About choice
Jul 27, 2005 Feminism/Politics
Sster said: “In other words, women who face unplanned pregnancies can choose to work with organizations that reflect their own beliefs about abortion, parenting, and adoption. As long as these organizations are upfront about their orientations and do not resort to dishonesty or coercion, I think it’s alright for them to be biased.”
Here’s the thing — I think that when it comes to a crisis pregnancy, sometimes our ideas about what we believe are so deeply challenged that we very much need unbiased, reflective support to make a decision. It would be lovely if there was a place for women to go and sit down and hash it all out. Right now I think Planned Parenthood is the best option since they’re far from pro-abortion and can at the very least give referrals.
I’ve been lucky enough not to have a crisis pregnancy (despite being quite slutty in my youth — side benefit to sub-fertility) but I’ve held the hands of friends and clients and talked to one of my bestest friends who was a patient services provider at a clinic and read stories of women in crisis pregnancies. The truth is, I believe, we really can’t know what our feelings are about choice until we’ve been in a crisis pregnancy. So a woman may have beliefs about abortion, parenting and adoption but those beliefs may be severely challenged if she gets pregnant at the wrong time.
The most compelling story my friend has about the clinic (in a sea of compelling stories) was the very very religious (was she Mormon? I can’t remember) woman who already had a basketful of children and found herself pregnant. She was profoundly pro-life but sat down and realized that she could not have that baby. She could not be pregnant again. She knew her husband would never allow her to make an adoption plan, she knew that she might not let go of the baby once s/he arrived but she also knew without a doubt that having that baby would push her over the edge of what she could handle. She had other children to consider. It wasn’t a matter of money, it was a matter of sanity. And so she chose damnation (because she believed that absolutely she would be damned for her choice) for the sake of her there on earth children.
A mother’s love is a profound thing.
I do think that most pro-life organizations are cocercive. Now I haven’t visited every Birthright or CareNet or Project Gabriel but I’ve read their web sites and talked to some of their volunteers. I do believe that a woman flipping through the yellow pages for help after the positive pregnancy test may end up there not knowing that they will try to make her choice for her. There is a pregnancy decision center down the road from me and when they say “decision,” they’re only offering two but if you need a free pregnancy test, you might end up there and then get stuck in a room watching “The Silent Scream.”
The reason I think a one-stop-fits-all kind of clinic would be good is that I know how hard it is to make a phone call when you’re in crisis. And I know how hard it must be to have to make lots of phone calls. I figure if a woman is talking to a counselor, it would be nice if that counselor could do more than sympathetically hand her another number. It would be nice if that counselor would stick with her and maybe go with her when she visited other places to talk about her options.
And I think an organization that says, “Listen, if you want to adopt, we’re here for you. If you want to parent, we’re here for you. If you want to have an abortion, well, you’re on your own.” is unintentionally coercive. Planned Parenthood, at least, is upfront. They’re a women’s health clinic — they don’t do other stuff. But a crisis pregnancy center or a Catholic social services organization, well, I don’t see how they can do it any other way if they’re truly anti-choice but it still sucks.
Not that pro-choice folks are any better. We’ve let anti-choicers co-opt crisis pregnancy centers, which is a shame.
I wrote a short op-ed about why our adoption has made me more pro-choice but I think it’s way too short and I haven’t been able to place it yet. I’m thinking of lengthening it and trying some other markets. If it doesn’t go anywhere, I’ll put it here.
July 27th, 2005 at 8:36 am
i’m totally with you on the crisis pregnancy/abortion issue.
i, myself had a “crisis,” or more accurately an unplanned pregnancy. We already had a son and daughter and had decided for financial, emotional reasons that we were definitely done having children. i had to take chlomid to get pregnant with the two children i have, and seeing as how i only get my pregnancy once or twice a year when I’m not on the pill, I never thought I might get pregnant without medical intervention. But I did.
