"Why don't you..."

Ensure women are confident in the decisions they make about their problem pregnancies
Help women leave their abusive partners so they can have that baby
Combat domestic violence
Provide women with contraceptive services to avoid unplanned pregnancies
Find a job developing more effective forms of contraception
Prevent rape and sexual violence - so that "the innocent ones" don't have to have abortions, natch
Find counseling for assault victims
Throw them baby showers so they'll have "all the supplies they need"
Offer to adopt her children so she'll have time and energy for one more
Buy her kids the damn Christmas presents so she won't have to have the abortion (What?? Please work on distinguishing between a problem and its symptom, OK?)
Help her with the cost of a new baby
Pay their utility bills
Help them find safe cheap childcare...

*

Dear devoted denialist antis, regular know-it-alls, and well-meaning strangers/friends/family/bloggers who just think abortion "shouldn't be used so thoughtlessly": 


Thank you for your suggestions. We regretfully see that you consider yourselves geniuses for having hit on the one magic solution that no one has tried.


In order to keep this letter brief, I leave to your own heroic efforts the task of identifying which of these things we ALREADY DO that you just assumed we don't do, which of them we would NEVER DO because you are not adequately informed to dream up effective strategies ("tell her to Just Leave him!"), and which ones we would LOVE to do but lack the resources and/or magical patriarchy-busting power to do.


In fact the purpose of our reply is simply to ask you a question, since you brought it up.


Why don't you?


No, seriously. Why don't you do those things? Answer me, each of you, about your individual practices. And society-at-large, you answer me too. And when you've all answered why YOU don't do these things, I'll understand you a little better, and then one day maybe we can "discuss reasonable solutions" as you have proposed but are currently unprepared for.


We regret that we will not be working with you at this time but encourage you to submit future proposals that meet the minimum thoughtfulness standards.


Good luck,


Placenta Sandwich
VP of Irritated Blogging
The Abortioneers

Guest post: My Truth with Abortion

Hi everyone. We'd like you to meet deliverance, who's graciously agreed to be our guest here for several upcoming Thursdays. As deliverance says, The name means relief from something, and sometimes liberation. Please extend your warmest welcome to our friend and colleague!

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potentially problematic

Hello, dear readers and writers. This is my first post in this special sliver of cyberspace, as I will be guest-blogging for the illuminating Daughter of Wands in August and September.

I started working in the honorable field of abortion care exactly one year and a day ago. Never had I expected to become so bonded with abortion. For quite a long time abortion was, for me, a distant political issue. I was committed as an activist to do my part in protecting abortion rights, but I never had any emotional investment.

When I reflect on how I thought about abortion before my days as an insider, I understand. Mainstream messages don't convey the heart that is in abortion care. That would be radical. Instead, we flaunt, we debate, we yell, and we condemn. There is no story-telling.

It is not new for women to have their stories and lives ignored. In my work, I have been able to honor the lives of many women. I have also come to this realization: Abortion care is soulful; it deepens the heart and opens the mind.

On a daily basis I get to discuss the "big questions" -- questions about life, death, rebirth, loss, and love. Recently, I have been thinking quite a bit about the topic of parenthood and how people make the decision to become parents.

I have been seeing advertisements by the Ad Council to encourage more foster parenting. Each commercial ends with the statement, "Kids in foster care don't need perfection, they need you." So basically, as long as your kid doesn't carry your genes, there's no need to do anything above mediocre. (You can find these ads on the right side of this webpage under "Campaign Materials"):

Choosing to raise a child is a huge responsibility, but these ads make parenting seem like it's something anyone can do, and it's not all that important to strive for anything above the ordinary. Perhaps we should consider the impact we have on our communities when we don't work to raise our children in the best way we can. Also, what kind of impact does it have on a child who hears, essentially, that they don't need anything special from a parent?

In my work at the clinic, I sometimes talk with women who feel obligated to carry out a pregnancy because they aren't in desperate situations. They often feel a bit ambivalent, and figure that if they try hard enough, they could accomplish being a parent.

Shouldn't parenthood be a conscious decision, one which involves a certain amount of desire and motivation? Parenting involves raising a person -- teaching someone about the world, helping them acquire life skills, and instilling values and morals. It shouldn't have the same weight as choosing which dinner entree you want from a menu.

I am not saying I support the ever-popular argument that "It is good to have abortion because there are certain people who just shouldn't have children." But I am noticing, partly through my work at the clinic, that sometimes parenting isn't seen as a profound act.

Recently I came across a poem which made me think of one way to look at parenting. It is from a book called Earth Prayers.

"I'm going to plant a heart in the earth
water it with love from a vein
I'm going to praise it with the push of muscle
and care for it in the sound of all dimensions.
I'm going to leave a heart in the earth
so it may grow and flower
a heart that throbs with longing
that adores everything green
that will be strength and nourishment for birds
that will be the sap of plants and mountains."
-Rosario Murillo

My work with abortion doesn't always have to do with the absence of children. It does, however, always have to do with love.

My New Love: Options Counseling

I have a new found love: options counseling. Who knew? I mean, I've done options counseling for years; but in my experience, it's not that common many women ask for it. Usually, women who call the clinic already know they want an abortion. They've had a few days (weeks, months) to think about it. They're certain. Or they wouldn't call to begin with. (Most of the time.)

Occasionally, however, a woman calls and says she is unsure of her decision and wants to talk to someone. Even so, almost every single person I've spoken to only considered two options: abortion or motherhood. Not adoption. I've never thought it was odd women didn't include adoption in their options; and I assumed for those that adoption was a serious consideration, they'd just call the local Open Adoption agency (like this one) or maybe their church. Not the abortion clinic.

I've recently provided options counseling to two women only considering abortion or adoption. Believe it or not, in my many years as an abortioneer, I had never ever ever talked to a woman who considered adoption (unless she was over the gestational limit for an elective abortion and adoption or giving birth became her only options. But that's different.)! How I've gone so long talking to zero women about adoption (because they've all been like, "Um. Nope! Can't do adoption. No way!") might be strange.

I have no clue what I'd do without Anne Baker's "Abortion and Options Counseling" (here or here) and The Pregnancy Options Workbook. I have to say, though, I have loved.loved.loved.loved this new experience in options counseling where adoption has entered the equation. I feel stretched. I'm learning more. And it's fascinating! Maybe because it's new to me. Regardless, these two women have taught me a lot and I find myself thinking of them regularly. They've reminded why I love - even adore - this work so much. They've reminded me to stop. To pause. In options counseling, you need to get to know the women better. To listen to their hearts, their dreams, their deepest desires. I get an opportunity to do a really good job. To excel at my work. To listen.Listen.Listen. To ask hard questions that maybe others can't ask. To feel honored to be the person to listen. To make a connection with more depth and even get to spend more time with them.

When a woman is right on the cusp between two completely different lives, two completely worlds, it's astonishing. Awesome. Really quite amazing to witness. In all seriousness, when these options counseling sessions take place, I hear in my mind Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken,"
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Frost knew what he was talking about. It's hard to make decisions, to make choices. I think these women are quite incredible and brave. And I truly feel honored to listen to them. Grateful, even. And...on that note, dear Abortioneers...if you haven't yet heard, here's some super duper fab news: The Backline (Options Counseling talkline) is re-opening starting THURSDAY! Check it out here. Congrats, Backline!

Guest post: Pro-Choice? Pro-Abortion.

Today is a very special Friday, as it marks the first official guest post this blog has hosted! Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser is a prolific writer and longtime activist for reproductive rights. She's also the author of the really lovely blog Standing In The Shadows, where last week she wrote a post in response to one of our posts (Desembarazarme's, actually), and we've been happily chatting about it since then. Sarah, thank you for letting us reprint that post here today!

I spent some of a cloudy Sunday afternoon walk thinking about whether to write another piece about abortion access, and how I am really, truly PRO-abortion not pro-choice. Earlier this month I participated in the National Network of Abortion Funds’ Bowl-a-thon and Blog-o-thon. I wanted an excuse to give readers the link to donate one more time (my former work was as a reproductive rights organizer so what can I say: will-raise-money-for-important-causes, check).

Then, I read a wonderful post on the Abortioneers’ blog. This group blog talks about the daily work of people providing abortion services. Theirs isn’t always easy daily work, especially in a political and social climate that has essentially turned abortion into a bad word. Remember how then-Senator Hillary Clinton (in 2005) called abortion “very sad and very tragic?” The possibility that abortion might be one of many reproductive choices—take guilt off the table, please, and while you’re at it, unless the entire situation is tragic, take tragedy off the table, too—without such a sense of taboo and secrecy and shame has become quite radical these days. The post was called Utopia.

