What is the worth of one life?
This was previously published on Remittance Girl’s blog.
At the age of ten, I lived in Madrid. The first thing I remember about the event was watching my mother carry a basin-full of blood out of our housekeeper’s room. There was so much blood, and it scared me. The Spanish doctor came, and I heard he and my mother shouting at each other. He was screaming that Angelita (our housekeeper) was just a stupid peasant girl who got what she deserved. Then he stomped out of our apartment, slamming the door. An hour later, a tall African American was at the door. He was a doctor from the US airbase. He went into Angelita’s room and spent hours with her.
What I came to understand later was that my housekeeper had become pregnant. Her fiance was still doing military service and wasn’t allowed to marry, and so, because abortion was illegal in Spain at the time, she had gone to a backstreet abortionist who had almost killed her. When she made it home, she was hemorrhaging badly. My mother called our Spanish doctor who refused to treat her. Finally, she called an American she had only ever met once, and that brave doctor came up from the base, risked his career and probably jail-time, and saved her life. He did it in response to a call from a virtual stranger.
Fourteen years later, despite practicing birth control fanatically (you can imagine, considering my childhood experience), I became pregnant. Despite the fact that I was with a man I loved, I decided—in consultation with him—that neither of us were ready to commit to a life together or to have a family. I went for an abortion. My lover came with me. Sat with me. Held my hand. Asked me, just before I went in whether this was truly what I wanted.
The doctor was an older, spry, witty woman. She was businesslike but very kind. When she had finished the D&C, I asked to see the fetus. She was surprised, but agreed. A lovely, brawny nurse helped me down from the chair and I hobbled, still cramping, over to the counter to look at the small collection of cells in the jar. For me, it was important to acknowledge exactly what I had done. I didn’t want to allow myself the opportunity to ignore the consequences of my actions. Although I have always been pro-choice, I have never entered into the debate about when life starts. To me, this is a non-issue. In that jar, life of some sort had clearly started. This did not cause me to regret my decision, or second-guess my motives for the abortion. It simply made me cognizant that I had done a serious thing and it was important that I take cognitive and moral responsibility for it.
25 years later, I am married to the man who held my hand in that waiting room. We have never had children, because neither of us have ever felt the call to have them. He has no desire to be a father, I have never had a desire to be a mother and, in addition, I carry a strong genetic marker for something quite nasty which I do not want to be responsible for passing on.
I still don’t regret having the abortion, but acknowledging the graveness of the act has caused me to be far more vigilant and informed about the birth control I practiced.
My challenge to anyone who is morally offended by abortion is: show me you really care about ALL the lives involved by being a strong and vocal champion of sex education, social support and easy access to safe and reliable birth control. By far the best and most civilized way to reduce abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.
Until Christian conservatives in the US put their considerable energy into preventing unwanted pregnancies, instead of abusing the people who choose to have abortions or the people who facilitate them, I will doubt their REAL sincerity that they are ‘all about life’.
Until then, to me, they will simply be ‘all about dogma’.
To this day, I still clearly remember being that ten year old little girl, watching some privileged bastard dismiss Angelita’s life as worthless. I remember my mother’s outrage and fear. I remember Angelita’s scared, pale, sweating face, as she lay on a bed surrounded by bloody towels. I knew then WHO anti-abortionists were protecting. And it wasn’t me, or my mother, or Angelita. To them, we were all disposable.
This was written in response to The Day I Went for An Abortion, on The Good Men Project.
Read more on Abortion.