All of a sudden, the way my husband and I pictured our lives unfolding over the next five years was drastically altered. We were terrified of having a third child, and spent an agonizing weekend talking and crying while deciding what to do. In the end, we decided that we could not go through with an abortion. We felt that, for us, the pain of an abortion would outweigh the financial and emotional difficulty of having a third child. I am fiercely pro-choice, and that’s the choice I made.
Unfortunately at 20 weeks, we lost the baby. We went in for my 20 week ultrasound, and the baby was already gone. It was an awful time. What was the point of an unplanned pregnancy, the pain of making a decision to have the baby, and the excitement i eventually started to feel about having another baby, if we were just going to lose it? I don’t think I will ever understand that. But I am at peace now with the whole experience. I look at our lives now and realize that it was probably the best thing (even though if I could, I would snap my fingers and choose to keep that baby).
I am grateful to live in a place where I have the option to make that decision. The fact that I had control over my family’s future has helped me come to terms with the miscarriage, and the whole experience.
I love your website. Thanks for sharing your life and your views.
July 27th, 2005 at 9:15 am
I think that this comes down to a very fundamental difference of opinion: because I’m not prochoice about abortion I don’t necessarily want to work toward a world where abortion is considered to be as good an option as parenting or adoption. Now, I also don’t harbor any illusions that Roe will be overturned (Supreme Court nominee Roberts or not!), and there are things about Roe that NEED to stick around (that the government should not interfere in private health decisions). And I will not judge a woman who has made a choice to abort, not only because I haven’t been there, but because the social and economic situation in the States is such that many women feel this IS there only option (that’s why prolife people have to be serious about social and economic change). I do think that Planned Parenthood is coercive, too (and of course this depends on the local chapter), and even most women’s health clinics. I guess the point is that this isn’t really my discussion–if I’m not pro-choice about abortion, I’m not going to want to advocate for places that would present abortion as an equally great option. This does NOT mean I advocate for places that provide misinformation! This is why I get quiet sometimes in my otherwise liberal group of colleagues, friends, and acquaintances…back to my corner…
July 27th, 2005 at 9:29 am
Planned Parenthood is not coercive, in my experience. I had an abortion there 10 years ago, and they discussed all my options with me. It was actually irritating, because I went in there knowing what I was going to do. I’ve always made sure I knew what my rights and options were regarding my reproductive health, long before this unplanned pregnancy, and my decision was solid. No wavering. It was tiresome to me to have to listen to them detailing my other options. But I appreciate that they did it, and gave no more weight to any one choice.
July 27th, 2005 at 10:02 am
I proudly worked at a Planned Parenthood that provided abortions and I would love the opportunity to work there again. Let me assure you that if we never had to do another abortion because women had ready access to affordable, safe birth control and/or support in continuing their pregnancies if they wanted to I would be dancing in the streets. Planned Parenthood is one of the few organizations trying to prevent unplanned pregnancies so that women don’t have to face a crisis pregnancy in the first place.
My mother was 17 when she had me (post-Roe) and never considered an abortion. She told me that knowing she was free to make the choice to parent (or not) helped her claim responsibility for her decision even when parenting was horrifically difficult.
I was working at PP when I had an unplanned pregnancy and I also chose to continue my pregnancy and raise my daughter. Even though I really wanted to be a mama, it wasn’t an easy and it turned my whole life upside down. I thank my lucky stars every day that I had the resources available to make my decision free of coercion or outside pressure. I only wish everyone else would be so lucky.
That is what choice is about. Each of us having an opportunity to decide what is best for us, our children and our families.
July 27th, 2005 at 10:47 am
I agree.. I think it’s sad that the prolifers have co-opted the crisis centers. Unfortunately, it seems that when other crisis centers do sprout up, they… well, attract the unneeded kind of attention that gets workers and counselors and doctors hurt, not to mention the question of being able to provide safety for the patients. I think that is one major reason why there isn’t equal coverage, so to speak, between the pro-life centers and the pro-choice centers (and yes, by pro-choice, I mean centers that present all options equally - including birth, adoption, and abortion).
I would support a full-on choice crisis center in a heartbeat.
