An incredible article in today’s Times, about the women who are at the front lines of the abortion debate — not the activists, not the politicians, but the more than 1 million women who will have abortions this year. Definitely read the whole thing.
At Little Rock Family Planning Services, the women filed in without making eye contact, a demographic that remains unrecognized.
Leah works in a clothing boutique. Alicia is in high school. Tammy pulls espresso. Regina is a sergeant in the Army, recently home from Iraq.
The article is set in one of only two clinics in Arkansas, and women come from all over the South to have procedures done there.
Brittany, 17, brought her mother for support. Linda, 39, brought her daughter.
The article does a good job of showing the diversity of women who have abortions — high school girls, mothers, school teachers, soldiers, Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, coffee shop employees, college women, married women.
The solitary protester outside , Jim Dawson, 74, stood a court-mandated distance from the clinic with a video camera, taping women as they entered, and promising them hellfire if they went through with it – as he has for a decade. Mr. Dawson drives 40 miles from Vilonia, Ark., bringing cardboard signs that say “Abortion Kills,” and usually departs by midmorning. On days when the clinic is closed, he pickets the Clinton presidential library. “I don’t stop many of them,” he said, “but a little bit goes a long way.”
Videotaping them. I’m sure God is smiling.
Like many women at the clinic, Leah had conflicted feelings about what she was doing. “I always said I would never, ever have an abortion,” she said. “I probably will regret it. I’m pro-choice for cases of incest or rape, but if it’s your own fault, you should accept responsibility. And it’s my own fault.”
In Arkansas, as in many states, abortion providers are required to offer women their ultrasound images before an abortion. Because Leah was just five weeks pregnant, her image showed a formless mass. “If I saw an actual fetal baby on the ultrasound, I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it,” she said. She said she felt selfish, “but hopefully this will set me on a straighter path.”
The procedure took only minutes. Afterward, in a recovery area, she said she was less shaken than she had expected. “I thought I’d be crying,” she said. “I feel goofy now, but not in a bad way. I feel relieved more than anything. I know I’ll never forget it, but I’d rather do that than have a child I can’t take care of.”
And so we come to another example of a woman who probably generally identifies with the “pro-life” side, but exercises choice in her own life. I also think it’s interesting that she has a similar reaction as most women after abortion: she feels relieved.
Regina, 28, blamed a faulty contraceptive Depo-Provera shot from an Army nurse in Iraq for her pregnancy. In Arkansas, she receives the injection in her hip, where it is most effective, but in Iraq she got it in the arm – she remembered by the soreness she felt slinging her rifle. “I was in Iraq 13 months,” she said. “I guess I got a little happy when I got home.”
She arrived at the clinic with a cut on her nose and bruises on her forehead and lip, which she sustained after telling her boyfriend she was pregnant. “He flipped out because he wasn’t ready,” she said. She had thought, upon learning of the pregnancy, that she “was about to get married,” she said. She came in with two fellow sergeants, who wore their uniforms. Her boyfriend was in jail, she said.
“I’ve done this once and swore I wouldn’t do it again,” Regina said. “Every woman has second thoughts, especially because I’m Catholic.” She went to confession and met with her priest, she added. “The priest didn’t hound me. He said, ‘People make mistakes.’ “
The end of the article is especially compelling:
As she lay on the table, Regina wept and put an arm around Ms. Osborne, asking how things looked “in there.”
“I’m not a baby, that’s what’s so sad,” Regina said. “Thank you, ladies, for being here for me. I’m too old to make these mistakes.”
She said the experience was emotional because she had expected more of the father.
She spoke to Dr. Edwards. “Thank you, sir,” she said.
Ebony, 28, an operating room supervisor, rinsed the blood off the aborted tissues for Dr. Edwards to examine. Ebony, too, had a story. When she was 15, her aunt and grandmother had made her carry her pregnancy to term. Later, she had an abortion. As a Baptist, she still considered abortion a sin – but so are a lot of things we all do, she said. She squeezed Regina’s hand.
“No problem, sweetie,” Ebony said. “We’ve all been there.”
UPDATE: You knew the anti-choice nuts were gonna jump all over this one, and they have. One blog in particular demonstrates the absolute callousness that the far right extends to women. I’m not going to link to it because the blogger fills his post with bloody fetus pictures (most of which, it should be pointed out, are actually late miscarriages, but that’s a different issue), but I’ll give you all a taste of his “compassionate conservative” rhetoric:
Kori is a triple-murderer. Like so many pathological killers, she’s learned that each murder is easier than one before. If you can work up the frothing hatred to kill one person, you can kill many, many more. It’s why we watch cops who’ve had to kill someone in the line of duty. We make sure they didn’t enjoy it the way Kori does. Clearly, Kori enjoyed the show on the ultrasound monitor.
