As I sail down Los Angeles's Crenshaw Avenue, I admire the trees that line the road, beautiful trees the likes of which I have never seen. They are perfectly shaped, with silvery-white trunks and graceful limbs full of leaves, bursting with fertility. The trees offer a contrast of radiant, exuberant femininity to the setting of my destination, where a gathering of women will sift through memories of abortions past. It is but one group among many that I am privileged to meet, part of a project commissioned by the National Women's Coalition for Life to understand better the problems that cause women to choose abortion.
From research that has gone before us, I have certain expectations. I assume that these women will cite reasons such as "I couldn't care for a child and keep my job" or "I don't have the material resources to raise a baby."
I will be surprised by what I hear.
LISTENING IN LOS ANGELES
The pregnancy-care center fills several rooms on the first floor of a small building. It resembles most of the other two thousand centers scattered across the country: warm wallpaper, sofas, and cheery posters grace a reception room, which leads to a large meeting area, then an intimate counseling room or two. Racks are stuffed with pamphlets and books for loan, and storage rooms are filled with maternity and baby supplies. These centers usually operate on a shoestring—sometimes the director draws a small salary, sometimes not—and offer everything to clients free.
Five women are gathered in the counseling room. In some ways, they are atypical of the postabortion population: all are now firmly and actively pro-life. Two of them even do abortion grief counseling. These are not women whose wounds are raw, nor whose attitudes toward abortion are ambivalent.
When I ask them to recall the situations surrounding their abortions, Jill offers that her home life was relatively positive and thinks that many aborting women come from normal families and from Christian backgrounds.
But Becky demurs. A victim of sexual abuse, she believes that her experience may be the personal history of many aborting women. Sexual abuse, she explains, leads one to conclude that "sex is how you know that somebody cares about you, which makes you more sexually aggressive." Women with this mindset, Becky suggests, have more sexual encounters and higher risk of pregnancy, usually begun in relationships where the commitment necessary to raise a child is lacking.
When Becky became pregnant, she had at first resolved to have her baby. But the abuse that she endured also made her more willing to do whatever others told her to do. In this case, "they" told her to have an abortion.
Becky's mother took her to a counselor, ordering Becky to wait in the reception room while she conferred with the counselor. They then called Becky in and informed her of their decision: Becky would have an abortion. Her mom added, "If you continue this pregnancy, you can't live in my house."
Becky was stunned, but at a loss for alternatives. She had a vague idea that there might be places for rejected pregnant women to go—"there were some Catholic maternity homes, somewhere"—but she had neither the resources nor the self-confidence to track down these homes. She had the abortion. Eight years later, she is still grieving: "I was already attached to that baby."
Martha reflects on Becky's experience, noting that "when you're considering abortion, you want to get it over with as quickly as possible. You just don't want to think about it." But unlike Martha, Paula says quietly that she agonized over her decision. She was 17, from a "good family," and engaged to marry the baby's 21-year-old father. When she told her mother about the pregnancy she was informed, like Becky, that "you have a choice": the baby or the family.
She recalls crying convulsively on the abortion table. The doctor pleaded, "If you don't stop crying we can't do this, because maybe someone's forcing you," so she choked back her sobs. But after the abortion, she took drugs, found it hard to accept love ("How could anybody love me?"), and even attempted suicide three times. Tears form in her eyes.
This is not the "choice" that pro-choice partisans imagine. "Freedom of choice" brings to mind the image of a stylish, confident woman considering an array of possibilities, all competing for her approval. "Lose your child or lose your home" is a very different sort of choice, and hardly an empowering one.
Deb's story also illustrates a lack of options. She had submitted to her boyfriend's demands for sex ("Say yes or I'm gone"), concluding that "without him, I'm nothing." One demand led to another, and she gave in again when he "forced me to have an abortion." It seemed the best course—she was a teenager, had no high-school diploma, and her boyfriend was facing cocaine charges.
They eventually married, then went through a radical transformation after a faith conversion. "Self-esteem can't come from anywhere but Jesus," Deb says. "He will love you in spite of your failings. If your self-worth is based on your looks, your parents' love, the sense that you're great, it will fail. All that will pass."
The session is drawing to a close, but I have one more question. "What was the main reason you had an abortion?"
Martha says, "I had mine for convenience. The reasons were selfish." This surprises me; I've often criticized the charge that women have abortions for convenience. But Jill, Paula, and Deb agree with Martha. No matter what pressures they faced, they refuse to lay the responsibility for the abortion on anyone but themselves. The judgment seems harsh to me in light of their difficult situations, but they appear to find freedom, even fortitude, in shouldering the burden squarely.
Becky adds that knowing the facts of fetal development, of how the baby grows in the womb, would have stopped her. If she had known that it was really her baby inside her body, she would have done anything to give it life. The other women agree vociferously.