July 30th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
There were actually a lot of inaccuracies and misperceptions in the recent Planned Parenthood article about the negative reaction of one prochoice woman who stumbled accidentally into a CPC, in this article (link below). Those of you who really want to be open-minded and know the truth on both sides of this issue might consider reading this:
http://afterabortion.blogspot.com/2005/06/one-womans-garbage-is-another-womans.html
Planned Parenthood told me 26 years ago nothing of my other options, but referred me to the local ab. clinic. I didn’t have the same experience as Sster. I regret my abortion deeply now, after having denied this for about 22 years. I’ll never have a daughter because of it.
The abortion industry in the U.S. has become a $1.3 billion a year giant, with Planned Parenthood, (PPFA) its largest provider. Planned Parenthood probably brought in AT LEAST between $193,744,400.00 and $217,229,560.00 just from abortions alone, out of $306.2 Million in clinic revenue. Abortions represented between 63.3% and 71% of their clinic revenue in 2003-04.
Planned Parenthood’s Annual Report says they got $254.4 million in taxpayer money in 2003 alone; $240.9 million in 2002. And their “health services” included doing abortions in 93.5% of the pregnancies they saw that year. And that doesn’t even count the number of babies possibly terminated by the Morning After Pills they dispensed 633,756 times last year. If even one-tenth of the MAPs dispensed aborted a baby, then that’s 63,375 more babies lost.
At least $500 million in taxpayer dollars went to help pay for all the salaries of those performing/supporting/lobbying for those 440,401 abortions in 2002-2003.
They are so very pro-abortion, because without abortion, they’d be out of business and out of some nice-paying jobs.
Sorry, folks. After reviewing their very own numbers from their annual reports (those links are contained in the above article), they do a good job painting themselves as “for women.” I for one have experienced and seen the damage they’ve done to us women.
Don’t believe me: believe this emergency room nurse: http://afterabortion.blogspot.com/2005/07/back-to-screw-abstinence-party-hosted.html
July 30th, 2005 at 3:21 pm
I occasionally volunteer at a Christian-based crisis pregnancy center, but mostly I work in post-abortion counseling.
I haven’t been in a Planned Parenthood clinic for many years, but when I was there, I was immediately referred for an abortion. Adoption wasn’t mentioned, and figuring out a way to work through my temporary life situation problems to make keeping the baby seem possible was not mentioned.
I am sure that there are PP clinics that provide hugely better options counseling than I got. However, when I talk with women in the post-abortion counseling situation, I do often hear stories that are more like mine.
One of the things that concerns me the most is the limited degree of inquiry at abortion clinics (like Planned Parenthood) into whether an abortion seems like the only good idea because there is some background coercion going on…it could be as minimal as a boyfriend sulking and sighing, or as major as parents threatening to disown and kick out a pregnant teenager.
I can’t agree with the statement that Planned Parenthood is “far from pro-abortion”. Nationally, Planned Parenthood is the country’s largest provider of abortions. Performing abortions is a significant part of their annual income, on a national level (not all PP clinics provide abortions, though).
Saying that PP is “far from pro-abortion” would be like saying that a cosmetic surgeon is “far from pro-cosmetic surgery”.
When I read about stories like the Mormon mother described above, I fully understand her feelings of desperation about having that baby, and her sense that she absolutely had to do that in order to in some way rescue the other children.
That sounds like a desperately disturbed home life, where things are that bad.
My observation in post-abortion ministry is that women who experience the most distress after an abortion are those women who believe it is a sin (as this Mormon woman did) and who believe that they are nevertheless forced to do it for the sake of their other children.
When a woman like this goes home from the abortion clinic, with those thoughts, memories, and new self-image as someone who had to kill her baby to save her other children, this is a woman who is going to need a lot of counseling. A LOT. If you don’t agree with her assessment about the nature of the act of abortion, it might be hard for you to see this. Therefore, you might be pleased at the fact that an abortion was available to her, and not play the movie forward about what her emotional life, self-image, and so on, will be in the days, weeks and months to come.