There are many different opinions on whether abortion is easy or difficult. Some people (both anti and prochoice) claim that abortion is always a difficult choice. Others, including women who have aborted, claim that abortion was an easy decision for them without any need for racking the brain. I don't think we can say for sure whether abortion is ALWAYS a hard choice or ALWAYS an easy choice.
Choices aren't either yes or no, easy or difficult. There is a scale, which allows for different amounts of comfort and easy. For each person, that scale is different.
I'd say, for most people abortion is:
a harder choice than what you're going to wear today and an easier choice than your career choice.
a harder choice than whether to have your wisdom teeth removed and an easier choice than who you will marry.
A more difficult decision than if you want to ask out your elementary school crush, and an easier choice than what to do if you have cancer.
Of course, each person is unique, and their opinion of where abortion stands as a decision may lie somewhere else than where I've placed it.
We cannot make claims about abortion being ALWAYS a hard choice or ALWAYS a difficult choice. Because its not. Each individual woman will have a different experience with abortion.
Reflecting on Privilege
10 years ago
Absolutely. Each woman, and even the same woman with different pregnancies, will find abortion to be an easy or difficult choice... No two situations and no two people are the same!
ReplyDeleteAs a pro-choice person, I find abortion to be one of the hardest choices. This is based on my own personal values and ethics. I do agree that it varies among women.
ReplyDeleteI love this post. It really does differ wildly for lots of women - and there are some women who might say it was harder than any of the things you listed. But in many, many of those cases, the difficulty of it was not "I can't decide what to do" but rather "I know exactly what I am going to do, but am having a hard time being OK with that."
ReplyDeleteI realize you probably know that last bit, but it's a good thing to make explicit since we are surrounded by people who think that women are indecisive and will be swayed by "counseling" and "information about your other options" - pregnant women are not stupid! They do not live under a rock! They know what their options are, and most likely took as much time as they needed to make whichever decision they end up making.