Photo:
Second Look ProjectIf you use BART in the East Bay, you've seen the billboards down on the train platforms.
Nine Months, they trumpet sorrowfully.
The amount of time the Supreme Court says it's legal to have an abortion. ABORTION: HAVE WE GONE TOO FAR?Advertisement paid for by Friends of Respect Life Ministry, Diocese of Oakland.
The photo on the billboard is half a headshot of a young white woman, smooth glowing skin, neat brown-blonde hair, sober reflective gaze from her one eye. Here, we know, is A Woman With A Sense Of Responsibility. A Woman Who Values Human Life. The kind of Woman Whose Babies This Great Nation Needs.
I agree with the ad. It shouldn't be as easy for a woman to get an abortion as it is for her to buy a Happy Meal at Macdonalds. Oh wait - it isn't.
Fact: Poor women--teens or adults--are the only group in America, whose abortion rate is rising. Black women have an abortion rate nearly four times that of white women. Latinas and Asian/Pacific Islander women have an abortion rate about two and a half times that of white women.
Fact: The federal ban on abortion entitled the "Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003" outlaws a range of the safest and most common abortions, performed as early as 12 weeks and fails to provide any exception if a woman's health is at stake.
Fact: In the past 10 years, state legislatures around the country have passed or considered bills making it increasingly harder for women and girls to get safe legal abortions early in their pregnancies. Tactics include mandatory waiting periods, mandatory parental consent and state-mandated misinformation fed to women (like
abortion increases your risk of breast cancer). Not to mention slashed state funding for abortion and basic contraception to the poorest, most vulnerable categories of women - the uninsured, women of color, new immigrants, low-wage workers, sex workers, minors.
If a woman in America has a late-term abortion, it's likely to be because she had to wait months to:
a) Find an abortion provider
b) Save, scrounge or borrow the money to pay for her abortion
c) Find the transport and funding to travel out of county or state for the procedure
d) Get the time off work - risking job loss, and permanent poverty
e) Find childcare for her other children
f) Go through state-enforced counselling and mandatory delay periods to make her change her mind
Think about Katrina. If hundreds of thousands of poor black Americans hadn't the resources to leave
to save their lives, how many of them could come up with resources to access an abortion in the first trimester?
8 Comments:
damn, good posting.
i agree. it's like a lot of folks don't realize that getting an abortion is not as easy as they are making it out to be.
I was a young woman in West Virginia and had to get an abortion when I turned 18. There are only 2 clinics in that state which perform them, luckily I lived in that city w/those clinics. But it is so appalling and scary for me to think of what I'd have had to do if I'd been forced to bring that pregnancy to term. I feel for all young women who are struggling with that, and hope that people can just one day leave other people alone. Stop worrying so much about the "unborn" and concentrate on our real, concrete problems that are affecting all of us walking around. Layla (now thankfully a New Yorker)
Thank you for sharing your story, Anonymous. It drives me nuts that wealthy white men in senate and Congress, who will never face what you faced, think they have the right to legislate on your body.
I saw a program called Abortion: Have We Gone Too Far and the priest said something very interesting; When a woman wants a baby she says, "yay I'm having a baby." When she does't want it it's called a fetus. Who knew the most important job that humans have, creating and protecting life, could be a psychological game.
It pains me that it is appalling and traumatic for a woman to have a child and not at all horrible to abort it. WOW.
I agree, abortions shouldn't be the focus, it's the many issues that plague America which lead to abortions. But never-the-less the unborn aren't fake or unreal or whatever selfishness was said. Apparently where a woman is in life determines what she wants to call what's inside of her but one thing can't be disputed, it is a life. On the scientific level, it's life.
The black community knows about condoms, it's not about that kind of education. It's about the lack of self-esteem, the inability to think things through, the proliferation of all forms of abuse and violence and the confusion they bring when it comes to emotions and sexuality and it has to do with the lack of two positive parents and the spoken and unspoken examples they bring. When men and women love themselves and in turn know how to treat one another so many things do not happen, including abortions. Politicians, parents, extended family, health teachers, religious leaders and community leaders need to get at the heart of issues and stop trying to only shame people after conception.
Oh yeah, explain the obvious contradiction:
Fact: Poor women--teens or adults--are the only group in America, whose abortion rate is rising. Black women have an abortion rate nearly four times that of white women. Latinas and Asian/Pacific Islander women have an abortion rate about two and a half times that of white women.
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Think about Katrina. If hundreds of thousands of poor black Americans hadn't the resources to leave to save their lives, how many of them could come up with resources to access an abortion in the first trimester?
Either they're too poor and there are too many obstacles to have an abortion or not. ??
These women need to scrounge and save for the cheaper forms of contraception, so they won't have to whine and complain because they are mysteriously pregnant.
I just wanted to point out that people have to learn to be responsible for oneself. You can't just think that a quick abortion is going to cover it. The fact remains that when people have sex, they make a deliberate choice to work with the reproductive system. Whether you use a contraception or not, you run the risk of getting pregnant. An abortion is a surgical procedure that is very costly, and it is money that should be given to more critical medical problems. We still don't have a cure for cancer nor AIDS, but yet we throw millions of dolars a day into killing the unborn. It's time society started to reflect and think about what is really important.
I for one believe that abortion is very wronge.. No matter the circumstance, it is never right to take ones life. As American citizens we ALL have the right to Life Liberty and the pursuit to happiness. Pregnancy is a choice for the fact that if you are educated about sex then you should know the risks. As for rape, less then 1% of aborters are rape victims. Dont take me as emotionless, I was rapped when i was 14 years old, there was a chance i could have been pregnant, but befor i knew for sure i vowed that abortion was not the answer. I was not pregnant though. And I am now 15 years old. But if i was pregnant i would have chosen adoption. I do understand that for some mothers it can be a health risk to follow through with the pregnancy, but that is a chace you take when having sex... I stand for prolife and i juge nobody, I just know where i stand and feel i have the right to defend my position.
It deeply pains me how abortion is so commonly used as a contraceptive method for many women. My husband and I have adopted two beautiful boys whom we love with our entire hearts; they are now 2 and 4 years old. I thank their biological mothers every day in my prayers for having chosen life for them when they discovered their unwanted pregnancy. I want to share my story to express that I think human life begins in the womb, after all, we were all there at one point in our lives... I can't think of many greater joys than the feeling of loving my sons, I just hope that each day more babies can be born to be loved by families who adopt them, and that fewer ones will end their life in the womb by decision of their own mother...
It's interesting to me that of all the comments posted here, only one poster is willing to name herself or himself. Why?
Another thing to consider, for all of you who blame women for choosing abortion:
What if you don't have the means to support yourself during pregnancy? What if being pregnant means losing your below-minimum-wage job, being thrown out by your parents or partner, ending up on the streets? Or not being able to feed and care for your existing children?
For all of you who insist that a woman should choose to give birth, and put the child up for adoption, if she can't raise it herself, my question is:
What are you doing to create and sustain support networks and resources for young women who are pregnant? To help them with nutrition, shelter, counselling, medical care, DURING their pregnancies, so they CAN actually carry a child to term without facing poverty, violence, homelessness, or putting their existing children in jeopardy? Please post details here of where these young women can find such resources - or post your own contact details if you're willing to offer such support.
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