And what of the executioners?
“My oldest son won’t let me see my grandchildren,” said Sherry Steele, 57, a surgical assistant who started working at the clinic after her daughter had two abortions.
Good for her oldest son. I wouldn’t trust my kids around a serial killer, either, even, or perhaps especially, if was my own mother.
Calling surgical assistants “serial killers.” Nice. And how accurate…
“All your past goes into making you who are,” Karen told the New York Times. Her past includes double homocide and no remorse. In my book, that makes what she is a murderer.
You have to know what’s coming next…
the author intended to promote abortions and make abortionists and women who have abortions sympathetic characters. Instead, as I pointed out, he turned them into monsters. And how could he not? How could a reporter make Hitler into a hero?
That’s right, folks, the Hitler comparison. Isn’t there a rule that whoever brings up Hitler first automatically loses? I love the “compassionate” face of the anti-choice movement…
I’d lay money on Leah going right back to being ‘pro-life’ and either pretending her abortion never happened, or blaming the abortion providers for tricking and deceiving her.
There must be a way to de-humiliate those who have had an abortion. Sort of like the “queer” adoption of a word meant to be painful.
I believe that if it were possible to get all the gays to come out in public, the public itself might be forced to look at the numbers and accept it. Is it a long shot for me to believe that when confronted by all the women who’ve had abortions, the general (re: not psychotic religious people who hate muslims for being terrorists, but are terrorists themselves) might reconsider its opinions?
Mythago: I don’t think that we have any right to make any assumptions about these women.
I’m going by her rather odd use of the present tense to describe her views on abortion.
That’s actually been a goal of the I Had An Abortion project — a film that documents the stories of eleven women who had abortions between 1930 and 2003 (those years are approximations). Along with the film, t-shirts simply reading “I Had An Abortion” were made, and they sold out incredibly quickly — and saw a huge backlash from people claiming that women were “bragging” about their abortions. I agree that ideally, all women who have had abortions (about a third of U.S. women, by the way) would speak out about it. But the anti-choice right has done such a good job at shaming women that being honest about our choices is incredibly difficult.
It’s time to start shaming the pro-embryo, anti-actual-Mom and anti-actual baby-ists.
Once Roe V. Wade is overturned by Bush packing the court with Scalias, how will a policy of deliberately increasing the number of unwanted children benefit American society?
It won’t, of course. It will increase the incidence of child abuse, a problem anti-choicers seem not to give a crap about. And why should they? Their real motive is not sentimental, nor compassionate, but punitive. Which is sick.
Government officially supporting a policy of forced maternity?
Even sicker.
Jill, I know you don’t want to link because of the graphic pictures, but please don’t reference a weblog without a link. Let us form our own opinions. Less us bash equally or not. But you’re quoting the person out of context, and then not letting us see the context. Even people we adhore should be given enough light, or rope, as the case may be.
Give folks a warning about the graphic pictures, and then carry on.
Or don’t reference the person at all, because they’re a minority opinion, and the more they froth the more most people shy away.
And yes, it will let the nutcases know you’re talking about them when your weblog shows in referers, but that’s the nature of this environment.
Shelley, I respect Jill’s right to link or not. A simple google search on one of the quoted phrases leads you right to this offensive site, and it was very very offensive. Theres no need to give these people any extra publicity.
January 21, 2001 I learned that I was pregnant.
I’ve always said that I’m “pro-choice in general, but pro-life for myself.” But you know what? I seriously considered termination. The circumstances were most definitely less than optimal.
In the end, I decided to keep the pregnancy, and I now have a daughter who will turn one next Friday. BUT…after all of that, if someone tries to force me onto their anti-abortion bandwagon simply because I didn’t have one, I think I’d retch.
Yeah, I made a choice. I happened to CHOOSE to have my daughter (and happen to think she’s the best choice I’ve ever made, but that’s another issue entirely). But who the $*&^ would I be to make a choice for someone else’s life? It’s not my job, and I wish the wingnuts would realize that it’s not theirs, either.
Thanks for this article.
What if we stood at the door of the churches who did this and videotaped those who came for Sunday services? I would expect a beating. Yet these same people are out to ruin the lives of others with secrets they should not be privy to.
That’s the issue that concerns me most, here: patient confidentiality. I cannot help but think would these same people start video-taping people filing into a psychiatrist’s office? There’d be a loud outcry I am sure and patient confidentiality would be invoked, but I believe that unless you had a powerful politician or prominent businessman going in during videotaping time, not a lot would happen. The precedent disturbs me.