Here’s an excerpt:

Today’s the kind of nearly-perfect day that makes me think about what would be absolutely perfect: A world where Sunday means nothing but relaxing with a cat and books and tea, no matter how warm it is outside, and also, a world where OF COURSE everyone wants abortion to be included in the new healthcare plan, where woman talk about their (positive) abortion experiences in the same breath as they talk about the frozen yogurt they had last night, where Medicaid pays for all abortions, where birth control is affordable and accessible and side effect-free, where abortion providers are heroes to all, where every child is wanted, where every termination is a blessing, and where no woman has to panic or give up her dignity or feel complete despair because she doesn't have the money or the means to terminate her unwanted pregnancy. Oh, and also a world where I am 5'9" and I have chocolate pouring out of my kitchen faucet and I have a unicorn.

**

Well, I thought to myself; she said it beautifully—and even with a lighthearted touch. So, I did what I often do when I love something I’ve read; I posted it on Facebook. I wrote this: I heart this, the idea that utopia INCLUDES abortion access. I had been mulling a post about how my ideal world includes abortion, but now I don't think I need to write it: thank you Abortioneers!

I didn’t bargain on negative comments, which were along these lines: abortion is not to be defended with zeal. At best, it’s a necessary evil.

I strongly disagree. And here I am, writing.

My utopia isn’t exactly like the one described in the Abortioneers’ post. That’s to say, in my twenties, when I worked in the field, most of my peers were, like me, childless and our support for abortion rights often came personally—we’d had abortions or otherwise had our own reasons for feeling strongly about the option—and we were very much guided by feminism as our shared rallying point. By feminism, in this context, what I mean is that we believed strongly that for women to be equal in society, agency over reproduction—our bodies—to be essential. Punctuate that with a period. Actually, cap it with an exclamation point! It wasn’t an apologetic stance; it was a celebratory one. I think it more closely resembled the wonderful utopia described in the post I'd just read.

Two decades later, I know people whose views about abortion (from support to opposition or strong discomfort) have changed after 1) having a child, 2) losing a pregnancy or a child, 3) struggling with infertility, or 4) adopting a child. That hasn’t been the case for me. My sense of urgency about abortion rights hasn’t faded one bit over time. It has, though, been altered by parenthood.

What’s changed is that I now see all choices—and that’s really to say, our lives—as messier and more chaotic than I once did (I think I harbored some fantasy that when you truly grow up, you figure “stuff” out, something I now know to be just that, fantasy). I realize in a way that I didn’t back then when getting pregnant seemed to be the easy part—and lucky me, in my case, that remained so for all three babies I gave birth to—that so many things are complicated, amongst them getting pregnant or staying pregnant, not to mention the whole huge black hole of potential hardships raising children… I’ve garnered a new and vast appreciation for life’s complexities and how they don’t necessarily get solved.

And given the sheer weight of that responsibility—parenthood—along with the lack of adequate support for it—no paid parental leave, no single payer health care, women making much less than a man’s dollar, and that’s just for starters—in this country, I would never assume that it’s fair or reasonable or respectful of women to foist that awesome (as in, immense) responsibility upon any woman. I feel that is a tragic situation, although in the same breath, I absolutely know that for many individuals, an unexpected pregnancy and child can turn out to be the greatest of blessings. The one does not change the other.

So many years into the wash of pregnancy, infertility, babies, and children, I appreciate that each of us has a lot to carry and it turns out that how we carry our own experiences is a pretty complicated endeavor, too.

**

My belief given all these givens is that every woman should be very free to make her very own personal choice. Please imagine me, as a potential adoptive mother when Saskia’s birth (or first, or just plain) mother was pregnant with Saskia told me that she considered abortion but couldn’t have pursued it because she didn’t the money. To clarify here: she did not say that’s what she’d have chosen, only that she couldn’t even consider it due to cost. I said (and I cannot make this up): Had I known you, I could have helped you find the money. Why? I knew where money was. I’d worked with—helped to found—the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts and because I knew, too, of the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund in Boston. And I meant it, much as I was waiting, and italics can’t adequately convey how fully I was waiting, for that baby, because by then, hers was a pregnancy with an intention and that intention was the baby I love more than I have words to describe.

While I feel, as the mother to Saskia, particularly because the warmth of our open adoption makes our personal story one of the happier ones, exceedingly fortunate, I also know that not all adoptions are so positive. Ours isn’t an easy situation always for all (and our daughter is two; we don’t yet know how she will feel over time about her situation).