I am impressed with the light in their eyes, the healing won after such piercing pain, and the wholeness all these women now seem to show. But, at the same time, I am skeptical of the belief that the facts of fetal development alone will be convincing in most cases. I wonder whether, given the original desperate situations, it would have even been sufficient for these women who face me now.
I also wonder whether their viewpoint is prevalent among women at the beginning of the journey, those just now considering abortion. It is these women who face that desperate choice today that we are seeking to understand.
LISTENING IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
Five women have come tonight to share their stories. There is a different tone here than in previous gatherings; the women are more relaxed and confident, and they laugh comfortably with one another—four of them, that is. Sandi comes in looking pale and subdued, wearing a navy sweatshirt and no makeup. Her smiles come a few seconds late, socially correct but fleeting. Sometimes she lowers her head into her hands. She will be the last to tell her story.
Elizabeth, a brunette with alert, dark eyes, takes the lead. Her abortion took place in 1968 when she was 16; she was in a casual relationship with a boy and became pregnant the second time they had sex.
"I hardly even knew how babies were made," she says, "and the guy was even more immature than me. I didn't know there was such a thing as abortion; it was my mother who set it up. I fought her on it, but she was adamant. She had seen girls have their lives destroyed by gossip. My mom said, 'That's not going to happen to you.' How can you fight that?"
I ask if some part of her fantasized about having the baby and starting her own family. Elizabeth responds, "Yes, I had a husband all picked out—a former boyfriend. Of course, he took off running, and I don't think he's been seen since." Chuckles spread throughout the room.
She adds, "To continue the pregnancy, I would have needed a support system. The Nurturing Network has a wonderful program now, and if there had been something like that back then, I would not have had the abortion."
Elizabeth's story strikes a nerve in Kelly, who says, "I was 22 when I got pregnant, and I was 19 weeks pregnant before I realized it. When I did, I was mostly worried that if I told my dad, he would die of a heart attack—not that it would break his heart, but that he would literally die.
"My boyfriend and I had been dating for four years, but when I told him the news, he was terrified. He didn't want to admit that it was his child." A chorus of sympathetic "oh's" sounds through the room, attesting to a shared understanding of this especially painful rejection. "I went to a pregnancy-care center for my pregnancy test. While I was waiting for the results, they showed me photos of aborted fetuses. I guess this was supposed to make me reconsider what I was doing, but it had the opposite effect—it made me angry; just shut me off like that." She snaps her fingers. "In a way, those pictures became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"For a while, I thought, 'If I'm five months along, maybe I should stick it out.' I was trying to find an internship or something so I could finish the pregnancy, but it didn't click. Then, all of a sudden, I switched gears and thought, 'If we don't do it now, we can't do it at all.' "
Kelly's concern was valid; time is an essential factor in the abortion process. In the first three months, the fetal child can be pulled to pieces and vacuumed out of the womb with a narrow-gauge plastic tube. This suction procedure became available in the 1970s, replacing the dilation and curettage (d&c) method, which cleaned out the uterus by scraping it with a metal blade.
After the first trimester, the fetus can be killed by injecting a highly concentrated salt solution into the womb, after which natural labor sets in to expel the dead child. This lengthy procedure—sometimes lasting 24 hours—is hard on the woman, who feels the child thrashing in its chemical-burn bath for an hour or so until it dies, and who may be alone when the napalm-red body of her son or daughter is born. No woman who sees this ever forgets.
The larger the baby, the more difficult the abortion task is, and the more dangerous the procedure is for the mother. A method for later pregnancies that is also hard on the doctor is a procedure called dilation and evacuation (d&e). The woman visits the doctor a couple of days before the procedure to have natural-fiber rods inserted in the mouth of the womb to slowly open it. When she returns for the procedure she is usually placed under general anesthesia. The doctor then reaches into the womb with forceps and by brute force pries off pieces of the child—a leg, an arm—reassembling it on a table nearby. When the bloody jigsaw puzzle is complete, the procedure is over.
Most clinic staff find this process emotionally grueling; at one clinic specializing in d&e abortions, 8 of 15 staff members reported emotional problems, finding it "destructive and violent." The risk to the woman is greater, too, as jagged pieces of the fetus can damage the interior of the uterus during the process.
More recently a procedure has been developed to avoid uterine damage. In dilation and extraction (d&x) the living fetus is delivered feet first, up to the head; a tube is then inserted into the base of the skull and the brains are suctioned out, killing the child. The doctor who presented this technique at an abortionists' convention said that he had done over 700 of these abortions and was pleased with the results; a colleague was using the technique up through the ninth month of pregnancy. It is not yet known whether d&x will replace d&e as the late-pregnancy method of choice.
I ask Kelly what method she had used. "It was the dilation and evacuation. I didn't have general anesthesia—they did it under local."
"And I thought I went through hell," comments Elizabeth.
