Thirty-six years after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Roe v. Wade, effectively legalizing abortion in America, a spirited debate continues between anti-abortion activists and those who insist on a woman's right to choose to terminate her pregnancy.
But what do women who have
actually undergone an abortion say about their ordeal and the impact
their choice has had on their personal lives?
While
Americans debate the morality of abortion, the procedure has been legal
and widely used since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. According to an
estimate by the Centers for Disease Control, there were more than 45
million abortions in America between 1973 and 2005.
Susanne
Today,
Susanne - who, like the other women in this report, asked that her last
name not be used - is the mother of a thriving 10-year-old girl. But in
1991, she was a pregnant college girl with an unreliable boyfriend. She
quickly chose to have abortion rather than bring the baby to term, yet
she still muses about what or "who" might have been.
"Sometimes
I do an age calculation, and I think about how I would have been a
parent to that other child if I'd decided to have the baby. Looking
back, I think I could have been an adequate parent, but I don't think I
could have been as good a parent as I am today," she says.
Susanne
has no moral qualms about her decision and adds that having the baby
under those circumstances would have posed its own moral difficulties.
"For
example," she says, "giving up a child for adoption, or perhaps
parenting a child without the support of a spouse, or being connected
to a person who may not have been a suitable parent as well."
Marilyn
When Susanne had her abortion in 1991, she could choose from among a
large number of abortion clinics where the procedure could be performed
professionally, under sanitary conditions. It was not always so.
In
1961, when 22-year-old Marilyn became pregnant, it was an era in which
premarital sex and single motherhood were both condemned by the
culture, and abortion was still illegal. The ergot and herbs Marilyn's
friend recommended as ways to induce miscarriage didn't work.
Desperate,
she managed to obtain the name of a woman, a non-professional reputed
to perform illegal abortions effectively. She paid $150 - the
equivalent of two weeks' pay - to a third party and went to a
vacationing friend's fifth-floor walkup apartment, which had no phone,
and submitted to the procedure.
"It was a very lonely
experience for me," Marilyn recalls. "It was like the old proverbial
coat hanger where she actually opened the cervix and put a tube in it
so that the fluid would drain out and the fetus would abort."
Marilyn says that her illegal abortion was not particularly unsanitary, but it was painful and highly anxiety-producing.
"Of
course, you don't know whether you are doing any damage. This was a
very frightening situation to have to go through that without any kind
of a backup all."
Marilyn says she is glad to see that the culture has changed since that time.
"Now,
it is so much easier to have a child without a marriage around it.
There are people screaming [clamoring] for children. But the freedom to
choose must be maintained, because there are all kinds of extenuating
circumstances."
Jamie
Medical tests such as
amniocentesis,
which can indicate if a developing fetus has a birth defect such as
Down Syndrome or spina
bifida, were not
available when Marilyn had her abortion, but they were in 1998. That's
when a positive amniocentesis test for Down Syndrome prompted Jamie, a
married occupational therapist, to choose to abort the baby she and her
husband had hoped to have.
Jamie says her unilateral
decision created some tension in her marriage and continues to be a
topic of discussion with her husband.
"Recently he asked me,
'What if we could tell if a child was blind or not? Would that be
something you would terminate a pregnancy for?'" she says. "I thought
it was an interesting question… but I'd have to think about it some
more. We have to be very careful."
Ursula
Of course,
not everyone has a partner with whom she can discuss her situation.
Ursula, a 31-year-old programmer, has had two abortions, one when she
was 19 in suburban Massachusetts, and one very recently. She says she
felt deeply isolated the first time, but not the second time.
"The
worst part of it when I was 19 was feeling so very alone. I just
couldn't say this to anyone because of what they [might] think. Whereas
now, especially with the Internet, it's so common to hear about it, and
I've spoken to so many friends about it. It's like, 'Whatever! It
happens! We'll help you through it!'"
VOA asked Ursula if she felt any sense of grief or loss following either of her abortions.
"I
suppose that with any endeavor that you start that you can't
necessarily carry to fruition, there is a sense of loss," she say.
But Ursula says that, more than anything else, she viewed her temporary pregnancy as an inconvenience.
"There is a sense of lost time and loss effort. I work full-time, and I was exhausted."
Susan "D"
Some women go into the abortion clinic feeling completely
"pro-choice," but waiver in their opinions after the abortion itself. Susan "D" felt unexpectedly overwhelmed following her procedure, which
she describes as "not especially painful, but horrible."
"[Afterwards]
… I felt I that had totally interfered with life. I had stopped life!
And, in my opinion, it is a kind of murder. You just can't get around
[the fact] that you are killing something that, had you left it alone,
would grow into a human being."
Susan "D" says she now
understands people who oppose abortion, but says, that for her,
abortion is a complicated issue, without clear-cut answers.
"People use birth control. Condoms break. Things don't work. People get raped. And you can't force a woman to have that child."
Susan "D" ascribes her own pregnancy to simple carelessness.
"And
I won't deny I was glad I had the choice [whether or not to have an
abortion], even though I despised myself for making that decision."
While women in the United States retain the freedom to end their
pregnancies - within certain limits - the abortion rights issue remains
a live wire in American politics that sparks impassioned debate and
legal battles between defenders and opponents. Whether it remains legal
or not, abortions will almost certainly continue to be performed, and
women will continue to bear the complex burden of their choice.
