I’ve been listening to Abby Johnson’s book Unplanned, her personal story of being recruited as a Planned Parenthood volunteer in college, rising through the ranks to clinic director, and eventually crossing the lines and joining the Coalition For Life. It’s not a new book, as it was originally released in 2010, but the audio book has been a hot commodity at my library recently, undoubtedly because it was just released as a movie earlier this year (how I was not aware of this and of the accompanying drama, I don’t know) [1]. Funny thing is, you’ve probably already decided already whether you like the book or not, depending on whether you’re pro-Life or pro-Choice, without ever having to read it. But it’s not simple propaganda. It’s about Abby’s personal moral journey, and it’s very human — no talking points. It wasn’t the morality surrounding abortion itself that is so interesting (as I’ve pretty much formed my opinions on the subject), but the morality associated with the stories within the story. So many topics worthy of discussion!
First, Abby says she was raised religious by loving, supportive parents in a conservative church, and she sounded perfectly comfortable with those values and beliefs. She was a great student in high school with accomplishments and accolades. But the moment she went to college, she became a self-described party girl. Not only did her grades drop, but she got pregnant and had an abortion. She married the guy (against her parents’ warnings) and divorced him a couple years later. In other words, it sounds like her life after leaving home became an immediate trainwreck. It doesn’t sound like she’d rejected the morals she’d been taught as a kid — she still seemed to believe them — but they simply didn’t affect her behavior. Even in hindsight Abby seemed at a loss to explain it. Her abortion was traumatic for her, but she locked it away in a box in her psyche and never gave it any thought. She didn’t tell her parents about the abortion, but they knew about much of her behavior and didn’t approve of it. They (especially her mother) still maintained a good relationship with her, including near-daily phone calls. My question is how it was possible for a young person to be raised with strong conservative values, which she never disavowed, to go totally off the rails like that? I’ve seen it happen in our church as well, of course, and I’ve always wondered how it can be that somebody’s genuine intellectual allegiance can be so divorced from the contents of their character.
Second question. Abby was recruited at a non-profit fair at Texas A&M by Planned Parenthood. She was told pro-Life people wanted to take away women’s reproductive rights, and many weren’t just against abortion but contraception as well, and how that led desperate women to seek back-alley abortions. Abby was a psychology major and wanted to help desperate women in crisis, so she volunteered. On her first day, she got to see the horrible pro-Lifers up close. They knew which day was abortion day, and they were gathered against the fence, some protesting, some praying. Abby was assigned to meet women in the parking lot as soon as they opened their car doors and escort them into the building. Her job as an escort was to provide a psychological shield against the pro-Life harassment through the fence and provide comfort and support to women who were making a difficult decision in difficult circumstances. She described the shouting, the guy wearing the enormous Grim Reaper costume, and the woman with the gruesome picture of an aborted fetus raised high on a placard. The experience rocked her sufficiently that she didn’t volunteer again for a couple weeks, but in the end, it created a sense of outrage against pro-Life nastiness and cemented her resolve to help these distressed women stand against them. However, she realized with time that the protesters weren’t a homogeneous group, and that some actually seemed quite nice. The nice ones didn’t seem to be shaming or harassing her clients, but genuinely wanting to help them and give them an alternative to abortion. As time passed, the nicer protesters tamed the more obnoxious ones, and the shouting, the Grim Reaper, and fetus placard disappeared. There was still tension, but she could exchange pleasantries with them and they seemed genuinely friendly, giving her flowers with bible verses and helping to settle disputes with the strident protesters who were doing things like taking pictures of the girls visiting the clinic and posting them online or sending them to the girls’ parents.
Abby makes the case that the protesters who were praying and showing love did a lot more good than those who were shaming or “protesting,” and they were the ones she could turn to when she wanted out of Planned Parenthood. She’d come to view the nice ones as genuine, and reciprocally, they recognized her desire to do good as being genuine as well. She felt the other protesters actually just made the divide worse.
