Now It's Time.

For the last months, during the abortion debate on PEI, I have kept my mouth shut and my fingers calm. I have tried to consider how to best articulate myself. On my own, I have vented and raged to my partner and my friends. But today, as I listened to Anne Marie Thomlins (a pro-life advocate on PEI) attack Kandace Hagen (a youth leader for the PEI Reproductive Rights Organization) I could no longer keep my thoughts to myself. I have to admit, Thomlins's comparison between Hagan and Hitler particular enraged me. Let me admit the following before I begin: my research area in my graduate study is in eugenics which has its own ties to Hitler and abortion (so I spend a lot of time reading historical accounts of similar debates regarding reproductive rights); I got pregnant with my close friend and lover in the third year of my undergraduate study and I made the decision not to abort and to raise my son regardless of the father's involvement (luckily he has been the most supportive partner I could have asked for - many women are not so lucky...even in committed relationships); and, I am currently pregnant with our second child. Also, I should say, I did my undergraduate degree in PEI, and am now a graduate student in Winnipeg.
In our society the pregnant body is abject. Mothers are treated like they should be all powerful, all accomplishing, busy bodies. They should work and maintain perfect homes. Mothers should not ask for help. They should understood motherhood from the moment of conception. They should know how to breast feed without support or assistance. And, above all, they should have an intense attachment to their own bodies ONLY at specified moments (specified by whom, I am still not sure) pregnancy and childbirth/re childrearing. However, their births should happen quickly and efficiently and in a hospital. Their bodies are seen as unreliable in birth, and should be aided with induction drugs, epidurals, demerol, episiotomies and c-sections (as someone who faced most of these in my first birth I have decided to have a natural birth out-of-hospital this time around). These expectations are incredibly unfair and unrealistic. I am not suggesting that these expectations are true for all mothers but, if I can draw on my own personal experience, they were true for me. As a twenty-one year old first-time mother I can assure you, I was not prepared. I suffered from depression during my pregnancy due to feelings of intense isolation, alienation, abjection and powerlessness. After the birth of my son, I suffered from post-partum depression for many of the same reasons. Motherhood is made more difficult because mothers are not given the tools they need, or the community being a mother requires. Women are not given enough access to knowledge about their own bodies or experiences, and it seems that motherhood and pregnancy (the two places where the most support should be given) are the sites which spur the most anxiety and fear.
Women have been educated on their bodies for centuries (until the growing power of the medical establishment in the 1800s), and were well aware of how to abort their own babies with the use of teas/herbs etc. They knew at what time an abortion was possible. They also knew to trust their bodies. If the pregnancy did not occur at a viable time, or in a situation which would not be ideal for the raising of a child, they knew how to terminate the pregnancy. Now, this kind of knowledge is foreclosed to women and they must go to a doctor and request an abortion. It does not matter why. Women have a right to their own bodies and should be able to decide when, and under what circumstances, they wish to have a baby.
To answer Thomlins's concern about regret: I am sure that most women who have abortions regret it at one point or another. I am sure that they wonder "what if." But, to take a woman's agency away and say that her knowledge of her own regret is repressed is ridiculous. Why do we take women's power away as a justification for a position? This has been happening for hundreds of years and it needs to stop. Women are not scapegoats and we are not the gate keepers of morality. We are allowed to make mistakes, and to be given the tools to fix them. And we are not stupid and ignorant about our own feelings and bodies. Stop making us feel that way!
I recently read a story of a woman who had an abortion and was later consumed with guilt after the birth of her first child. Later, her daughter told her, "Mom, the baby you aborted was me. It just wasn't the right time for me. I understand. I came when you were ready for me. I'm not angry with you." Following the logic of this little girl, we need to change how we perceive abortion. It is not the killing of a "child." It is the aborting of a fetus. If a woman is to miscarry what would we say to make her feel better? That it is the will of God? It just wasn't the right time? Why can't a woman take the will into her own hands? She should be able to say "It was my will"; "it just wasn't the right time". She should be given emotional and monetary support to make decisions about her own body.
As someone who faced the choice to abort or not, I am aware that it was my choice. I have my reasons for choosing not to abort my fetus, and those reasons are mine and mine alone. No one else has the right to know those reasons. If I had chosen to abort, I would hope that my family and friends would have supported me and I would expect that they would know that my reasons were none of their business. Perhaps it is naive of me to think that no one would have judged, scorned or have shunned me. I know that women face tremendous backlash about their abortions and I have to wonder if that may have a larger effect on their ability to rid themselves of feelings of guilt. Women need to support each other, and have the support of others, without the fear of guilt or derision.
Our choices are our own, and we are smart enough to make them. Now, give us the right tools to make those decisions so that no one else has to pay with their bodies or their lives.