What We Talk About When We Talk About Abortion
What We Talk About When We Talk About Abortion.
Earlier today I was participating in our national pastime of watching people argue on Facebook, in this instance my favorite anonymous group, when I sent some screenshots to my friends in the world’s best group chat. This anon said they didn’t think it was helpful when people frame their support of abortion with “I’d never get one, but…”
It didn’t take long for the low-key shaming responses to pop up. Comments about emotional scars and difficult decisions and a few, “I just could never.”
“This one is about to go off,” I wrote.
And my lovely, progressive friend responded with,
“Well I disagree with anon.”
If one of my favorite people can’t see how this is harmful to women, it’s a problem that we need to talk about.
Let me reframe this about why this issue is so personal to me. My status as abortion-haver or not haver is irrelevant to this discussion, but a little bit about my daughter is. I’d just gone back to school, when she developed these strange, small, dark bruises over her entire body. I asked her if her teacher was being mean. Her grandma? My fiancé? She denied it all, and I took her to the doctor, where the nurse who I always was close with grew immediately distant.
Great, I thought, they think I’m beating her and we’re not going to find out what this is.
Then they came in and told me they needed me to take her to the hospital immediately where they would admit her. Her doctor had suspected leukemia, but we lucked out. She happens to be one of those people unlucky enough to have developed an autoimmune disease that she has lived with for 12 years. And one of the things about this disease is that several factors including bleeding risks mean that a pregnancy would be a huge risk. I have known since she was 6 that if she ever becomes pregnant, an abortion would be the preferable option for her safety. I have never been anything less than completely fine with that. It’s a medical procedure, like the thousands of others she’s had.
In the same way that no one can force you to sit in a chair for an hour and donate blood, or plasma to my daughter (something she absolutely at times needs to live); no one should force my daughter to carry a fertilized egg at risk to her own safety. But when you frame your arguments on abortion as “something I would never do” you are injecting a morality argument into a medical procedure that saves women’s lives. And that argument is the very argument that is fueling the current bans going into effect around the country. Women will die.
“I would never but I support your right to.”
It’s a harmful and unnecessary statement, and if you’re making it, ask yourself why. So people know that even though you support choice, you’re “not that type of girl”? It might be uttered in the spirit of sisterhood, but it serves only to separate us and shore up the argument about there being a morality call inherent in the decision. We don’t need you subtly signaling about your morals. We need you with us. Your choice to not have an abortion is included in the argument of choice. Further comment isn’t needed when women are having every aspect of their character attacked in the attempt to make the best medical decision for themselves.