Concept new life image courtesy of Shutterstock
The reason I don’t support abortion is precisely because I think there are highly effective contraceptive methods now a days and girls need to learn that before having sex they need to use contraception. Unfortunately, most of the women I know who underwent abortions were fairly educated women who just got lazy with the contraception or just didn’t think about it because they considered that abortion was a good enough contraceptive method. I think that if you really don’t want to become a mother there is fairly easy access to depo which is 99.9% effective and the woman should get… Read more »
“Until Christian conservatives in the US put their considerable energy into preventing unwanted pregnancies, instead of abusing the people who choose to have abortions or the people who facilitate them, I will doubt their REAL sincerity that they are ‘all about life’. Until then, to me, they will simply be ‘all about dogma’. Would it be fair for me to say that until feminists actively support a man’s tight to a financial abortion or unilateral adoption, which is my preferred phrase, I will suspect that they aren’t all about choice, but all about women’s choices and how they can force… Read more »
Agreed. Feminists, or anyone else who does not equally support post-conception choice for men to opt out of parenthood is, in fact, ANTI-choice and possibly anti-male as well.
Nothing is simple.
From what I have observed, the most vocal abortion opposers support abstinence sex education which, if practiced, is one of the most highly effective methods to prevent pregnancy, wanted or unwanted.
But they are not nearly as vocal about abstinence as they are in their opposition to abortion. Unless you count comments like “Well maybe you shouldn’t have had sex!” Which are profoundly unhelpful. Usually the next a-word I hear from an antiabortionist is not Abstinence but Adoption. I always cringe because I wonder how many of them are aware of how the adoption system works in this country. I do think that option is often thrown out there without much research into it, just because it preserves the life of the baby. It’s like, as long as THAT criterion is… Read more »
Abstinence-only sex ed is NOT ‘one of the most highly effective methods to prevent pregnancy, wanted or unwanted.’ ‘Systematic analysis of pregnancy prevention strategies for adolescents found that, far from reducing unwanted pregnancies, abstinence programs actually “may increase pregnancies in partners of male participants.”‘ – A. DiCenso, G. Guyatt, A. Willan, and L. Griffith, “Interventions to reduce unintended pregnancies among adolescents: systematic review of randomized controlled trials,” British Medical Journal, Volume 324, June 15, 2002. Evidence does not support effective use of abstinence only sex ed – Ott, MA; Santelli, JS (2007 Oct). “Abstinence and abstinence-only education”. Current opinion in… Read more »
Really long tangent that entirely missed the point.
If you read my comment, you will see that it is not an argument for (or against) abstinence or any other form of sex ed. The article argued that, “Christian conservatives in the US put their considerable energy into preventing unwanted pregnancies . . .”
I simply pointed out that that is the demographic that supports abstinence programs which, when followed is highly effective in preventing pregnancies. So, it’s not factual to suggest that the anti-abortion demographic does nothing to try to prevent pregnancies. Their rate of success is a different matter.
Sorry, that should have been “Until hristian conservatives in the US put their considerable energy into preventing unwanted pregnancies . . .”
I read what you wrote. You wrote the same thing again, and it’s still wrong. Abstinence-only programs are not effective. I don’t attempt to refute that the Christian Conservative demo promotes them or _believes_ they are effective, but _you_ made the statement that they’re effective as if it were fact. It is not. But I’m not going to make a simple “you’re wrong” statement without backing it up, because that would be just as baseless. Yes, this is a tangent, and it does explain some of why the CC demo behaves the way it does, but then KKZ is also… Read more »
So, either try comprehending what I wrote or stop arguing based on a strawman you created. I have not and am not arguing about the relative effectiveness of different sex education programs. Feel free to continue to argue back and forth with yourself if you enjoy that.
My statement of fact was/is that not having (abstaining from) sexual intercourse is highly effective in preventing pregnancy.
Hi Eric,
I’m certainly not arguing with what you have said. It’s true, but it has made me wish I had been a little more specific at the end of the essay, and added the word ‘effective’ to the sentence. I took it as read. My mistake.
If you have been meaning to say that actual abstinence itself is effective, I have no argument with that truism. In which case, it was much ado about nothing, and I apologize for the distraction. I suggest a re-look at your posts will show how easy it is to interpret that you were saying that abstinence only _programs_ were effective.
Well, the problem is… it’s a profoundly unrealistic. And their vociferous support of a spectacularly ineffective approach speaks to their disengenuity.