On the one hand, I see her point. My personal philosophy, whether I manage to live it or not, is that acting with love is ALWAYS the right thing to do. And yet, I can’t quite condemn the more obnoxious protesters. Many pro-Lifers view unborn babies as people. Say there was a legal concentration camp in your community where the guards were routinely executing helpless and persecuted people. Would you just stand at the gate and try to be friendly with the guards, hoping they might eventually see the error of their ways? Or would the fact that those guards were facilitating the deaths of human beings motivate you to try to act with more urgency, maybe even violence? Don’t get me wrong, I’m adamantly against resorting to violence to protest abortion clinics, and I reject the tactics some of the protesters were using, but I can see how I might feel differently if I personally considered a 14-week abortion to be the same as murder [2].
The next question is similar to the last, and it seems pertinent to the continuing discussion here at W&T as to how inclusive the church should be and at what point people should be excluded. Abby was a believer. She and her husband wanted to go to church, so they found one they liked. The church (Baptist, I believe) had a public pro-Life stance, so she kept quiet about her job. In fact, one of the kind things the leader of the pro-Life people at the fence did for Abby was to keep quiet and not out her to her congregation. Eventually, though, the secret came out. She and her husband continued to attend and people weren’t overtly hostile, but when she and her husband expressed a desire to actually join, the pastor said no. He said she was welcome to continue to attend, but since she worked for Planned Parenthood, they couldn’t let her join. She felt the rejection keenly.
She and her husband then started attending an Episcopal church. She wasn’t used to high church with a formal liturgy, and she discovered she found a great deal of peace in it. The Episcopal church had an official pro-Choice stance, and I think a couple of her co-workers attended there as well. She’d been attending for years when she changed sides. When news of her defection spread, there was a great deal of push back from the congregation, and she says she received several emails from people suggesting that she should no longer attend. She and her husband met with the priest, and after a long discussion, she realized they again had to find another church.
Abby found both experiences very painful, and she thought both churches were wrong to reject her like that. She wasn’t quite sure what they should have done, but she definitely felt like they should have done more to pull her in, not kick her out. But what, exactly? Her first church had the position that she was committing heinous sin as a matter of profession. The second church had taken an official position with which she originally agreed, and which she now said God had revealed to her was wrong. Should either church embrace a person who was so publicly rejecting their positions?
The last question, and the big one for me, was sparked by Abby’s revelation that when counseling at Planned Parenthood led to a woman choosing adoption over abortion, she, as director of the clinic, would refer the woman to a pro-Life Christian adoption services. It made me wonder. Could pro-Choicers and pro-Lifers actually work together to help women and reduce abortion? Abby joined Planned Parenthood because she wanted to help distressed women and reduce abortions, especially unsafe abortions, by providing care and contraception. She wanted to do good. She never espoused later term abortions and certainly not when the fetus was viable out of the womb. She was sure many of her co-workers felt the same way and were just as motivated by the desire to do good. During her career at Planned Parenthood, she felt that many of her efforts actually reduced the number of abortions. However, towards the end of that career, Planned Parenthood’s budget problem made her wonder. It turns out that free services aren’t really free — somebody has to pay for them. Planned parenthood collected money from clients for abortions, and abortions were by far the most lucrative service they had to offer. Consequently, Abby claims the organization was putting pressure on her Bryan, TX clinic to perform more abortions to get the revenue up. Even worse, she claims that Planned Parenthood was building a large clinic in Houston that might even perform abortions as late as 24 weeks, and she felt all of that had to do with making money (later term abortions provided even more revenue). Whatever the motivations of many of the employees, she felt the organization’s incentives were aligned with abortion.
What if those incentives weren’t there? What if Planned Parenthood had the budget to fulfill its mission of assisting women with their reproductive health and making abortion safe, legal, and RARE [3]. What if all pro-Life people acknowledged a woman’s agency with respect to abortion, and instead focused on programs to promote valuing life and providing options and assistance to support to women who choose life? Abby felt that the best-hearted and best-minded people on both sides weren’t actually so far apart. If she’s right, couldn’t both sides work together and dramatically reduce abortion and provide services for women?