"Yes, it was pretty traumatic," Kelly sighs. "They tell you, 'Once we start, we can't stop,' and you're thinking—and it's obviously very sick, you're nauseous [sic]. … " Her words momentarily trail off.
"The first two years after my abortion, I was probably the strongest pro-choice supporter you could find," she concludes. "I had to prove that what I did was right. I often wonder about some of the louder pro-choice voices out there, because I remember feeling like that."
"I used to be a big contributor to Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League," Elizabeth agrees.
"I went the opposite way," says Bette. "I was 19, and I had a lot of guilt about having premarital sex. But I did love the guy, and we stayed together three years after the abortion. Sick as it sounds, I stayed with him partly because we had a special bond—he was the father of my dead child.
"I remember sitting with him and my friend Carrie after I found out I was pregnant. Carrie told me that she'd had an abortion and it wasn't so bad. I kept thinking, 'I can't believe this is happening; this isn't what I want.' I had to leave the room to answer the door, but I heard my boyfriend saying, 'Carrie, you've got to talk her into this.' I was furious.
"I also worried about how I could tell my parents. Although I know they would have ended up supporting me, I couldn't bring myself to do it. If I had only had someone to go with me to tell them, it would have helped a lot. If just one of my friends had said, 'I'll be there for you,' I could have made it. But I felt like they were saying, 'I'll be there for you—if you have the abortion.' No one was there if I didn't do what they wanted."
I turn toward the still-silent Sandi, who has ridden out all our lively talk with a wan smile. "Sandi, do you feel like talking?" I ask. "You don't have to if you don't want to."
"Yeah, I just, yeah," she says, collecting herself. "It's interesting to listen to other people. I've thought about my abortion a lot." She begins her story, the earlier suggestion of depression fading. Instead, it is replaced by a calm, deliberate quality, a quietness rooted in self-possession.
"I had a close relationship with God in high school, but as the years passed I wanted to make decisions in my life without him. Pretty soon I was involved with alcohol and guys. When I found out I was pregnant, I told the father that I planned to go the adoption route. But he said, 'How could you even consider it?' He offered to pay half the cost of the abortion.
"I wanted to do anything I could to hang on to this relationship. And I wanted to keep my scholarships and not interrupt my education. But then this guy said, 'If you tell your mom, it could be the last straw,' knowing that my dad had died a year before in heart surgery."
"Golly!" "What a prince!" the other women comment.
"And also, I considered this life to be not all that great. I thought that if this kid skipped over this life and went straight to heaven, I would be doing it a favor.
"In the last year or so, God has been showing me that every single part of my decision has affected my life since then. Like with my career. The fact that I didn't want to interrupt my education led to a compulsive need to advance in my work, and I became a nervous wreck. I wasn't able to relax until I realized that God was taking care of me.
"What has taken years for me to understand is that there is tremendous value in this life, and I had to admit that I took this great gift away from my child. But I also realized that, even though I did this terrible thing, God loves me; he loved me even before I said, 'I'm sorry.' "
The other women are murmuring "hmmm," and a few eyes are glistening. Sandi goes on quietly, "The last thing is, I felt God say to me, 'You know, you're a mother.' That was a real healing, to be allowed to mourn for this child. Women after abortion don't have anywhere to go; everything's supposed to be okay because it's what you needed to do, and there was nothing in there anyway. But God says: 'You're a mother.' "
I reflect on the paradox: in acknowledging the death of her baby, Sandi gave life back to herself. It makes me wonder how many dying mothers there are in the world today.
LISTENING IN BOSTON
As four women and I sit clustered around the end of a massive table, I ask each one to sign a release form, giving me permission to use her story. It specifies that I will not use her real name.
Rita Ann surprises me by doing something that no one else has done. She takes out her pen and carefully draws a line through the last sentence of the release.
"I want you to use my real name," she says. "I'm ready to tell my story." She looks at me with calm confidence, a woman well into middle age, her straight, auburn hair cut short, no earrings, pale blue eyes. I know she has never told her story before.
Marion, across the table, looks up at this exchange. "I sure don't have anything to hide," she laughs. "Go ahead and use my name, too." A tiny, effervescent brunette whose every fiber seems to proclaim "Kiss Me, I'm Italian," she takes the lead, describing a chaotic childhood. Her father beat his wife and kids until, at the age of 13, Marion broke up a fight and commanded her dad to leave, which he did. After the divorce, Marion's mom embarked on a new life: promiscuity, bars, and drugs. Marion says, "I thought she was awful cool—and at the same time, I thought, 'This is really stupid. I hate this.'
"When I was 15, I decided to get pregnant," she says. "It was the only noble way to leave my younger brothers and sisters and get out of the house. I went to Planned Parenthood because they gave a free test; I didn't know about any crisis centers. I spilled out my story—'My dad's a jerk, he beats us up'—and not in pretty language. The counselor ripped off a sheet of paper and wrote on it the address of an abortion clinic.
