Each Monday we've been busting common myths about abortion. for the next few Mondays we're borrowing short extracts from a great article on the Scarleteen website called How to (un)pPack for a Real Discussion About Abortion We think Scarleteen is brilliant. Abortion is one of the many topics they cover spanning the whole range of issues relating to human sexuality. They address every issue with a rights-based, compassionate, evidence-based approach. If you haven't visited www.scarleteen.com DO!
Thanks Scarleteen for giving us permission to reprint this extract from your article.
No woman wants to have an abortion
Many women, if not most, who choose an abortion want to have one. If a woman freely chooses abortion for herself, rather than being pressured or coerced into it, then an abortion is absolutely what she wants.
And let’s be real about that: women are pressured or coerced into all of the possible choices with a pregnancy with some frequency. Sometimes that pressure is direct, from family, partners, friends. Sometimes that also comes from communities, cultures, religions, politics. No matter WHAT choice a woman is making about her pregnancy, from a pro-choice perspective, pressure, coercion or force is absolutely unacceptable.
By all means, some women have pregnancies they do NOT want to terminate, where the last thing they want is an abortion, yet they still decide to terminate, usually based on very serious or grave circumstances. Some women feel that of the three choices available they don’t want to make any of those choices: but one has to be made, even if none of them are wanted.
There is a range in this: for some, abortion is an ideal choice, what is most wanted, full-stop and without any feelings of conflict. For others, neither abortion nor childbirth are wanted outcomes, but abortion is the more wanted choice and what seems best to that woman with her pregnancy. For many, feelings lie somewhere in between those two poles.
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