Pro-choice writer Cara J. Marianna gives reasons why women had abortions. Read these reasons why women had abortions and look at the pictures of aborted babies. Do these reasons justify what you see?
“In addition to relationship issues, financial concerns, youth, and general fear of parental/familial response, many women simply reported that it was not the right time to have a child. A number of women had other things they wanted to do and did not want to disrupt their plans.
Pregnancy and motherhood are physically, psychologically, and emotionally demanding, and the women I interviewed had a clear sense of their capabilities and limitations. Five of the younger women did not feel ready for the responsibilities of motherhood, while two of the older women I spoke with had reached a point in their lives when they looked forward to having the duties of motherhood behind them. It was common for women to feel that they had (and continue to have) their own lives, identities, goals, and dreams, quite independent of boyfriends, partners, husbands, and children. Some women are not interested in being mothers while other women have things “they want to do before taking on the responsibilities of parenting.
From babies aborted at 9-10 weeks
Women who do have children may not want all their years consumed by the demands of motherhood. No matter how rewarding women find motherhood to be, many look forward to a time when we can focus on ourselves….. The desire for some type of freedom was a persistent narrative theme in these stories. Several women I spoke with were not willing to have a baby because it would result in a significant curtailment of personal liberty and a loss of control over their lives.”
14 weeks
“I wanted more woman-time to grow and discover. Something in me knew that that would clearly cease in the way that I was looking for it at that time. Of course, you would still become a woman if you had a child at that age, but I wanted to travel, I wanted to go to graduate school, I wanted to read more, I wanted to go to concerts. A lot of the reasons for the first one were issues of freedom.”
10 weeks
“I had a lot of plans for the fall, and I knew that if I was pregnant, I couldn’t do it. I was gonna travel with the fairs for the summer and knew there was going to be camping. It was just a great way to make a lot of money. I didn’t want anything to mess it up.”
Dismembered body of baby aborted at 20 weeks
“as many women know, children can and do impinge upon our personal freedom in significant ways. Jane would not have been able to pursue her educational and career goals with a new baby to care for. At the very least, she would have had to postpone her career development for several more years, by which time she would have been in her forties.”
8 weeks
“Two of the older women I interviewed (Paula and Jane), both of whom were in their thirties when they had their abortions, were ready to have childbearing behind them so that they could focus on their own lives and interests.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 93-94, 96. 97, 98
Late term
Do these reasons why women had abortions justify them?
An abortion doula helping at an abortion clinic in Manhatten recalls that one woman was trying to sell Zales jewelry to the workers at the clinic while they were doing her abortion:
“A Zales representative tries to sell me on their various collections [during her abortion.] She doesn’t wince at all during the abortion. When it’s over, she thanks everyone, tells us which store she works in, and offers us all a discount. “
From a woman who decided to have an abortion. She describes how she came to the decision:
“I take my plight directly to God through prayer. I receive the answer that, having borne 3 children already, I know the gift of a baby. But I can give back the gift if the burden is too great, and it will be taken back into the universe. The greatest punishment I will receive is that which I am already suffering – the knowledge that I will never know this child.
This child, already built to outlast me, will never see the light of day, never be loved by its sister’s and brother, will never learn or marry or have children, never grow old…
My choice was not simple: it was not made out of disregard for life but because of the desire to protect my family. No one loved that incipient child more than I did.”
Madelein Gray “Giving up the Gift” Commonweal February 25, 1994
A woman named Sarah who had 3 abortions gives her reasons:
“The first one, I was a student and I didn’t want to interrupt my studies. The second and third, I had plans for my life. I had real definite plans for my life that did not include totally changing them to marry someone that would not fit into my vision of myself and my future.”
The interviewer says:
Motherhood had never appealed to Sarah. She was always more interested in education and career, travel and adventure. Pregnancy and motherhood were incompatible with the goals she set for herself and the basic vision she had of her life. There was simply no room in her life for a child….
Sarah noted, continuing a pregnancy ‘would have been more of a decision about giving up what I had planned. And I really did view myself as kind of an adventurous young woman. There are so many more interesting things to do than have a family and kids.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 99
9-10 week preborn baby, a time when many abortions are performedDismembered body parts of baby aborted at 9 weeksShare on Facebook
A 40-year-old woman named Claudia explained how her preborn baby communicated with her from the womb and told her having an abortion was okay:
“I got into the car and sat there and [the baby] spoke to me. She said, “I am looking forward to having you be my mother but I want you to know this is your decision and whatever decision you make is perfectly fine with me. If you choose not to continue this pregnancy I will be waiting.” I sat in the car and cried for about an hour, feeling very grateful and very sad at the same time.”