"But as I was going home on the bus, I was thinking, 'I don't want to do this.' I knew that abortion would mean killing my baby. So, I decided to go to a church for help. I picked this church because it was pretty; it had stone and vines and window boxes, and I thought, 'If God lives, he'd live here.' I went in and blurted out my story to the minister.
"Well, he hit the roof. Got up and started, like Jimmy Durante, a 'what's-this-generation-coming-to' speech. Then he sat down, opened the bottom drawer of his desk, and handed me $150 in greenbacks.
"I was 15, I didn't ask any questions. I took the money, put it in my pocket, and he shoved me out the door. I was standing outside the church thinking, 'What does he want me to do with this?' Then I realized." Marion's voice grows quiet. "God wanted me to have an abortion.
"I couldn't believe that this was what God really wanted. But every adult I talked to told me it was best. I was sad, and I couldn't go home right away, so I walked by the river and sat on a bridge. I swung my feet and talked to my baby. I said, 'I've wanted to have you since I was five years old. I wish I could have you—but I can't.' " There's a catch in Marion's throat. " 'And I wonder if you're a girl, or a boy, and I'm really sorry—that I have to kill you—but God wants me to.' "
Marion's story goes on, through another abortion, a miscarriage (brought on by her father's beatings), drugs and drinking, a third pregnancy and marriage, all before her life was changed by Campus Crusade missionaries who brought her the gospel.
Rita Ann, however, had a "storybook romance abortion." She recalls, "I was the youngest of four, with three older brothers in an Italian family. Talk about princess, I was a queen. I could do no wrong.
"It was 1965, and I had been going with Tom for a couple of years. When we made plans to marry, I got pregnant. I told my dad, and he took it well enough; he said, 'We'll just have a smaller wedding, and you won't get as many gifts.'
"Then I told Tommy. His reaction knocked me for a loop. 'We can't get married with you pregnant. I can't do that to my family,' he said. I was bewildered. I told him, 'I already told my family; we'll just get married in February instead of May.' But he was adamant. He wanted me to have an abortion. After our Christmas engagement, on January 22—yes, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade—he took me to a hotel over by the Boston Harbor, a real pit stop. And then he handed me over to two men in a coffee shop."
Here Rita Ann slows her story, reduces it to broken bits. "Two men took me into a room. I was five months pregnant. They injected me with saline—I hemorrhaged. I left there looking like Gandhi in a sheet, with it wrapped around my legs. I ended up at the hospital in a coma with peritonitis, septicemia," she draws it out slowly, "a 106.7 temp, and sterile.
"I did marry Tom. Being raised as I was, Italian, I thought if I couldn't have children, what purpose did I serve on God's green earth? And who else would have me? So I stayed with the only man who knew it all."
Eventually, Tom and Rita Ann divorced. Rita Ann spent ten years in another relationship before it, too, ended. "That August, 1987, I was just falling apart," Rita Ann remembers. "I walked into Saint Joan's Church and met a priest; he had just said mass and he was still all draped. I said, 'I want to go to confession.' Less than five minutes later I was saying"—her words rush out—" 'It's been 22 years since my last confession and I had an abortion!' I walked out of that church like I was in a first Communion dress, and it has been with me ever since."
Just like that: the truth set Rita Ann free, as it did many of these women once they were willing to face it. Acknowledging truth is searingly painful, especially the truth that one's own baby has died. But once faced, whether in the company of a priest or alone, the truth opens prison doors.
REAL CHOICES
What new truths did I discover through the stories of these women?
My earlier expectations that women had abortions for x, y, and z reasons may not have been completely wrong, but neither were they completely right. I discovered that there was seldom a single, compelling, practical reason for the abortion. Instead, there was nearly always a complex nest of problems, affecting both a woman's material situation and her emotional well-being.
And yet, as I listened to these women, and others in cities all across America, a surprising theme emerged. In nearly every case, the abortion was undertaken to fulfill a felt obligation to another person: a parent (and then, most often, her mother) or the father of her unborn child. The predictable barriers of housing, jobs, and money faded rapidly in significance when these women were faced with a loved one's disapproving frown. They needed personal support and encouragement more than any material aid.
Both pro-choice and pro-life leaders have long said, "No woman wants to have an abortion." But if women are doing something they don't want 4,400 times a day, they are further from freedom than ever. If a woman is to make a life-affirming choice, one that both she and her baby can live with, she needs more than the one miserable alternative of abortion. It is time to give women real choices.
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Frederica Mathewes-Green directed the Real Choices research project and is currently director of communications for the National Women's Coalition for Life. This article was adapted from her book Real Choices: Offering Practical, Life-Affirming Alternatives to Abortion (Questar, (c)1994).
Copyright (c) 1995 CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine
