Abortion, contraception, reproductive rights — these are issues of both men and women. Here are two stories.
In today’s New York Times, Susan Heath writes an opinion piece titled “No One Called Me a Slut” describing a time when she went to an abortion clinic with her husband.
As she describes her experience at the time:
It’s 1978, five years after Roe v. Wade. I’m 38, I have four sons — the oldest is 17, the youngest is turning 12. I’m at school, getting a B.A., and I’m loving it.
I’m about two and a half months pregnant.
I don’t want this child.
I have a family, a large family. I love my children with a passion, but I don’t want any more. I know this with absolute certainty. I’ve got other things to do, and I don’t have it in me to be a good enough mother to a fifth child. I delight in newborn babies with their delicate weightlessness, the curl of their small fingers around my thumb, but the best thing about them now is that they belong to other people. I don’t want to bear them, feed them, bring them up, be responsible for them.
I don’t want this child.
So I’m on my way to Planned Parenthood to have a legal abortion. My husband drives me there — this is a serious matter for both of us, but we absolutely agree it’s my decision to make. We have been conscientiously using contraception and it’s failed us this time.
I’m pregnant but I’m not trapped.
All I had to do was call the clinic and make an appointment. I don’t have to be ashamed or terrified, because brave women before me fought to make abortion legal, have gone public with their stories of shame and terror and made sure that no woman ever again has to die from a back-alley abortion or bear an unwanted child.
We park and walk up to the entrance. No running the gantlet between pickets shouting at me that I’m a murderer, no fear that someone will throw a bomb.
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Compare that to the experience Aaron Gouveia went through when going with his wife to a Planned Parenthood clinic:
“You’re killing your unborn baby!”
That’s what they yelled at me and my wife on the worst day of our lives. As we entered the women’s health center on an otherwise perfect summer morning in Brookline, two women we had never met decided to pile onto the nightmare we had been living for three weeks. These “Christians” verbally accosted us—judged us—as we steeled ourselves for the horror of making the unimaginable, but necessary, decision to end our pregnancy at 16 weeks.
After extensive testing at a renowned Boston hospital three weeks earlier, we were told our baby had Sirenomelia. Otherwise known as Mermaid Syndrome, it’s a rare (one in every 100,000 pregnancies) congenital deformity in which the legs are fused together. Worse than that, our baby had no bladder or kidneys. Our doctors told us there was zero chance for survival.
♦♦♦
I’m not a religious person and I’ve never believed in heaven or hell. But there is a hell on Earth. Hell is sitting next to the person you love most and listening to her wail hysterically because her heart just broke into a million pieces. Hell is watching her entire body convulse with sobs because she’s being tortured with grief. For as long as I live and no matter how many children we have, I will never forget that sound. And I vowed to do everything in my power to make sure she’d never make it again.
Across a crowded street, two people with “God Is Pro-Life!” signs and pictures of torn-up fetuses managed to drive the blade in even deeper. Again, I was left trying to console the inconsolable, feeling even more helpless this time, because I wasn’t allowed into surgery with her.
Aaron goes on to confront the protesters, and videotapes the heated exchange that takes place. You can see the video on the post, here. Aaron ends with this message:
My wife and I wanted our second child. We loved her. We even had a name for her, Alexandra.
You never know the circumstances surrounding this kind of decision. Consider this my plea: stop terrorizing women. Stop adding trauma to their trauma.
And Susan Heath ends her story:
I don’t have and never have had a single qualm about not bringing that child into the world. I know many women who have grieved greatly over the children they decided not to have, and I am thankful to have been spared that agonizing sadness of guilt and regret. I also know many women who, like me, have felt only gratitude and relief at having been able to take control over their lives safely and legally.
I’m 72 now. I have five grandsons and three granddaughters, and I passionately want each one of them to be responsible and have the same legal right to choose that I had.
Abortion, contraception, reproductive rights — these are issues of both men and women. They need to be talked about — in ways that are respectful, intelligent and civil.
These are complicated, provocative issues. Let’s learn together how to talk about them.
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photo: fibonacciblue / flickr
Abortion is murder. Plain and simple. Even if a child has but one second to live because of a congenital malformation, killing that person is still murder.
Your declaring it “plain and simple” doesn’t make it so. Sorry.
So giving birth to a still born would be a better idea? lol. You’re diluted as fck. NOBODY should half to carry their dead child around for months. A fetus is not a person, and it is not a “plain and simple” matter. You’re a joke.
*have
What vile name are women who put their children up for adoption called?
If years after the fact a woman doesn’t broadcast the fact that she had an abortion, no one knows to even acknowledge the fact, let alone call her a name. In fact, she never has to breathe a word to anyone, and many women don’t. So, the situations aren’t even close to comparable.
If she manages to keep it silent, then yeah she doesn’t get called names. But it’s not just about not telling people, it’s about whether someone sees her go into a clinic and it’s about rumours. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard rumours about someone getting an abortion. And let’s see, as for names they get called: generally variations on slut, whore, and baby-killer.
Someone she knows would need to by chance happen to see her going into an abortion clinic? What are those odds? Can we say “longshot?”
And then, what are the odds that person would ever say a word, let alone call her a baby killer? And then, how likely is it that 10 or 16 years later she is still being called such names?
