Today HotAir links to this column advocating an “Abortion Pride Movement”.
Huh??
Why do women have abortions? Because they get pregnant when they don’t want to. Through ignorance, or rolling the dice, or failed birth control or spur of the moment passions that get away from them, women get pregnant when they don’t want a child. To fix the situation they’re in they decide to have an abortion. What exactly is there to be proud about??
The importance of abortion as a human right integral to women’s dignity, the destigmatization and normalization of the experience as common for women – there are now more than 46 million abortions occurring in the world today (close to half of which are illegal and unsafe) and one in three U.S. women will have an abortion by the age of 45 – and ending the silence and shame that women may still feel cannot be underestimated in the global struggle for reproductive justice and gender equality. When we normalize abortion as a fact of women’s lives, and discuss abortion as an honorable and loving choice that helps women to become better mothers in the future, we are showing respect, understanding, and support for the complexity of women’s choices.
Confession time here. I have had an abortion. It was the worst decision I have ever made in my entire life. I got pregnant accidently due to stupidness and I had the abortion because of all my big ambitions in life.
From the very second that the abortion occurred, I have wanted to be a mother. That’s it. No more wanting to become a biochemical engineer, no more philosophical jaunts, no more anything regarding any sort of higher career ambition. I wanted to be mom.
I don’t kick myself every day. I don’t wallow in guilt. But what I do realize is that the decision to have an abortion was inevitable to me at the time because it had been “normalized”. People did it all the time. It wouldn’t affect me long term. I thought about it, yes, but not enough. I was young.
I believe women have the right to choose. Absolutely. These are our bodies. However – the decision is NOT a normal event, nor should it ever be such that it’s regarded with little care or with “pride”.
You’ve made a mistake and you are choosing to fix it a certain way. There is no call for a movement here. A life is terminated. Yes, a life of cells that are wholly dependent upon the woman who gets to (and should get to) choose what to do with those cells in her body, but a life nonetheless.
If you want to be proud of how you’ve “fixed a problem”, then your life doesn’t have much to be proud of does it?
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