Yes, this is a total pipe dream, and one that only be had by a person like me, who abhors abortion and yet feels the option shouldn’t be legally removed, at least until the baby is nearly viable outside the womb [4]. There are pro-Choicers who consider abortion the equivalent of pulling a weed (my deceased co-worker, for example), and there are pro-Lifers who see abortion as murder, pure and simple, regardless of the circumstances. Between these two camps, there’s no middle ground to yield. But it does seem to me that many people are at least toward the middle a little ways. It’s just that the highly polarizing rhetoric simply pulls them into one camp or the other. Much like politics these days. Personally, I’d love to see a coalition in the middle that works to promote life and provide alternatives to women while not taking away their choices.
I really enjoyed Abby Johnson’s account, and would highly recommend it, audio or text. She certainly doesn’t come off looking like a hero, and she knows it. Nor do I think she ended up in the place I find myself. We undoubtedly disagree on some things. But I found her spiritual transformation to be profound, and there were several anecdotes I found especially compelling [5] I also liked vicariously viewing her friends and opponents through her eyes, especially as she changed sides of the fence. In short, this book is anything but simple propaganda.
Discuss.
[1] The MPAA gave it an R-rating, due to a few graphic abortion-related scenes, not due to typical nudity, violence, or language. One executive associated with the movie said “[a] 15 year-old-girl can get an abortion without her parent’s permission, but she can’t see this movie without adult supervision? That’s sad.” Also, several TV networks refused to allow the film to be promoted, sparking accusations that the liberal elite were trying to bury it. But Wikipedia claims it still grossed $18 million dollars, three times its budget.
[2] For a good discussion on why I might not consider abortion to be the same as murder, at least before the baby is viable outside the womb, see Angela’s post at BCC.
[3] You can argue Planned Parenthood’s intentions, but abortion in the US is simply NOT rare. Depending on whose numbers you want to believe, there were somewhere between 600,000 to nearly 1 million in 2018. The Guttmacher Institute reports that approximately 1 in 5 US pregnancies terminates in induced abortion.
[4] I feel that in the case of rape and health risks to the mother, the option to abort must be available. A woman who is raped has been horrendously violated, her choice taken away. Giving her back her choice, and allowing her to work with God as to what to do next, seems right. Also, if it were my wife or daughter whose pregnancy threatened her health, who risked leaving her children motherless and her husband a widower, I cannot abide the thought that the government would have say in whether the risk was acceptable or not.
[5] One, for example, was from a woman who’d been impregnated by her rapist, had an abortion, and returned periodically to the clinic for guilt and grief counseling. She told Abby she understood that she wasn’t at all responsible for the rape — that it wasn’t her choice. But killing her baby, she said, that was her choice, and she didn’t see how she would ever be able to live with that.
Wheat & Tares 
Years ago, I was a board member on our local county Right To Life committee. That organization on a local, state and national level is funded and supported heavily by devout Catholics who do see birth control as wrong. There are many other religious groups represented within the organization, but all the heavy lifting is by the Catholics. To call the Right To Life organization Anti-Birth Control is not incorrect. The organization officially is not, but the majority of their decisions are made and mandated by individuals and organizations who see birth control as against the will of God.
I was also quite involved with a Maternity Cottage at the same time. An interesting fact I learned was that there are very few options for women who plan to keep their babies. Literally all the non-religious maternity homes are for those women who plan on adoption. Even the religious options are very focused on adoption and the money generated through that adoption process. Our maternity cottage had been the only option in our large and populous state for women who planned to keep their babies. One place with 8 beds in a huge state. That isn’t much of an option.
If you are pregnant, without financial stability and planning the keep your baby, the options are almost non-existent. That is the dirty secret of the Pro-life movement.
Abortion is more complicated than many realize. Are there horrible things that happen in the abortion industry? Absolutely. Are there horrible things that happen when abortion is not an option? Absolutely.
Where do we find the balance? That is the question. Sometimes, we just have to trust that each momma will do the best she can.