After her abortion, she says:
“About a month later I participated in counseling with my ministers. In my practice we channel our higher selves and the message that I received during this counseling was very similar to the reassurance that my child Rose had given me in the car. Ever since then I have felt a full heart relationship with this being…the relationship has given me great comfort and has been a source of joy for me…
I also believe that souls choose to be born or to live a certain amount of time in the womb and then depart, or they choose to be aborted… Given my agreement with my child, who is eternal, I did nothing other than delay her return to the earth by agreement with her.”
Note: The book this quote appeared in was written by a Planned Parenthood worker who counseled women in abortion clinics. The book was written as a guide for women who were considering abortion.
Anna Runkle In Good Conscience: A Practical, Emotional, and Spiritual Guide to Deciding Whether to Have an Abortion (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass Publishers, 1998) 46 – 47
In an article in the New York Times, a reporter writes about a woman who discovered her preborn daughter had down syndrome. The woman had an abortion because she was afraid her daughter might one day be raped:
“Another woman talked quite a bit about rape. She was assaulted as a child, she knew that the statistics for sexual abuse were high for people with intellectual disabilities, and she was determined that her daughter would not experience that, so that was one of the reasons she terminated her pregnancy. She referred to her abortion several times as “the protective choice.”
She killed her child out of fear that the child would one day be a victim of rape. There are never any guarantees in life that a person won’t be victimized, but is it that a good reason to kill them?
Leslie Savan wrote the following in the Village Voice:
“…many women of my generation are replacing having children with having abortions, not only in a literal sense but also as a major rite of passage …”wanted unwanted pregnancies” become attractive in the first place because of interacting and not-always conscious motives, among them:
• a desire to know we’re fertile
• to test the commitment of the man…
• abortion as a rite of passage…the fact that more women are aborting makes it more permissible, even intriguing…
• torn between “femininity” and “feminism” getting pregnant proves we are feminine while getting the abortion proves we are feminist…
Leslie Savan,, “Abortion Chic: Attraction of ‘Wanted-Unwanted’ Pregnancies” The Village Voice, February 4, 1981.
9 to 10-week-old unborn baby – most abortions happen between 6-11 weeksFrom baby aborted at nine weeksShare on Facebook
In a study, a 20 year old woman who had an abortion was asked the reasons why:
Q: What kinds of things did you consider in your decision to have an abortion?
A: I guess my personal identity was the basic thing. Everything else is pretty much tied to that. Because I really don’t know what I want to do, exactly, like, if I were to have a child now, that would definitely limit my life. And right now I’m fighting any kind of limit like that….It would really limit the direction I could take, you know, in choice. And I don’t know enough of what I want that I would feel satisfied having my choices limited like that.”
Judith G. Smetana Concepts of Self and Morality: Women’s Reasoning about Abortion (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1982) 73
In 1982, before the abortion pill was released, abortions could only be done after 7 weeks. A 7 week abortion leaves hands and feet behind:
it is sad that adoption was not an option for this woman.
A woman who was characterized as “brilliant” and a college professor had an abortion because her astrologer. She aborted because of a horoscope. Mary Kenny recounts:
“Another curious case was that of a brilliant woman academic head of a department at a provincial university who was in her 30s and having an affair with an artist – a moody, melancholic yet pleasing man, married, though not very happily. She… became pregnant. She was at the same time very pleased and very sad. She would have greatly liked to have had the child, but she thought the relationship impossible. So she took herself off to an astrologist and had her horoscope cast. The astrologist was disturbed at what he saw in her future, and warned her to try and avoid an event which might happen “about eight or nine months from now.” That clinched it: she knew it was a sign that she must have an abortion. So she did. Some eight months later her lover committed suicide. So it may not have been the birth of the child, but the suicide of the man, that the astrologist had presumably foreseen. The woman was, naturally, very distressed, though she stood by her decision, and felt the suicide of her lover would have been a bad omen for the child anyway. Later, she became obsessively keen to have a child and even considered artificial insemination by donor (AID), though, up to the time of writing (some five years after the original abortion) without success.
What is significant about this case is that it shows how a highly intellectual and rational person can use what some would consider a quirky and superstitious method to help her make a decision about abortion.”
Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 56 – 57
It is sad that this woman chose to kill her baby because of a horoscope. This anecdote shows that even a woman who is well-educated and presumably intelligent can make a decision to abort her child based on faulty reasoning. She seems to regret her abortion and desires another child, possibly to replace the one she has lost.
Most abortions are done on babies that look like this, and are over seven weeks of ageShare on Facebook
