ClinicQuotes

Alisia describes how hard her abortion was:

“I cried all through the abortion. I cried a lot. Afterwards, too. The doctor, I think he was pretty upset, too, that I was taking it so hard. He was trying to calm me down, saying, you know, “It’s really a hard decision for you,” and I was saying, “Yeah, it is,” you know, through my tears, “Yeah, it is; yeah, it is.” I’m over here shaking and crying. Because it’s interesting, but your emotions play so much a part of what’s going on, that I began to get chills. She had to cover me and turn on the heater.

Then when they took me out into the recovery room, I went there and I laid down there and I was trying to keep calm because there was another woman there and I didn’t want to upset her because I was upset. I asked the counselor if she could get my sister. She went out and got Maria, and Maria came in and I started crying all over again. And she was saying, “Well, what’s wrong? I thought this was what you wanted to do.” I says, “Yeah, but it doesn’t make it any easier, you know. It is what I wanted to do. This would have been my last baby.” And I just started crying.

The counselor came in and said, “I’m really glad you’re crying.” I looked at her and said, “Why??” She said, “See that lady over there, she was trying to hold it in, and watching you cry, she’s letting it out.” And I looked over there, and sure enough she was crying too. So then I started calming myself down. She was sitting there crying, and she got herself dressed to leave; she came over and she says, “You know, I want to thank you.” She says, “I really needed to do that and I was really holdin’ it in.”

Sumi Hoshiko Our Choices: Women’s Personal Decisions about Abortion (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1993) 88 – 89

What kind of “right” is this that women fight so hard for, that leads to so much tears and pain? Are abortions really good for women?