If both sides could agree on one fact, they could have an agreed response. That fact is that making abortion available, and providing free birth control and sex education, is the best way to reduce abortion to a minimum. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/abortion-rates-go-down-when-countries-make-it-legal-report-n85847
Also making abortion illegal does not stop abortion, it just makes it more dangerous. 50,000 women a year die as a result of illegal abortion.
Rates of abortion vary greatly from 50/1000 women of child bearing age, in countries like Pakistan, and Africa (where it is illegal) to US and China just under 20, to Canada and Australia 15, down to much of Europe 6ish.
Where abortions are lowest the culture of respect for women, and the services provided for women, of sex education, including consent teaching, then birth control, and with abortion as the last resort. And that 98+% of abortions are performed before 16 weeks.
The problem arises because of ideology, usually religion, where sex education is denied, and then birth control is denied, and then abortion is also denied. This is ideology imposing its morals on others creating terrible results for the victims, of many times the rates of abortion, and side effects like poverty.
Abortion is such a difficult topic that it is rare to find a well thought out argument that allows for compromise, even though I think individually there are many people who find middle ground. This post manages to get some for thoughts out while walking a fine line.
Damascene took the words out of my mouth on birth control: a substantial portion of pro- life side is personally opposed to birth control, even if they don’t lobby for it as much.
On this footnote: “if it were my wife or daughter whose pregnancy threatened her health, who risked leaving her children motherless and her husband a widower, I cannot abide the thought that the government would have say in whether the risk was acceptable or not.”
I agree with this sentiment about government interference. This reminds me of a radio program where a doctor talked about state laws requiring him to tell a pregnant women the risks of abortion, which I think included infertility, bleeding, and I don’t know what all. The irony is that the same risks apply to being pregnant, but state law required him to state these as risks to abortion. Anyway, my point is that while the risks are low, any pregnancy is a risk to the mother. So it is very difficult to draw a legal line and say abortion is illegal in some cases and make an exception for health.
Thank you for sharing the op. I might have to watch this movie.
This was a far more interesting and balanced piece than I had expected. I have mostly always leaned to the side of pro-choice . I think that comes from a place of valuing agency and feel it wrong for those of us with religious views to impose our beliefs on those who don’t. I’d rather there be safe abortions than illegal ones. I think it also comes from a place of wondering how well women with fewer life choices are helped with birth control or appropriate assistance when keeping their babies. I’d welcome seeing more of that from the pro-life side. In an ideal world there would be more cooperation from both sides without all the ugliness.
Rockwell, yes. I consider my sentiments to be more in line with the Pro-Lifers, in general, but there are exceptions to every rule, so I’m really hesitant to having the government set the rules. The problem with anti-abortion laws that make exceptions for rape or the health of the mother is that I doubt they’re set up to handle the complexities in a way I could accept. For example, how do you establish rape? You either have to accept that there will be a lot of abortions from women falsely claiming rape (which pro-Lifers probably wouldn’t), or you have to have some process to verify rape claims. Whatever process you come up with will traumatize rape victims even more (without even leading to justice against the perpetrator) as well as create delays leading to later-term abortions. A similar problem exists wrt health. As you said, every pregnancy is a health risk.
But my concern with government interference extends to what the pro-Choicers are doing as well. For example, progressives think it’s just fine that if a doctor performs an abortion in one case, she should be forced to perform it in another. They don’t think the doctor’s personal sense of morality should figure into it. I’m not okay with that kind of thinking. Likewise, the idea that some high school counselor can legally decide that I’m a religious zealot and therefore can take my daughter for an abortion without me even knowing, is horrifying.
GEOFF-AUS, I’m not convinced that making abortion legal makes it rarer. I think it’s correlation, not causation. Legal abortion just generally goes hand-in-hand with greater sex education and easily obtained birth control. A pro-Life person could easily argue that the best way to reduce abortion is wide-spread education, free contraception, and absolutely illegal abortion. Also, it’s interesting that the countries who claim the lowest abortion rates also have the lowest birth rates, even to the point of not reproducing themselves. I’m not worried about the economic consequences of this because countries can easily repopulate with refugees, but it does show that these same places don’t seem to value children and family.
