it harder for them to leave. That form of reproductive coercion would, of course, be far worse for women in a country where seeking abortion wasn’t a legal option; a woman forced into her pregnancy would either have to go the backstreet route, or go ahead with her pregnancy whether she wanted to or not. The loss of regulated abortion clinics would also mean that the situations discussed in the article where clinic counselling identifies domestic abuse as an issue and supports the woman in leaving her abuser would no longer happen, so one possible route to identifying and supporting victims of domestic abuse would be lost. And, finally, it would potentially be harder for anyone who had been coerced into abortion to seek counselling or support afterwards, because of the fears over admitting to having done something illegal. (In fact, blackmail over this might be yet one more possible route by which an abuser might terrorise a partner out of leaving.)
In short… while the problem of reproductive coercion so vividly described in that article is, indeed, a significant issue, it’s one that would overall be made substantially worse rather than better by making abortion illegal.
Why is it that women feel they have to choose between pursuing a career or education and having a baby? Why can’t they do both?
In that particular case, because the figures on that point that you linked to come from a study done in the USA, which is notoriously atrocious for its stance on maternity leave and on state-funded childcare (which, by the way, are yet more examples of laws that could substantially decrease the number of abortions but are largely opposed by supposedly pro-life politicians in that country). Progressive laws on these policies do indeed help a great deal; that’s one point on which I hope we can agree.
Why do we see an abortion as a central tenet of women’s rights when it seems to cause women so much grief and pain?
Because forcing women to go through with pregnancies against their wishes causes considerably more grief and pain. I’m very sorry for the woman in that clip, and really wish for her sake that she could have got much better counselling about her options, but making abortion illegal altogether does not strike me as a good answer to the fact that some women get inadequate counselling beforehand.
Furthermore, more than 50% of aborted babies are female when you factor in widespread sex-selection on the global scene, so it’s not at all clear that abortion is pro-women on any level.
Sex-selection abortion strikes me as being primarily a symptom rather than a root problem. The root problem here is that some societies place a markedly lower value on the lives of women and girls than they do on the lives of men and boys. The solution to that isn’t making all abortions illegal; it’s working actively to increase the social status of women.
Wow, so much to unpack in that, Dr. Sarah.
My first question is where is the pro-life getting their stats? 7% of women are forced to abort? Really? What source is that from? Again, coming from a USA perspective, a woman wanting an abortion must first travel to a medical confirmation and “counseling” (where she can be told outright lies, such as abortion causing breast cancer), *sometimes in a different state than she lives in*, then wait some mandated period of time such as a day or three days, then come back and have the procedure. Many times the lone facility that performs abortions will be ringed with hateful strangers screaming at her and pressing up against her and threatening to find our her identification from her car’s license plate and use that to further harass her. In other words, if a woman wants a legal medical procedure, she must not only have the money for the procedure and possibly travel expenses, time off work, and childcare needed for multiple trips, but must also put herself through a gauntlet of abuse and significant risk of harm first. The only coercion here is against her getting the abortion.
Also, there’s the constant repetition of how much they just LOVE the pregnant woman, which is clearly not true if you read the rest of their words, where they accuse the pregnant woman of being a sociopath, an idiot who can’t possibly understand what’s happening to her body, a helpless pawn of the public at large, and any other demeaning or dehumanizing term they think up. They trivialize a woman’s decision by saying it’s on a whim or “for convenience”, as if the decision to risk life itself and physical and financial health is the equal to stopping for milk on the way home from work so it’ll be there for the morning’s coffee.
Sex-selective abortions come out of that same hatred of women, in cultures where women have very few rights and men inherit all the family money and get lifelong family support. The anti-choicers in more resource-rich countries value women just as little as the ones in poorer countries; they just use different words.
I live in an atheist country. Most people here are either non-religious or have only some vague beliefs. Very few people visit a church on a regular basis here. Thus “God hates abortions” doesn’t work as an argument here. Instead, Latvian abortion opponents use as their main argument the following nonsense: “Women who have an abortion feel guilty about it, they feel emotional pain and regret this decision later, thus by banning abortions we are saving them from all this emotional pain and preventing them from experiencing pain, guilt, and regret.”