No one decides upon placing a child for adoption and goes forth without looking back, as far as I can tell. My friend, Susie Book, wrote on her blog about participating on a panel with other birth mothers. One question was, “How often do you think about your placed child?” Susie wrote: “I think she (the adoptee) got the answer she wanted: Every day. Even the woman who relinquished better than fifty years ago said it immediately: Every day.” The bottom line is this: parenthood is a huge deal. And there are no easy answers.

I believe our best choice is to acknowledge that given the complexity and the responsibility, we must, must envision a world that supports women to make their own choices, without the hubris of shame or the crushing taboos that cast silence atop our most intimate—and sometimes painful--experiences. Now that I am raising a daughter, I want her future to be that much freer than the present. So, I’m going to continue to challenge us all to look beyond what we carry with us—important as those experiences are—to what it means to try to make this choice for another person. I’m not just going to hope for this; I’m going to work hard to try and ensure that you keep your hands off my daughter’s body.


Like it? You can find Sarah writing regularly at Standing In The Shadows.

In You We Trust

In a world where no one has enough money and survival feels like a burden, financial counseling is monotonous, hardening, and repetitive. As we know, often getting an abortion means coming up with money that most people don’t have. It means selling belongings that you might need, not paying bills, getting evicted, selling food stamps, lying, and borrowing money with no means of paying back. Most women have to piece together money that simply does not exist.

I spend a vast amount of my time running through a long list of ideas about how to exhaust resources that aren’t exactly available. Most times women have to compromise their pride, independence, and sometimes honesty in order to raise money. Every so often, a women needs more than money. Another part of my job is to offer options counseling: I help women think through all of their options regarding the pregnancy.

When someone faces an unintended pregnancy she has three basic options; carry the pregnancy to term and parent a child, carry to term and give that child to someone else to raise, or have an abortion. Most of the women who reach me already know they want an abortion and they just need help figuring out the how. But sometimes I am in the position of helping a patient think through this major decision.

For me, helping women figure out what they want to do is one of the most important aspects of my job. When a woman is unsure about what to do with her pregnancy, first I remind her that no one else can make this choice for her -- not her mom, not her boyfriend, not the staff at an anti-choice pregnancy crisis center, and not me. I let her know that I can help her try and sort out her own thoughts and give her accurate information, but ultimately she needs to figure out what she thinks is right for her life and body. I always tell patients who are teetering on their decision not to have an abortion if they are not sure it’s what they want. I tell them to find out how far into the pregnancy they are and hope time is on their side.

Most women I have spoken to never consider adoption as a real option. When I counsel women they typically weigh two options, parenting or ending the pregnancy. Adoption is not an option for everyone. Most often putting a brown or black child up for adoption means foster care, which may or may not ensure a stable home. On the other hand white women who bear healthy white children are able to set up private adoptions, have medical expenses paid and sometimes other expenses, and choose an open adoption if they want. We live in a society where race defines one’s life options. White people more often have resources and the ability to adopt children, and the demand for white adoptees is much higher than the supply. As transracial adoption becomes more popular this trend could change; however, the mental and emotional health of transracial adoptees is also a very complex issue. In addition to race as a factor, adoption or foster care means that after spending nine months carrying a fetus in her body a woman will not know if that child is safe, cared for, and happy. Most women I talk to immediately shoot down any suggestion of adoption.

When a woman wants help making her decision and for her the options are parenthood or abortion, I ask her if she has a support network, what her goals are, where she sees herself in five years, and how a child might add to her life or hinder her from accomplishing her goals. Most recently, an 18 year old asked me, “I mean is a child really like a burden?” I wanted to say, “um, YES!” However, in the interest of being objective I said, well a child does not have to be a burden, but raising a child means putting someone else’s needs before your own, and that’s a challenge, so if someone is not ready to take on that challenge raising a child may feel burdensome.

The most common emotion after an abortion is relief, particularly when a woman goes into the procedure feeling sure this is what is right for her life and body. When I provide options counseling for women, I want them to know that I trust their ability to make the right choice. I want them to know that whichever choice they make is OK. Options counseling is refreshing when most of my conversations are about nickels and dimes. These conversations with patients remind me why I believe in this work and why pro-choice is synonymous with pro- woman, pro-empowerment, and pro-family.