Di, I really didn’t mean for this post to be a balanced post on abortion. There were just so many stories within the story that I found this book fascinating. I didn’t even bring up Abby’s second abortion using RU-486 or the dramatic experience that caused her to rethink her whole philosophy.
I too would love to see some in-between ground. I was just the opposite. I went from pro-lifer to staunch pro-choicer. The main reason being that I couldn’t understand how abortion was equivalent to murder. And if it was to considered murder, then why allow it in cases of rape and incest? And to deny rape and incest abortions just seemed barbaric. The second reason that convinced me to be pro-choice is that I couldn’t understand the argument from pro-lifers about who should be prosecuted. Why punish the doctors when the woman was the one requesting the abortion and technically the one who bore the most responsibility for the abortion happening. And to prosecute every last woman who had an abortion for so doing also seemed barbaric.
A really balanced piece, Martin. I lean pro-choice, but only because I don’t think anyone but the person who is pregnant can make that decision. If women don’t have body autonomy, we are nothing more than queen ants tied down by the collective and forced into procreative servitude. That’s a hellscape for women who have an unwanted pregnancy, and I’ve always said that the only thing worse than unwanted pregnancy is an unwanted child. But nor do I personally approve of elective abortion. I prefer that women exercise choice prior to conception (through education and free access to birth control). I am extremely skeptical of hypocrites who claim they want to reduce abortion but also want to eliminate sex ed and contraception. Those folks just (IM biased O) hate women.
John W: “Why punish the doctors when the woman was the one requesting the abortion and technically the one who bore the most responsibility for the abortion happening.” I think a better case can be made that men acting irresponsibly bear the greatest responsibility for abortions. Men are the great beneficiaries of the type of sex that produces babies. Female pleasure is not even required for sexual intercourse to happen. It’s all about irresponsible ejaculations. Too often, women with no resources are cajoled or pressured (and obviously at times raped) into procreative sex. If men behaved more responsibly, they wouldn’t insist on penetrative sex which is their personal favorite, but does less for their partner than other forms of sex. And yet men are disproportionately the ones opposed to abortion. Makes ya wonder. Some men are willing to torpedo a woman’s entire future for a few minutes of unimpeded (by condom, for example) male pleasure.
Only 1.3% of abortions in the US are performed AFTER the fetus is viable (can live outside the womb), and those are not “elective” abortions. They are due to serious health concerns either for the mother or the baby. So while there’s a lot of conservative hand-wringing over a late-term elective abortion, the reality is that those aren’t happening. Yes, there are elective “oops, I didn’t mean to get pregnant” abortions, but they are nearly all in first trimester, usually before the woman is even showing and the fetus is too small to even be detected when it passes.
John W-
Well stated.
If abortion were really the concern we would/could put more resources toward preventing unplanned pregnancies through education (male and female) and facilitate easy access to effective, affordable/free healthcare for women. Additionally, we might put more resources to help mothers and their families care for children such as subsidized, high quality daycare, and other basic needs, instead of threatening to take away those basic needs (such as food stamps). I saw a statistic the other day that nowhere in the U.S. can a minimum wage job pay for a 2 bedroom apt.
I wonder if there is a discussion in the book of the “crisis pregnancy” centers which, from the outside appear as a medical clinic (staff wearing scrubs etc) but in fact, do not have trained healthcare personnel on the premises and whose sole purpose is to dissuade women from getting an abortion.
What happened to false advertising laws? I have no problem with places that help women get resources and support to continue pregnancies as long as they are required to disclose what they do and do not offer.
I also think we as a society don’t fully appreciate the deeply emotional, as well as financial and physical effects of carrying a pregnancy to term and then giving that baby up for adoption.
Several years ago I read a book, “This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor” by Susan Wicklund. Though I can’t remember details, but I found it was very informative and enlightening
Pew research found that of religious groups, Mormons (70%) and Jehovah Witnesses (75%), have the highest levels of adherents that believe
abortion should be illegal in all/most cases.
This is a really well thought out piece. Thank you.