I really hate this crap. 1. Yes, some pregnant people later regret having had an abortion. Many do not regret it. Some parents regret having had children and wish they were childfree. It depends on the individual person. 2. Yes, some pregnant people feel emotional pain as a result of getting an abortion. Others do not. Moreover, many people feel more emotional pain if they cannot get an abortion.
Some nasty religions have spent millennia trying to make their victims feel guilty about everything. Religious authorities want their flock to feel guilty, because then they will go to church, ask for forgiveness, and donate money to the church.
If a person is a sociopath, how can we trust them to be a good parent and raise a child? In general, it would be better for sociopaths to remain childfree. If a person doesn’t love children, it would be better for them not to raise any kids. This means sociopaths should be able to obtain contraceptives, sterilization surgeries, and abortions.
Note: Of course, it is also possible to not feel bad about an abortion while being a loving person who is not a sociopath. My above point about sociopaths is meant to point out a flaw in the reasoning of pro-life advocates. I do not agree with their idea that not feeling bad about having had an abortion indicates that a person is conscienceless or loveless.
By the way, back when I was fighting for my right to access a sterilization surgery (I asked for a hysterectomy primarily due to being trans, but I also wanted to make sure that I will never get pregnant), many doctors insisted that I am not mentally capable of making this decision. Nonetheless, had I become pregnant, the same doctors would have deemed me mentally capable of taking responsibility for a child. How is that possible? I’d say that a decision to sterilize oneself (or get an abortion) requires less emotional maturity than taking responsibility for a child. How can I simultaneously be too crazy to decide to have a surgery and sane enough to be a parent?
My response to that question would be to turn it the other way around. Why don’t we talk about the fact that many women don’t suffer much guilt after having an abortion?
Then, of course, note that both questions raise the question of whether many women actually do or don’t feel guilt – or indeed relief, etc .. and why and then note that that goes to the sort of social pressures and influences imposed by our patriarchal hetero-normative, child-demanding society as well as to the various individual responses.
I’ll also note that the question is ultimately, in my view anyhow, an irrelevance. How you feel as a person doing X or about some people doing X should NOT dictate whether you or some people can determine whether anyone can do X at all or whether people have the right to X regardless of some peoples feelings / reactions. Or, basically, just because some people feel guilt doesn’t mean all (or even a majority) will or that no person should then be able to access abortion when they need one.
As I noted in a previous thread on this, this is an example of framing the question to suit their side of the debate & I reject their terminology and will substitute a more medically accurate one. The abortion terminates a pregnancy and destroys a fetus, embryo or zygote or – but very rarely and arguably a “baby” and in the “baby” cases, my understanding (I am NOT a Doctor but from all I’ve read and understood on this issue) is that the baby is already either dead or unviable or severely damaged. Or a grave threat to the mother’s life. But generally, this isn’t the case. Distilled down to a summary, I disagree with the premise of the question and its terminology. I don’t think it is.
Doesn’t it? Really? Why not? What about the alternative of forcing people to give birth against their wishes. Does that NOT disempower them and reveal that they aren’t being genuinely valued?
I have a feeling of distinct deja vu – wasn’t something very similar to this asked before? Again, my answer to question five here (& a previous one?) applies :
Just because some people are coerced doesn’t mean all (or even a majority) will or that no person should then be able to access abortion when they need one.
Also the issue there is the coercion and lack of consent – and NOT the access to abortion. Tackle the lack of consent and make sure everyone seeking an abortion is genuinely doing so not being forced into it against their individual wishes – sure. However, use that 7% (statistic from? Gathered how? Reliable?) to bar the 93% it does NOT apply to from having their inaleinable rights and wishes respected. No!
Because the patriarchial, society we live in makes that extremely difficult? Oh and again, just because some people are able to do both parenting and career doesn’t mean all (or even a majority) will be able to or that no person should then be able to access abortion when they need one. Hmm.. pattern developing huh?
Might be worth emphasising here the choice element of the pro-choice side and stating that those who do NOT wish to have abortions don’t have to get them. Also the answer here isn’t to bar abortion but, again, to tackle the other aspects ie.the difficulties people have in both having and raising kids and careers and make it much easier – financially and in terms of social acceptance for everyone to do both – women especially.Well, also making it more acceptable for men (trans & cis) to stay home and care for kids as well.
Trans-erasing phrasing aside, that’s a repeat of question five in slightly different words really isn’t it? My answer for that applies again here.
