ClinicQuotes

Even though I’m pro-life, I read pro-choice books to get another perspective and to learn as much about the issue as possible.I don’t have a lot of qualms about giving a bad review to this one. The book was basically New Age mumbo-jumbo. It was written by a clinic worker who tries to present abortion as being a holy experience that allows a woman to learn about herself and experience the spiritual power of pregnancy. The book was full of long passages of New Age rhetoric that didn’t make a whole lot of sense:

“The soul energies we contact around some pregnancies might be coming in to help women learn how to make choices. With regard to the continuum between nonphysical and physical life, they could probably go either way. Does this sound like a self-serving rationalization to assuage guilty feelings? Perhaps, but I think not. If anything, thinking about the spiritual life of pregnancy allows women to face difficult feelings like fear and guilt while embracing gentler possibilities. As we learn to care for and respect ourselves, we become capable of bringing life through our bodies that is a promise of being loved and cared for the physical world.”

Despite her pro-choice bias, the author lets slip a few times that she knows that abortion is killing:

“The choice to allow death to occur through abortion is an expression of women’s creative life-giving power in action.… For most women choosing to have an abortion is a loving, caring act… It is our sense of responsibility for life that usually plays a central role in decision-making about pregnancy.”

Yeah, killing the baby really is a loving and caring act.

She also admits that abortion is hard for many women:

“Consciously controlling the process of pregnancy and deciding to turn back pregnancy often produces a mix of feelings, which includes sadness and loss.… The arrival of the menstrual period during the 1st few months after an abortion reminds a woman that she is no longer pregnant. For some women this is a cause for celebration. For others it precipitates a drop into sadness, and is a painful reminder of the loss of the pregnancy… If the feeling of emptiness goes on for a long time, a woman might become at risk for depression.”

Really, the book seem to be the clinic worker’s attempt to sugarcoat abortion and make it out to be a profound spiritual experience (?) that benefits women when the reality is something far different.

Very, very powerful. So much information, so much heart rending information. It really illustrates how bad the situation is in India. I like the fact that the person who wrote this did so much research, interviewing so many people who were involved in sex selection abortion. It also touches on infanticide and the history of infanticide in India. The discovery she makes is surprising – that sex selection abortions are commonest among the most educated women and men. She also went into the consequences of having a society that is skewed with more men than women, with men unable to find wives. It talked about polyandry, and about villages buying brides and then treating them as slaves and son producing machines. I am very glad that this author wrote this book, with so much information, but I’m not sure what to do about the problem.

In the book The Ambivalence of Abortion, Linda Bird Francke tells the stories of women who have had abortions, the men who are their partners, and the clinic workers and who deal with abortion on a day to day basis.

She gives an inside look at what women go through when contemplating abortion, then deciding to abort, going through the procedure, and dealing with the aftermath.

The first thing to consider is that this book was written some time ago, in the late 1970s. Many people, knowing this, would not give it a second look. However, I feel that the book is still relevant today, as the emotional make-up of women and the abortion experience has not changed much in the past thirty years. Women still have abortions for many of the same reasons- wanting to preserve an education, conflict with their baby’s father, financial pressure, etc. People still consider abortion to be controversial – some people oppose it and others accept it. It is still an emotional decision, now as well as in the 1970s.

Francke reveals in the beginning of the book that she had an abortion herself, and compiling the stories of other women may have been her way of coming to terms with it. She maintains that she feels she made the right choice, but does express some grief over the baby that might have been. In her interviews, she explores the grief that many women, even pro-choice women, feel about their pregnancies and abortions. Her book describes how ambivalent women are about ending their pregnancies and how complex their emotions are. She touches on the ambivalence of society as well- a society that decrees that abortion should be legal and available but that it is still a ‘wrong’ thing to do carrying stigma. Few women want the world to know they have had abortions- either in 1970 or today. All of the women Francke interviews use fake names.

Their reactions run the gamut- some are mainly relieved, others sad, some guilt-stricken, many are a combination of all three. The providers she interviews express their own ambivalence. Many of them speak of helping women, but also of their disgust when the same women come back for abortions five times. Some are sure that they are doing the right thing, but are upset by the remains from late term abortions, were the aborted fetuses may have hands and feet and look like babies. Francke also has a chapter where she talks about men and their feeling towards their partner’s abortions. She lets the women and men speak for themselves, often quoting much of what they say word for word.

Overall, The Ambivalence of Abortion is a powerful book, and despite the fact that it is old, it gives great insights into the minds and hearts of women who choose abortion as well as the women and men who provide abortions. It should be read by anyone who is interested in the abortion issue.