I do think the rhetoric on both sides keep the dialogue from moving forward. Just recently, the Daily Beast, in an article about China’s one child policy, equated the violent abduction and forced abortions (sometimes in the 8th or 9th month) with the pro-life movement in the US. The article starts with the following, “One Child Nation is a stark reminder that America isn’t the only country where a woman’s right to control her body has been under siege. ” (https://www.thedailybeast.com/one-child-nation-inside-chinas-horrifying-child-killing-policy) What this comparison fails to see is your point that many in the pro-life movement see abortion as the murder of a real human being with inalienable rights. When the focus is solely on the rights of the woman, the real conflict is being avoided.
About 15 years ago, Planned Parenthood in San Francisco hired a chaplain to help the women who come for services process their emotions and feel supported. While the position was terminated after a couple of years, I applaud their leadership for acknowledging that abortion has real emotional consequences. It is a shame the chaplain position no longer exists.
The point I was trying to make is that the countries the have very low abortion rates, have their general populace agreed that the best way for women is to provide sex education to the young, then free healthcare including birth control, and then abortion as a last resort. This inadvertantly leads to less abortions.
I think if the anti abortion people were genuinely wanting to reduce abortion they would be taking this route, but they also do not trust people (especially women)enough to be comfortable with sex education, and free birth control. America seems to have more of these people than other first world countries, even Canada.
In Ausralia we have just had this debate, because some of the states still had abortion on the criminal code, and when removing it governments have to set some regulations around it. Mormons and some other religious groups have been crying about 9 month abortion, but the votes in parliament have been about 70% for abortion.
Angela C, I too saw the Facebook diatribe by “a Mormon woman with 6 kids” about how unwanted pregnancies were caused by men ejaculating irresponsibly, and I agree with much of what she says. I cannot believe how irresponsible supposedly enlightened US men are. But extending that same blame to men for the abortion rate is very wrong-headed, imo. In our society, there is exactly one person who chooses whether to have an abortion, and that is the pregnant woman. It is her choice, and therefore her responsibility — full stop (as the feminists like to say). I’m not saying an abortion is necessarily the wrong choice, but the man has no choice. He’s only responsible for the pregnancy. If she wants to kill his kid because she doesn’t want to carry it to term, there’s nothing he can do about it. Likewise, if he wants to kill it and she chooses to carry it, he’s financially liable to help support it, like it or not. But the reason I think women need to understand that they’re responsible for the abortion has nothing to do with the man at all. It’s because, when it comes right down to it, the woman will eventually realize that it was her choice, her responsibility, and she has to be able to live with that. If she knows in her heart she couldn’t live with the choice to abort if she felt it was her fault, then she better not proceed because some well-meaning progressive told her it was the dude’s fault. She’ll be setting an emotional and spiritual time bomb that will go off on her later, and it could be devastating.
Gilgamesh, that Daily Beast rhetoric is really over-the-top. So often I hear the abortion debate framed as powerful white men wanting to control women’s bodies, and I just shake my head in frustration. It’s true that in Abby’s book, all the Planned Parenthood employees (other than the abortion doctors) were women, but the Coalition for Life seemed to have equal male/female representation. Some of the most outspoken pro-Lifers were women, and it’s pretty patronizing to simply dismiss them as patsies of the white male misogynistic conspiracy. They were intelligent and well-spoken, and they cared about other women. As far as I can tell, the white male power-brokers who like to control women’s bodies do it for sex and are the one’s insisting on and paying for the abortions. To frame the abortion argument as some sort of battle of the sexes simply enrages both sides, because pro-Choice women want to protect their rights and pro-Life women feel misrepresented and without a voice (which, I’m convinced, contributes to their willingness to vote for Trump).
One other argument I here is that we need to preserve abortion rights for the “poor disadvantaged woman who might otherwise seek a dangerous back-alley abortion”. While this is certainly a valid scenario, a much more typical abortion seeker in the US is a white, middle-class college girl (like Abby) who’d you’d expect would know better. Is this because there’s not enough sex-ed in high school, or could it be because these college girls know they can act irresponsibly because they can always get an abortion if necessary?
