>The following reply is to Yoshie (Y) from Joanna (J):
>
>Y: The dominant ideology demands that women who have an abortion
>feel guilt and shame and maintain silence about our personal
>experiences of abortion, making an abortion a kind of taboo topic
>like homosexuality used to be and still is in some quarters.
>
>J: I don't think women feel bad after an abortion because of the
>"dominant ideology"; I think they feel bad because there's not much
>to celebrate. An incipient life is ended -- for whatever reason, by
>means of a procedure which is painful and invasive at best, and
>life-threatening at worse.
Abortion during the first trimester is not painful and hardly invasive. I speak from personal experience. If you experience physical pain during an early-term abortion, your doctor is a quack. A legal abortion provided by licensed practitioners isn't life-threatening either. Not having an abortion when the woman's medical conditions demand it, or having an unsafe abortion because it is illegal, or giving a birth under unsanitary conditions and/or conditions that diminish maternal health, however, is life-threatening:
***** Anti-Abortion Policies Take Heavy Toll in Africa Run Date: 11/02/03 By Nicole Itano WeNews correspondent
. . . According to a report released earlier this month by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund and UNICEF, women in Africa have the highest maternal mortality rate in the world, with women having a staggering 1-in-16 lifetime chance of dying while pregnant.
In all, they estimate that 529,000 women die each year while pregnant, 99 percent in the developing world, particularly Africa and Asia. India has more maternal deaths than any other country, an estimated 136,000 each year, followed by Nigeria and Pakistan. Kenya has the dubious distinction of joining a three-way tie for ninth place with China and civil-war-torn Angola. Although African and Asian women have almost equal numbers of maternal deaths, since the population of Africa is much smaller than that of Asia, statistically African women have a much higher chance of dying while pregnant.
In Kenya, unsafe abortion is one of biggest causes of maternal deaths, accounting for an estimated 30 percent of maternal deaths and at least half of hospitalizations in public gynecology wards. It is, say family planning organizations, an epidemic that is being largely ignored, in Kenya and elsewhere on the continent.
The precise causes of maternal mortality vary from country to country, but across Africa, women's access to contraception, prenatal care, skilled birth physicians and abortion are hampered by poverty and overstretched health systems, say family planning groups. With little control over their own reproductive health, many African women are destined to have repeated pregnancies at great risk to their lives and health.
HIV/AIDS has also proven to be a double curse, raising maternal mortality and pulling attention away from family planning and reproductive health issues. . . .
<http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1586/context/archive> *****
Women who feel bad about abortions do so because they are forced by economic and/or other circumstances to choose abortions _when they actually want to have children_. Women who choose abortions _because they do not want children, in the absence of circumstances that make child-reading impossible or very difficult_, have no reason to feel bad, except by the brow-beating of the dominant ideology.
>Y: Silence enforced by guilt and shame isolates women who have an
>abortion from one another.
>
>J. Sorry Yoshie, but one thing women do talk about to one another is
>their reproductive history.
Between friends, yes, but seldom in public.
>Abortion is not just another form of birth control.
It has been and will be, especially as a backup when other methods of birth control fail.
>If we're going to march about something, let's march about
>child-care, health-care, living-wage laws, sex education,
>mass-education about rape, etc. Let's say, a woman has the right to
>terminate a pregnancy, but there's a lot we can do so that she never
>has to make that choice.
Surely, we should march for child care, health care, living wages, sex education, rape prevention education, etc., but as long as human beings remain human beings (who forget to take the pill, etc.) and technology remains necessarily imperfect, some women will continue to make a choice to terminate pregnancy, even under the best possible circumstances for maternal health and parenting. Some women will continue to get pregnant when they don't want to have children. -- Yoshie
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