abortionclinicdays

the wisdom of the body

every now and then, a woman in counseling will tell her story in words so compellingly true that i am spellbound.  it happened earlier this week when a woman i shall call glorietta began by telling me how her last baby was accidently born at home with little warning.  she stood up and felt the baby sliding down her leg.  she and her two other children were transfixed, did not utter a sound, even after their silence was broken by the newborn's wailing.  eventually the older child called 911 who sent paramedics to cut the cord and take mother and baby to the hospital. that baby is less than a year old. glorietta, aged 39, was outraged to find that her body was betraying her, she said, by getting pregnant again so soon.  anyhow, she said, she is just done with having babies;  she told me that she is tired, over the thrill of the miracle of pregnancy, just wanted this pregnancy out, and was not sharing her body with anyone, not her uterus, and, as she said, not her tits either.  she was just done, over it.  her body was having none of it! 

glorietta's wisdom of the body is as old as the human race.  women have always known when it is, or is not, a good time to bring forth new life through their bodies, and she had no doubt, did not have to think about it because her body was telling her.  in earliest recorded time, and certainly even before that, women ended pregnancies that should not be born, whether because of war, drought, famine, disease, or, of course, age.  there was a rightness to it because they were closer to the earth than the primarily urban dwellers that we are.  now the plants and herbs that women used for that purpose are lost to us since we relinquished our natural wisdom and "medicalized" pregnancy.

but for glorietta, the message was clear.  her words of summation to me were, "it's just like the leaves of a tree.  when it's time they just shed." 

one in three pregnancies planned

to me, the importance of this article is that women are having an even harder time preventing pregnancy at a time when they are not prepared to have a (or another) child.  the US continues to have the highest rate of unintended pregnancy in the developed world.  and THAT is a tragedy. 

lou


UNPLANNED PREGNANCY, ABORTION OFTEN HAPPEN

MORE THAN ONCE IN A WOMAN’S LIFETIME

New Guttmacher Study Notes Role that Government Has Played in Making It Harder—Not Easier—for Women Having Abortions to Prevent the Next Unplanned Pregnancy

About half of all U.S. women having abortions in 2002 had already had a prior abortion, according to Repeat Abortion in the United States, released today by the Guttmacher Institute. Moreover, one in three women have given birth to a baby they had not planned for, and one in 10 have had two or more unintended births. Repeat unintended pregnancies that end either in abortions or unplanned births occur among women from all economic, racial and ethnic backgrounds, the authors point out, suggesting that the reproductive health care system in general is failing to provide women with the services and counseling they need.

“Our study challenges the misperception that women who have more than one abortion are different from other women,” says lead author Rachel K. Jones, senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute. “The typical woman having a second or third abortion is, in many ways, like the typical woman having her first abortion—and in turn, all types of American women have abortions. This suggests that we need to do a better job helping all women better prevent unwanted pregnancies, so they can avoid having to decide whether to seek abortions or raise children they are not prepared for.”

In fact, the only notable differences between women obtaining a first abortion and those who had already had one or more abortions are that those obtaining repeat abortions tend to be older and to have more children. This makes sense, as older women have been at risk of unintended pregnancy longer than younger women. Overall, most women obtaining abortions are poor or low-income, and six in 10 are already mothers.

The authors found no evidence of women using abortion as their primary method of family planning. The majority of women having abortions were using contraceptives when they became pregnant, regardless of whether it was their first abortion or they had already had a prior abortion. In fact, women obtaining second and higher-order abortions were slightly more likely to have been using a highly effective hormonal method (such as the pill, the patch or the ring) when they became pregnant. These patterns suggest that most women who have abortions are trying to avoid unintended pregnancies but are having trouble doing so.

The time when a woman seeks an abortion is an opportunity to offer family planning services and counseling to help her prevent another unintended pregnancy. Yet a quarter of a century of government policies at the state, federal and international levels have impeded this process. For example, Colorado, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania require strict separation between organizations providing state-funded family planning services and organizations providing abortion-related services. At the federal level, Title X–funded family planning programs must 
be “separate and distinguishable” from abortion-related activities. And in developing countries, clinics or hospitals where abortions are provided are prohibited from receiving U.S. assistance for any postabortion contraceptive services and counseling.

“The ‘wall of separation’ that the federal government has erected between family planning and abortion services is, paradoxically, leading to more abortions,” says Sharon Camp, Guttmacher president and CEO. “While intended to distance publicly-funded family planning clinics from abortion services, an unintended consequence is that it is getting in the way of abortion providers’ ability to facilitate women’s access back to family planning clinics. These policies interfere with the ability of abortion providers to ensure that, following an abortion, every woman has an appropriate contraceptive method and is able to use it consistently. And it is poor and low-income women in this country—those who have the highest rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion—as well as women in the world’s poorest countries, who are paying the price. We’re failing to prevent abortions because we’re letting down women in the greatest need.”

Click here for the full report Repeat Abortion in the United States.

For more information about this issue or about the Guttmacher Institute, please contact Rebecca Wind at 212-248-1953 or mediaworks@guttmacher.org.