Ten years later, my husband was in the same exam room as a panicky doctor. My 13-week-old daughter was pregnant when an ultrasound showed extreme fetal anomalies. The doctor informed us of the news and rushed us to a specialist in genetics to obtain a second sonogram. “What is the rush?,” I asked through tears. She advised me to find out as soon a possible if the baby was suffering from a disorder, in order to have the baby removed. We assured her that no matter what the results, we would not end our pregnancy. In pedantic tones she repeatedly told us, “You may change your mind.” We felt pressure from the medical community to abort, which is common.
As a female priest, many women have met me to discuss regrettable abortions. These women often remember what their child’s due date would have been and keep track of how old their son or daughter would be, year by year. It is striking to me that these women don’t talk about their own desires after having an abortion. They speak about their husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers who didn’t offer support or outrightly pressured to have an abortion. They talk about how they couldn’t afford to have a baby. They talk about how they were afraid that they couldn’t finish school, how they felt panicked, ashamed and alone.
I know this is not every woman’s experience of abortion. Many of the women who reach out to me are in mourning for their past choices. Yet, these women aren’t able to tell me stories about feeling empowered and able to make the best decision. They feel trapped.
There are many stories about women who claim that having an abortion was what enabled them to have a successful career. These stories acknowledge that abortion on request has created a culture in which women have to make one choice when faced with unplanned pregnancies. Abortion is cast as the price of entry for women’s equality. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Many European countries have much more restrictive abortion laws and lower abortion rate than the United States. However, they do not restrict women’s advancement. As Ross Douthat wrote in his Times column, “Is it really necessary to found equality for one group of human beings on legal violence toward another, entirely voiceless group?”
Instead of building equality for women on their actual flourishing, we as culture place gender equality on a technological intervention which denies what female bodies are and what they do.
“Rather than challenge workplace norms head-on,” wrote Erika Bachiochi in National Review, “the decades-long quest for unfettered abortion feeds into the model of the ideal male worker who is beholden to no one but his boss. If abortion is what enables women to participate in the workplace, then perhaps costly accommodations, flexible work schedules, and part-time-pay equity are not so necessary.”
Women feeling that they must extinguish life in their womb in order to be admitted into the world of success, career advancement and equality with men is a reality shaped more by sexual double standards and male-centric acquisitive capitalism than by valuing women’s choices, bodies and desires. This allows a still-patriarchal society to not invest in systems that make childbearing an easier choice: a more just work culture like Bachiochi suggests, but also paid parental leave, widespread availability of lactation rooms, better access to maternity care, affordable health care for children and government-subsidized child care.
Source: NY Times