The Pro-Life movement spends a significant amount of time talking about their fight against late term abortions.
Late Term Abortions are the horrible unicorn events in the abortion industry. People become very emotional on the topic but they forget just how rarely such events occur.
The reasons for doing them is often misconstrued.
Imagine a young couple showing up at 23-25 weeks gestation after finding out that their child has horrific anomalies that are incompatible with life. Such couples have to make choices. Do they carry that baby to term knowing that the child will quickly die? Attempts to medically rescue that child will include horrific bills that will financially decimate them. The outcome will not change. Add funeral expenses and a burial or cremation.
Imagine the next 15 weeks of that gestation while people ask about their baby-bump. Is it a boy or girl? Do they have a name picked out? All the typical discussions of pregnancy become horrific to parents who are carrying a child who will die soon after birth.
So many parents in such situations find a late term abortion as the most rational answer in a horrible situation. They grieve the loss of their child but also look for the most rational option.
Having seen too many of those couples, I am against late term abortions being banned.
Martin:
“One other argument I here is that we need to preserve abortion rights for the “poor disadvantaged woman who might otherwise seek a dangerous back-alley abortion”.
“In 2014, the majority of abortion patients (60%) were in their 20s, and the second-largest age-group was in their 30s (25%).
Fifty-nine percent of abortion patients in 2014 had had at least one previous birth.
In 2014, three-fourths of abortion patients were low income—49% living at less than the federal poverty level, and 26% living at 100–199% of the poverty level. Abortion patients were less likely to have no health insurance coverage in 2014 than in 2008 (28% vs. 34%), likely because of the Affordable Care Act. Thirty-five percent of patients had Medicaid coverage, 31% had private insurance and 3% each had either insurance through HealthCare.gov or a different type of insurance. The majority of patients (53%) paid for their abortion out of pocket…”
(source: Guttmacher Institute)
“When it comes right down to it, the woman will eventually realize that it was her choice, her responsibility, and she has to be able to live with that.” Yes, I have often thought this too simply because I have never been in a position to have to decide if I would have an abortion, and I *believe* I would never do such a thing. However, most women who have had them that I’ve heard interviewed state that although they thought they would be haunted by remorse, the real, abiding feeling is usually relief that they did not have to endure an unwanted pregnancy or bear a child they were not at the time prepared to support. So while the ‘what if’ game has also been something I’ve considered, it doesn’t match up with most of the cases I’ve heard from real women.
Having said that, on my mission, a woman approached us distraught that she had an abortion, and she was afraid she was going to hell. She wanted us to absolve her, and our president did not want to meet with her. Perhaps she wasn’t that serious about missionary discussions anyway. Her real issue is that her husband was abusive and controlling, and she needed to leave him to survive, and having his baby would make that impossible. Plus, as a Catholic, she was told regularly that if she had an abortion she was going to go to hell. So, while it’s true that there are women who suffer emotional distress over an abortion, they seem likely to have other sources of distress and pressure in this situation.
Angela C, I agree that there are plenty of women who’ve had abortions who seem to have absolutely no problem with it. Furthermore, I’ve been told that if women do have guilt, it’s caused by religious people like me shaming them or worrying them about hell. I really don’t know what to say about that. For whatever reason, some people simply don’t seem to have a spiritual bone in their bodies, either, and I just don’t understand it. But you have to remember that most of the women who are going to publicly admit having an abortion are going to be those who don’t feel any guilt. Those who do feel a lot of guilt generally aren’t going to be the ones sharing. Some women are deeply affected by it, and they’re not even necessarily religious. Also, there seemed to be a number of slave holders in the US prior to the civil war who genuinely felt enslaving blacks was the natural way of things and had no problem with it. I don’t know how that was possible either, since slavery is probably the most evil thing I can think of, and I think we pretty much all agree on that now. But they sure didn’t then.
I better clarify that I’m not equating abortion to slavery. It’s just that I’ve been listening to a book about Frederick Douglas, and it’s baffling to me how something clearly immoral in one person’s eyes can seem so acceptable and normal in another’s. It happens.