Author Frederica Mathews-Green interviewed many postabortion women for a book she was writing. She says of her research:
“It was striking how frequently women in these groups said, “If I’d only had one other person to stand by me…” They weren’t asking for magical solutions. They were asking for a friend.”
Later in the book, she says that she had expected the women she interviewed to say that they were most concerned about material needs and goals like finishing an education or being able to afford a baby, but:
“Yet when we listened to women describe their situations in depth in the listening groups, a surprising theme emerged. In nearly every case, the abortion was undertaken to fulfill a felt obligation to another person, a parent or boyfriend. Our assumption that abortion decisions were prompted by the sort of practical problems – food, shelter, poverty, clothing – which a pregnancy care center could attempt to solve was not borne out. Instead, the woman felt bound to please or protect some other person, and abortion was the price she felt she had to pay.”
Later, Mathews Green continues:
“When postabortion women talk about the reasons for their decision, they talk most often about the failure of the baby’s father to be supportive, to fill the father’s role. Unexpected pregnancy can raise some breathtaking problems, but a partner’s vigilant love has a way of easing them. Imagine a woman discovering a pregnancy in a difficult situation, but her partner saying to her, “I love you, I love our baby, I’ll do anything I can to make this family work.” On the other hand, imagine a story from one of my listening groups: a married woman with two kids, living in reasonable security, to whom her husband says, “Only ignorant people have more than two kids. I don’t want this baby. You have to have an abortion.” Which child will survive?”
Frederica Mathews-Green. Real Choices: Offering Practical, Life-Affirming Alternatives to Abortion (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Books, 1994) 21, 33, 45
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