In my work campaigning for reproductive rights I hear a lot of arguments based on punishment, shame and the censure of women. There is a pervasive belief that we aren’t best placed to make decisions about our reproductive futures –from where to have our babies to whether to terminate a pregnancy. This is all-too-often couched in patronising ideas about protecting us from our inevitable “bad” decisions because of the life-long trauma it will cause us. Google “I regret my abortion” and you’ll find screeds of highly emotive propaganda from those who are keen to control and curtail reproductive freedom.
So, while I’m not surprised by the US study that shows 95% of women don’t regret their abortions, I’m delighted to have something concrete to wave back at those who peddle seductive lies.
This study does much to counteract the mythologising around abortion perpetuated by the anti-abortion lobby. The reality for most appears closer to the experience of Jennifer (who I encountered on Twitter, and who wishes to remain identified just by her first name), now 31, who had her abortion when she was a 19-year-old student. A year after a serious mental health crisis, she discovered she was pregnant. Knowing that she couldn’t cope with a baby, or an adoption, she felt her choice was “between abortion and suicide”.
Since the abortion, she describes feeling sadness that she had to go through the experience. “I was due in December so for the first five years or so I would think ‘what if?’ around the date I would have given birth. However, it was always mingled with absolute relief that I could make what, for me, was unquestionably the right choice. Now, I barely ever think about my abortion.”
As well as validating the experiences of women such as Jennifer, the study raises questions about abortion law in this country. Katherine O’Brien of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) explains that the legal framework “adds an unnecessary level of stigma on to the abortion decision”. Unlike any other medical procedure, women need the permission of two doctors before they are able to end a pregnancy, at any gestation.
Doctors can’t authorise the abortion simply because a woman does not want to be pregnant, only if they believe that continuing the pregnancy would cause her mental harm. O’Brien is on point in her assessment of how absurd this framework is: “It makes little sense that in 2015 the message we send to women is that they cannot be trusted to make their own decisions about their own pregnancies based on what they think is right for them at that point in their lives.”
When considering how women feel about abortion (or indeed childbirth, sex, miscarriage or contraception), it is easy to be reductive and over-simplify their experiences. This story isn’t as simple as regret or no regret; good abortion or bad abortion. Instead there is a spectrum of emotions that women may move along throughout their lives. And, just because a decision is right, it doesn’t mean it isn’t sometimes difficult or painful. Sometimes women will later look back with regrets just as others will be positive about their choices.
Regardless, women’s freedom to make that decision themselves is still of paramount importance. Unsurprisingly the study did find that some women experienced negative emotions – most often when abortions took place at a later gestation or when a planned pregnancy was terminated because of foetal abnormalities or maternal ill health. Being honest about this is important, as is ensuring that women have good follow-up care and are well supported emotionally, should they request it.
Yet for most women, according to this study, however complex their feelings are, they still believe abortion was the right choice. One of my doula clients who has asked to go by a pseudonum, Maria, was also 19 when she had her abortion. Although she knows she “would have been a terrible mother” at the time, she describes it as the hardest decision of her life and says that “not a day goes by when I don’t wonder what he would be like now”. But, despite this she’s grateful to have chosen abortion. Without it, she says, she would not “have had the chance to see the world, meet my amazing husband or go on to have the two brilliant little boys who fill my soul with joy”.
It’s important that we stop telling women how they should feel, making them ashamed of their decisions or their emotions. Both the law, the anti-abortion lobby and the cultural soup around reproductive choice make it appear that decisions around abortion will come with terrible anguish whatever the eventual choice. To “qualify” for an abortion, the pregnancy must be going to cause mental harm, but the abortion itself is portrayed as an awful, haunting choice.
We need to remember the real lives of women, not the propaganda. “I don’t think I should feel guilty for being young and vulnerable and not being able to cope with continuing a pregnancy,” says Jennifer. It’s time not just to listen to her, but to really hear.
