Aspen Baker is founder of the pro-abortion group Exhale. This group is meant to give post-abortion support to women who are emotionally troubled by their abortions or hurt after abortion. The group will try and make a woman feel comfortable with her abortion. It was set up because the pro-choice movement finally realized that many women hurt after abortion.
Aspen Baker explains why this was so hard for pro-abortion groups to swallow:
“Before Exhale started, the most prominent people who were talking about post-abortion feelings were pro-life.” There has been a few pro-choice projects here and there that considered this perspective…but these were “few and far between and did not have wide pro-choice support.”
The author of the book this appears in then says:
“The common pro-choice refrain was “most women feel relief” – and nothing else – and pro-choice advocates rejected the idea of a “postabortion syndrome.”…
It was assumed that anyone who talked about abortion feelings, especially difficult ones like sadness or grief, had been bamboozled by pro-life extremists…
When someone truly cares about women they are open to hearing what women want to say (whether they are pro-choice or pro-life or neither), but when the care is primarily about securing or ending the legal right to abortion then there is great concern about what women say about their own abortions.”
Mary Mahoney and Lauren Mitchell The Doulas: Radical Care for Pregnant People (New York: Feminist Press, 2016) 21-22
Read stories of women who are hurt after abortion.
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