saturday's theme

as i have written here before, certain themes sometimes emerge on a single clinic day.  this past saturday's theme was "saving oneself".  i was struck by the certainty of each woman that abortion was necessary in order for her to save herself.  each was in a bad relationship and in the process of extricating herself when she discovered that she was pregnant.  anyone who has herself been in a bad relationship knows that the full realization of your situation comes to you in waves.  sometimes there is some backsliding, often prompted by a "i can make this work" message repeated to oneself.  sometimes the back and forth, i'm leaving/i'm staying comes out of one's partner promising to change behaviors troublesome to the relationship.  but when you finally accept, once and for all, that the relationship is over, that there is nothing more to do, it's time to just leave.

all three of the women i spoke to last saturday were in the process of leaving.  the youngest of the women, whom i'll call ali, also had serious health problems to consider.  she was not yet 25, but had already been in a diabetic-caused coma last year.  she is still having trouble controlling her diabetes, is suffering from depression, is unemployed and felt utterly alone.  trying to take care of herself is overwhelming her at this point in her life.  also, she may never be able to carry a pregnancy to term because of her health issues.  right now pregnancy was not anything she could even imagine since she has to find a place to live as she begins her divorce proceedings and tries to get her life on track and get her insulin and other medications stabilized.

next i spoke to beth (as usual, all names and identifying information have been changed).  beth had just left her fiance in another state.  she felt that she had to move far away in order to get free of him.  he was abusive, threatening, and made her life miserable.  she had just moved here, gotten a job, but was in no position to have a child.  even more important, she did not want to have a child to the man she had just escaped from.  rather, she wanted him out of her life together.  and she wanted no connection to him or reason for him to be in touch with her. 

danika was also in the process of ending a long term relationship.  although she and her husband had only been married three years, they had been a couple for years before that.  they had both hoped that making the final committment in the form of a marriage pledge to one another would erase some of the problems they had had in their years together.  but in fact it had not turned out that way.  and, with three children for her now to support, she dared not have another child.  her husband's alcoholism was now so bad that he was unable to hold a job yet he was still denying that he had a problem.  she said that her kids needed to be away from the constant fights and screaming even though she is afraid of trying to raise the kids on her own. on the other hand, she said, she had already been doing just that since before they were married.  at this point she would actually have fewer problems, she felt.

so each of these women had her abortion, left the clinic with both sadness and feelings of hope for a new beginning. 

lou

Comments

[Paige]

Angela,
Thank you for your kind words.I just wish women would realize that killing their babies will never solve anything so I will keep telling my story over and over and if it saves one woman and her baby from the heartache I must live with every day, then its worth it.

[Angela]

Paige,
May God bless and keep you. You have made the right decision. Please don't stop telling your story every chance you get.

Peace,
Angela

[Paige]

Lou,

As a woman who has had an extremely traumatic late-term abortion experience and who has also given another baby up for adoption, I find your line of work to be about helping your checkbook, not women.

I am only 27 years old and I have been with a man who is significantly older and abusive for 14 years of my life. He has forced me into having abortions for 14 years. When I attempted to go on birth control, he beat me. I am now pregnant again with his child, but I just can't go through with another abortion. I just recently left this man to have my baby. If I were to choose to give her up for adoption, there are many agencies who help women like me (who have no money). They will pay for any pregnant woman, her other children, and even her husband to live in a furnished apartment with a weekly grocery allowance at no cost to her whatsoever.

Of my two choices, adoption was hard, but not nearly as hard as knowing that I paid someone to kill an innocent baby who could have been loved and cared for.

The doctor who did this never presented me with any other viable options. His adoption counseling consisted of "Do you think you can handle not knowing where your baby is?"

It's strange that it becomes a baby when I would have to give her away, but it's a fetus when you want to kill her.

Exactly what about an abusive relationshop are you solving by killing the woman's baby? Do you tell women that abortion is not going to be a quick fix to whatever problem they think it's solving? Because it isn't. Not one of the women I've encountered doesn't have some type of regret or wish she had been given more information regarding the long term effects of her "choice."

The emotional price you pay is quite steep, but you can also end up ith physical problems that no one ever tells you about. I have severe cervical scarring from repeated insertions of laminaria. It will cause me pain for the rest of my life and there is nothing that can be done for it.

[Grace]

HELLO!!! Margaret Sanger worked for BIRTH CONTROL, not abortion! Birth control PREVENTS abortion - including the illegal, dangerous ones sought by desperate immigrant women in 1916 who couldn't support children #s 8, 9, 10 and 11!

Let's PLEASE get our facts straight before spewing the spittle about.

[syn]

Today's modern liberated female can no longer cry victim, what pathetic weakness exhibited by such lowly women. Thanks to Susan B. Anthony we all have the ability to to earn our own way if we so choose. No thanks to the resurgence of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood's 'Taking the easy way out will empower females', we all now have the right to kill.

That said, today's liberated pro-abortionist female puts Susan B. Anthony's tireless and difficult work bringing equal rights for women to shame.

[linda Shown]

So you are saying if you want to get out of a bad relationship where unwanted kids or forthcoming kids are involved, you just kill them. Why can't one kill a 1 month old child as well as an unborn child if you don't want the dad? Where does one draw the line? With DNA and other medical advances, one can see that there is a baby in the womb, not a fish. Roe vs Wade would never have been passed by our "wise" supremes if this were brought up today with the medical knowledge we now have. You can bet on it!

[achromic]

I sure wish you guys would write more often. I like your writing.

[Julie]

Hey there; I found this blog in a roundabout way from Alternet, and it's refreshing to see such honest talk about abortion.
I am a member of abortion debate groups on both yahoo, and hotmail; and with your permission, will spread the word about this blog.

[shannon]

Could one of you post something about the new Supreme Court nominee?

[Grace]

Julia, thank you for that perspective. I really like your comparison to the "choice" of paying for food or rent. As long as women don't have what they need to either prevent pregnancy or support children, they are forced into this horrible choice. We should ALL get together to work for birth control, education and social services. But unfortunately, the whole thing has become so polarized and nasty.

[Julia]

I'd like to let you know that I really appreciate the blog you're keeping and your calls for more realistic discussion in the abortion debate. I am pro-life, but/and much of what you says resonates with me -- the single biggest problem I have with the pro-abortion (loaded term, but as long as I'm called anti-choice, I'll go with it) groups I've come into contact with is their lack of respect for the fetus as a living being. I am not of the opinion that killing is never good or right, but I think that whenever it is done, it should be done with respect for the life being taken, whether an animal in a slaughterhouse or a baby in an abortion clinic.

Your stories of women who deal with this is very welcome -- I cannot imagine being in that situation, with one group who tells me that what I'm doing makes me evil and another that says that there is no life being taken, even if I can feel it. And they highlight the fact that abortion is a choice in the same way that paying for food instead of rent (because you don't have enough money for both) is a choice -- it isn't. Bush et al continue to decrease money and help available to mothers/parents/victims of domestic violence/etc. while barely paying lip service to being pro-life.

So from a pro-lifer to a pro-choicer, thank you!

[Gina]

Just dropping in to say I am so glad you have this blog. It's a needed perspective. For all of the people who come by disagreeing and angry, there are many of us out here who agree with you and appreciate your writing, and who need to hear what you have to say. Keep em coming.