If it does happen, it’s usually very short lived, unlike the dead-beat dad insult, which often haunts men to their graves.
Except it isn’t short-lived. The stigma of getting an abortion can last a person their whole lives…that’s why often women will go to great lengths to try to keep it a secret.
You are comparing an extraordinarily rare occurrence for women with an extraordinarily common occurrence for men. There is simply no comparison.
Furthermore, many women who have had abortions garner sympathy. By contrast, almost all men who reluctantly support a child he was forced to have garner scorn, ridicule, and insults, with the insults and ridicule getting louder and more harsh the older he and the child gets.
No, many women who have had abortions don’t garner sympathy. Perhaps by close friends they will. Otherwise, people vilify them. I want you to list these women who garner sympathy, because I don’t know of any who have. It’s especially bad if you’re in high school and you get an abortion because teens talk. I have heard scads of rumors of girls who got abortions when I was in high school, and the consensus was that these girls were sluts and immoral, never mind forgetting that she didn’t get pregnant on her own. At the same time, even the ones… Read more »
As a former volunteer at a Planned Parenthood, I can tell you that there are indeed some women who change their minds after being harassed by the Pro-Life brigade.
I find clinic protesters to be reprehensible human beings in general.
This is just as rational and reasonable as calling someone a “dead beat dad” when he made it clear long before birth that he didn’t want the child, and was completely unprepared to take on that responsibility.
Given the identical set of circumstances, a woman would have been given the choice to abort or give the child up for adoption, with nobody insulting and calling her vile names years after she made the choice.
I was actually with you until you said this: “with nobody insulting and calling her vile names years after she made the choice.”
Women who have had abortions or give children up for adoption face all sorts of ridicule and vile name-calling…yes, even years after the fact.
Yeah, but it’s usually by religious right nutheads, not by society in general. If a woman speaks up in favour of her reproductive rights and Rush Limbaugh calls her a slut there’s calls for his resignation. If a man speaks up and someone calls him a deadbeat dad then there’s calls for legislation to codify this in law.
Not that this makes the pro-lifer’s tactics acceptable, but at least it’s just a fringe group, not acceptable opinion in polite society.
You know, Eric, I’d be willing to side with you more in a different culture, one where we didn’t make it extremely difficult and psychological traumatizing to obtain an abortion. Your argument seems to ignore just how difficult it is—emotionally and physically—to obtain an abortion. So let me ask you this hypothetical. Suppose we allowed men to be off the hook for financial support of the child provided they did the following: – They paid for the abortion or paid half of the pre- and post-natal care costs until adoption – In the case of abortion, they accompanied the woman… Read more »
I’d add giving up parental rights. If you’re going to give up responsibilities, the rights go right along with that. I mean that for both men and women, mind.
I have heard many women who said that their abortion was not hard at all. This is what they have said. Their personal experience, not mine. And, as hard as that may sometimes be, I’m not sure it’s worse than supporting a child you want nothing to do with for 18 years and being called a dead-beat dad and facing harsh, hateful criticism and scorn for the rest of your life for not embracing the role. “If that was the price of avoiding child support, would you be supportive of those two prerequisites before being released from the obligation?” And… Read more »
Men don’t have reproductive rights. Men only have responsibilities.
I can’t imagine that yelling at someone going to an abortion clinic is really going to change anyone’s mind about getting an abortion. I can’t imagine a woman out there who was on the fence, but on the way to the clinic someone called her a murderer or a slut and then she realized, “you know what, they’re right, I’ve changed my mind and I’ll carry the pregnancy to term. Thanks for yelling at me and calling me names. That’s just what I needed.” More likely the yelling has just made one more woman even more determined to protect abortion… Read more »
Condemning people at the top of your lungs is the best way to show you love Jesus.
Let’s start with gettting reproductive rights for all. Let’s start with ending the reproductive rights discrimination against men. This is the most aggregious attack on reproductive rights that there is, and should be addressed first and foremost.
If a woman doesn’t want a child, she gets sympathy,, understanding, and goverment protection to get rid of it. If a man doesn’t want a child, he gets insults, called a dead-beat dad, and gets harrassed by the government for 18 years. For wanting to make the exact same choice. Worse, the abortion rights movement supports this anti-choice discrimination.
Good point, Eric. If women want men’s support in protecting their reproductive rights, they’re going to have to support men having some too… or at least, stop directly opposing the notion of men having reproductive rights.
Just one question. Why wait for over 2 and a half months ?
It can take a while to find out.
They could have not known until later into it, and it’s not always easy to get a doctor’s appointment on demand.
I am morally opposed to abortion. I can’t believe people would be so reckless with human life and can’t imagine killing my own offspring out of convenience. Reading the first woman’s comments I was shocked at her view of human life. That being said, I accept that people have different values. While I may not agree, condone, or defend those values – I feel no obligation to seek agreement with or to change another person’s values. We don’t all have to agree, we don’t all have to see things the same way, but we all should be polite about it.… Read more »
What are your views on the mermaid syndrome child? Abortion is the most humane option in that case I believe, zero chance of survival is pretty much guaranteeing the child to die and sadly that could be quite a painful and stressful death.
This will not help. This is not part of a productive dialogue that deals with these issues. Citing the Bible as The Way of Life and trying to legislate from it is about as close to Sharia Law that we can get here in the US. Please stop adding trauma to trauma.