Pregnant and Unhappy About It

[donsu]

http://alternet.org/rights/37924/


Many women don't identify with either the pro-choice or the anti-abortion movements. They're pregnant -- and they don't want to be.


Last week I attended the hearing on Ohio's proposed abortion ban held by the House Health Committee. This bill, in its present form, is the strictest in the country. It would ban all abortions in our state and even make it a felony to transport a woman to another state to seek abortion care. There are no exceptions for rape, incest or to save a woman's life or health.

The bill's proponents dominated the six hours of testimony. Most of it consisted of scientific and theological debate on when life begins. Only a handful of witnesses told personal stories supporting and opposing the bill.

I came prepared to share women's experiences, collected through journals that we put in the waiting rooms in the abortion clinic where I work. I left disheartened when they adjourned the hearing before I could testify. It demonstrated once again just how wide is the gap between the abortion "issue" and the abortion "experience." Women's lives and struggles continue to be lost in the debate.
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To my unborn child: When I made the decision to let you go, it was the best for you and your sister. It was hard for me to have a baby at 16 and go to school and work. I don't want you to have to suffer because it is not fair to you. --Journal entry by Preterm client
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As an abortion provider, I see women every day who don't identify with either the pro-choice or "pro-life" movement. They come because they're pregnant and don't want to be. Many come because they desperately want to be good mothers and know that, at this particular time in their lives, they can't fulfill that promise. They're aware that they are about to terminate a potential life, the possibility of a baby that might be welcomed and well cared for at another time and in other circumstances.
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This wasn't an easy decision, but the right one. I'm sad and hurt, but strong. The tears I cry are for the child I'll never know. If I had one wish … that this child knows it took great love to do this.
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Abortion opponents usually base their position on moral grounds yet seldom acknowledge that women are capable of making responsible, moral decisions about their families and futures. I feel privileged to support these women, as they and their families grapple with the most fundamental questions of life and death, motherhood and womanhood, love and faith.
-snip-
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and then there was this Journal entry:

These tears are for all of the scared girls and women who have come here. I am here with my brother-n-law and his girlfriend. She is 20 weeks pregnant. Their situation is different from most who walk through this door, but the feelings are the same. They want their baby. They want it a lot. On Saturday they went for an ultrasound to see what the baby's sex is. The next thing they heard was, "There is no amniotic fluid, no kidneys, and only partial lungs. Your baby will not survive outside the womb." A decision was made to end this pregnancy now. Coming here was very hard. Seeing the protesters outside, if they only knew.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. The people opposed to choice

have no idea how difficult the choice really is.

[Waya]

2. No, they don't.....

...and they have no idea how it effects the life of a woman who made the choice.....sometimes for years to come.....

[sinkingfeeling]

3. How many of the pro abortion ban speakers were male vs. female?

[StellaBlue]

4. With these restrictive state legislations, what's going to happen when

A women, who otherwise would want the child, NEEDS an abortion for medical reasons (like your last client journal entry, above), and she lives a few hundred miles from the nearest medical facility that performs abortions? What if it is a matter of immediate action?

Will doctors perform them, anyway, because they've been trained to preserve life? Say, if a woman arrives in the emergency room, who is pregnant, and has been in a horrific car accident, and her baby must be aborted to save her (I know, far-fetched, it's just an example, a simple, failed natural miscarriage, where the baby is braindead perhaps, would also be one).

What will the politicians (and their arms, the police) do when these laws cause women to DIE because they cannot receive treatment?

And, of course, beyond this, how many girls and women, victims of rape, will kill themselves AND their fetuses?

These people make me wish I believed in hell.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. I was thinking along similar lines

would a woman who crossed state lines be charged? Could the next of kin of a woman who is needlessly killed for the sake of a dead fetus sue the state?