It’s almost a kind of sociopathy. When you challenge them, they will invent excuse after excuse for their antisocial behavior. There’s no getting to the bottom of the well. They want their pink market of adoptable babies (in all colors but we won’t take black!) but they don’t consider that maybe some of these mothers would not have aborted if they could have had a decent life as a single mother.
It sickens me.
Since “anti-choice” gets thrown around here, I am left with little choice…
The anti-life crowd has little to gain by marginalizing those who think that fetuses are human beings too as “religious fanatics,” or what not. Granted, the article not linked was completely over the top, but what the article did well, and the NYTimes article did much better without the over-the-top rantings, was showing how disconnected those seeking abortions were from the gravity of what was happening.
As long as the anti-life crowd fails miserably at APPEARING, at the very least, to realize that the act of abortion involves the death of a fetus, and is not to be viewed by those undergoing it as “a cure for pregnancy”, they will NEVER win over any hearts and minds of moderates, and their only progress will be made by pointing at ravings like that of the Hennessey post and saying “Look at these idiots who oppose abortion!” So, yes, you SHOULD link that post, Jill, because I seriously doubt that anything you write could advance the abortion cause ANY better than the idiotic theatrics of the people screaming “MURDERERS! HITLER!”
Not to knock your writing, of course. But, people like Hennessey are your best weapon.
Who’s anti-life? I don’t think I hear anyone hear advocating for mass murder/suicide.
The act of criminalizing abortion leads to the deaths of more fetuses, as well as to the deaths of pregnant women.
Sure, let’s jump right on that. While we’re at it, let’s start shaming the pro-baby-killing, anti-motherhood and anti-paternal responsibility-ists. (Might as well target all of the nonrepresentative caricatures at once, right?)
Nice straw man you got there. Knock him over often?
Show me a policy, existing or proposed, that mandates copulation and you might have a start at making that a compelling argument. Until then, “a policy of deliberately increasing the number of unwanted children” will remain a melodramatic fiction used as a rhetorical bogeyman.
Care to share some supporting evidence for any of these claims? Other than anecdotal evidence, I mean. It’s really easy to attribute horrible thoughts and motives to your ideological opponents and in order to demonize them. After all, who wants to be called a pitiless, woman-punishing, pro-child-abuse, fetus idolizer? I would argue, however, that such a characterization is as representative of pro-lifers any more than an image of a man-hating, anti-responsibility, destined-for-damnation murderer is representative of pro-choicers.
Are there extreme cases on either side? Certainly, and they’re on the (far end) tails of the bell curve. In between are people of a wide variety of positions on the issue of abortion. As human beings, we should be able to discuss the issue intelligently without conflating our ideological opponents with the most extreme example we can think of.
Meh. “is no more representative of…”
The New York Times article seemed to me to be intended to convey the message that “eveyone’s doing it (even women who say they are pro-life!), so it must be o.k.” This brings to mind something St. Augustine once said: “Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it, and right is right even if no one is.”
The New York Times article is depressing evidence of how deeply rooted the “life is cheap” mentality is in our culture, and of how far the pro-life movement has to go to reach its goal of persuading our society that all human life is of inestimable value and worthy of protection.
F.Y.I. there’s an interesting and similair conversation going on at BitchPhD, also sparked by NYT article.
I read the article and was dissapointed without being surprised. It’s great that the for once someone is actually writing about the women who get abortions. But I found the tone very tiresome. I’m weary of being told that abortion is a sad, somber decision that always carries with it some element of regret. I realize that for pro-choice lobbiests and politicians, the message that abortion is always a fraught, depressing experience is probably just a way to endear themselves to those who are ambivalent about access to abortion.
But I’m not a politician. I’m sick of having to have this conversation in low, ginger voices. I don’t have bad feelings about my abortion, nor do I think there is any reason I should. I think the delicate tone that even supporters of access to abortion often take has a lot to do with the way women, in general, are socialized to be apologetic and hedging any time they act, any time they make up their own mind and do something. I’m so over justifying myself and qualifying my decisions to dickfarts like Dan. I can’t be apologetic or pretend to regret what was undoubtedly an excellent decision I made about me and that does has no bearing on him whatsoever.
Some people have to be diplomatic and respond to chauvanistic dickfarts by pleading and appealing to their sense of righteousness. I have no such obligation. To anyone who feels entitled to compell human beings that are not you to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, stick your nose back in your own business before it gets stuck somewhere else. Just fuck off, dickfarts.
Hissy Cat, I love you.
I have a lot more I want to say about your comment (and about your recent blog posts! They’re great!), but sadly studying calls. Tonight, I’ll take some time and get into all the great points you raised. Thanks for this one, you hit it right on the mark.