This comment from an abortion provider was posted on an article about a proposed late-term abortion ban. The article discussed how women should have access to late-term abortions despite their reasons for seeking them, and maintains that focusing on the stories that are the most tragic only works against abortion rights.
“Thanks for this piece. It resonates with me deeply as a provider of abortion care and as an “out” advocate of reproductive justice, the framework most cogent with your remarks but least known by people moved by this issue. To your point, when advocates have sought stories from me to make the case for abortion, it has always been a request for tragic circumstances, the stories felt to be the most likely ones to move opinion. The reality is that that is not the typical patient I see, as most women having abortions are not raped or are not carrying a lethally flawed fetus, and yet I have not identified a clear distinction between women I am willing to help and those I am not based on “acceptability” of circumstance.”
[Emphasis Mine]
Tracy Weitz “What do responses to the Washington DC 20-week abortion ban tell us about the habits of the prochoice movement?” ANSIRH blog, July 25, 2012
http://blog.ansirh.org/2012/07/habits-of-the-prochoice-movement/