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When Woman Have No Choice
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When Women Have No Choice
Melinda Tankard Reist
The language of choice suppresses a critical examination of the issue. But there are other voices that need to be heard if we're going to get anywhere near an honest debate.
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In the mad rush to achieve abortion on demand in WA, two little things seem to have been forgotten: there was a baby in the fridge and a mother who knew it was a baby and wanted proper, culturally appropriate burial for that baby.
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In the deafening roar of the chanting of the 'right-to-choose' mantra, both the baby and the mother at the center of events have been overlooked, swept aside in the charge to establish unfettered access to abortion.
The 'pro-choice' flag bearers don't see the baby in the fridge. But the mother did. That's why she wanted a proper burial, not have it thrown in with other 'medical waste'.
Did that mother look at what was left of her baby and give thanks for the glorious 'right to choose'? Did she think: "This is a great good whose cause I must champion?" Did she feel empowered by her exercise of 'choice'?
Or did she have other thoughts? Did she ponder that she had no choice, that she might have chosen differently had she had support?
The pro-choice rhetoric is never as it sounds. It makes all choices sound good and equal, like products in a supermarket from which a woman can pick and choose. It suggests no desperation, no pressure, no coercion either direct or reflected in partner's passive nonsupport.
Many women have discovered otherwise.
They may not have taken their baby pieces home. But they are reminded of their babies every day. Their arms feel empty, they don't like looking at babies, they appear to cry for no reason. They ask: What would my baby have looked like? Was it a boy or a girl? Would-be birthdays are quietly marked, year after year. They feel strange saying they are another of two when there was another one, nameless, anonymous, but never really forgotten. Some become pregnant soon after the termination to try to replace the lost baby. They are filled with feelings of self-loss and other loss.
The experiences of these women have been ignored. The politics of the 'right to choose' has taken precedence over a woman's actual lived experience of abortion. They would like to grieve, but are not allowed: if they had relinquished their baby to adoption, they could.
These are different voices so far stilled in the abortion shouting match. I am trying to give them a hearing.
Women contributing their abortion stories to a book I am writing were physically and/or emotionally hurt by the procedure. A Melbourne woman delivered her aborted baby at home in the toilet after her 'safe legal' abortion. The lawyer of another says his client's experiences equate with assault and battery. She had been told by a counselor in a women's health centre in Sydney that it was wrong of her to speak badly of her abortion experience - abortion was such a hard won right. Another Melbourne woman speaks of crawling through her house for her three aborted babies. She has considered taking her life to be with them.
A former abortion clinic nurse says women deemed not good enough for motherhood were pressured to agree to termination. She was castigated for helping women who didn't want to go ahead with the termination to dress and leave the clinic.
Women sharing their stories feel the abortion took away a baby, but not their problems. They have worn too long the mantle of silent suffering.
While pregnancy support and Women Hurt By Abortion groups have been criticized in the media, a number of women contacting me say if it wasn't for the care they got from these places, they might be dead. One of these groups in South Australia says it cannot keep up with the calls from distressed women seeking their help.
It's time to examine the 'pro-choice' orthodoxy. The rhetoric of choice is isolationist. It tells women: you're on your own. They are abandoned to their 'autonomy'.
Abortion has become an act of social obligation. Many women contacting me say others, usually partners or parents, wanted them to have the abortion. For many women, abortion on demand means someone else's demand.
I was involved in setting up a home for single, pregnant women: the neighbors objected and threatened legal action. They didn't want girls like that in their nice street and, anyway, shouldn't we just send them to family planning - that is, for an abortion?
We can't talk about choice if women are driven by difficult circumstances into the arms of an abortionist. (From an article published in the Herald Sun 16 March 1998)
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