Sex selection is a case of mis-use that doesn’t mean the right to bodily autonomy should be forfeited any more than the mis-use of guns means that the USA’s Second Amendment must be forfieited. To use a common “But the bad guys will / do” parallel argument that those who claim to be conservative will often insist on. Although, as it happens, I think gun ownership does need to be regulated and, whilst I think aborting a fetus just because it is female should be discouraged that is in a different category because the right to bodily autonomy is much stronger and more important than the mere privilege of owning a firearm is.
Again, just because some people choose to abort due to sex selection doesn’t mean all (and definitely NOT the majority) will or that no person should then be able to access abortion when they need one.
Also Dr Sarah what you said in your last sentence here.
How much of that guilt is because of anti-abortionist comparing embryos and fetuses to babies?
I once took a friend who was having guilty feelings to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industries display of miscarried embryos and fetuses. That showed her it wasn’t the same as a full term baby.
@ ^ robertbaden : Yes. Iimagine quite a lot. The Anti-Legal abortion side makes a point of actively trying to make people feel guilty here and then they exploit that for theri own ends. Also as Dr Sarah noted, there’s the whole catch 22 where people can’t win either way.
PS. The mythical 5 minute from birth abortion – a massively unrealistic, unlikely and vanishingly rare to the point of being purely hypothethical and an exercise in deliberate trolley-extremes pushing scenario would also come under the misuse category. Thing is just because some people might have an abortion for reasons we don’t agree with or think insuffiicent isn’t reason to deny everyone else their basic human rights merely for some specific cases tobe seen as dubious. People still have the right to control their bodies even then.
Also, they recently screened The Last Emperor on telly here and I do wonder whether the scene of infanticide where a new-born baby -( then Manchurian puppet Emperor for the Japanese Occupation) Puyi’s son to his first (?) Consort Wanrong ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puyi#Puppet_ruler_of_Manchukuo_(1932%E2%80%931945) is poisoned by the Doctors immediately after birth – might be the inspiration for that canard or at least part of it. Probly not becuae it s pretty obscure refence and movie these days anyhow but that or things like it in fiction maybe?
If creating guilt is a problem for abortions, then it is a far worse problem for Christianity, a religion based on convincing people they are so tainted by their guilt for thoughtcrimes against a deity that they can only find forgiveness and avoid an afterlife of eternal torture through a proxy.
Far more people would be alleviated of guilt by deconverting them from Christianity, which no one needs in the first place, than by trying to withhold abortions, which plenty of people do need.
As I recently posted in a different blog, how many of these pro-lifers are willing to adopt or financially support these babies? My response to them is, “Put up or shut up”. Talk is cheap.
@StevoR: at five minutes before birth, there is no abortion; there is only birth. Even in emergency and incompatible-with-life scenarios, when a pregnancy is at a point of viability (after 32 weeks, that is), labor is induced. Conditions where the mother is in imminent threat of death (for example, Preeclampsia, Eclampsia, HELLP Syndrome) can only be resolved by inducing labor, no matter at what stage the pregnancy is. If the pregnancy is at 32 weeks or later, there’s a 95% chance the fetus will survive. As the Jezebel article cited several times by both Dr. Sarah and Andreas Avester documents, nobody gets up at 39 weeks of gestation and says, “Gee, I think I’ll have an abortion today, swimsuit season’s coming and I want to look great!” and skips off to a handy neighborhood clinic where smiling doctors happily do the abortion.
Also, the Bible itself has one recipe for forced abortion (a man can mix up rotted grain and force his wife to drink it) and many, many examples of men killing babies after they’re born, and God tells Abraham to kill his own son, Isaac…and Abraham goes forth to do it until the very last second when God says nah, only kidding, mate. This is not presented as wrong; in fact, Abraham preparing to kill his only son is seen as a sign of Abraham’s goodness.
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@ 8. Katydid : Agreed – hence my use of the “mythical” there.
Also, I’m well aware of that magik abortion potion as mentioned the wonderful Betty Bowers clip on this issue :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq3U09DeKpg&t=4s
Which mentions that and a whole lot more than so many so called Christians seem to either be ignorant of or just ignore. Well worth worth seeing if you haven’t already. (Think I’ve shared this before in a previous thread here?)
Yup – and yet we never even know the name of Jephthah’s daughter :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt66kbYmXXk
Who actually was a human sacrifice to the ancient Israelite deity.