Posted on 01/20/2008 5:47:22 AM PST by rhema
For many Americans, the face of abortion is a frightened teenager, nervously choosing to terminate an unexpected pregnancy. The numbers tell a far more complex story in which financial stress often plays a pivotal role.
Half of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year are 25 or older. Only about 17 percent are teens. Sixty percent have given birth to at least one child prior to getting an abortion.
A disproportionately high number are black or Hispanic. And regardless of race, high abortion rates are linked to hard times.
"It doesn't just happen to young people, it doesn't necessarily have to do with irresponsibility," said Miriam Inocencio, president of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island. "Women face years and years of reproductive life after they've completed their families, and they're at risk of an unintended pregnancy that can create an economic strain."
Activists on both sides of the abortion debate will soon be marking the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, which established a nationwide right to abortion. Since Jan. 22, 1973, there have been roughly 50 million abortions in the United States, and more than one-third of adult women are estimated to have had at least one.
Who are these women?
They come from virtually every demographic sector. But year after year the statistics reveal that black women and economically struggling women - who have above-average rates of unintended pregnancies - are far more likely than others to have abortions. Though about 13 percent of American women are black, new federal figures show they account for 35 percent of abortions.
Black anti-abortion activists depict this phenomenon in dire terms - "genocide" and "holocaust," for example. But often, the women getting the abortions say they act in the interests of children they already have.
"It wasn't a hard decision for me to make, because I knew where I wanted to go in my life - I've never regretted it," said Kimberly Mathias, 28, a black single mother from Missouri.
She had an abortion at 19, when she already raising a 2-year-old son.
"It wasn't hard to realize I didn't want another child at that time," Mathias said. "I was trying to take care of the one I had, and going to college and working at the same time."
She was able to graduate, now has an insurance job and - still a single mother - has a 3-year-old son as well as her first-born, now 11.
By contrast, Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr., calls herself a "reformed murderer" for undergoing two abortions when she was young.
Now an outspoken anti-abortion campaigner, King says the best way to reduce abortions among black women is to dissuade more of them from premarital sex.
"We give free sex education, free condoms, free birth control," she said. "That's almost like permission to have free sex, and the higher the rate of sexual activity, the higher the rate of unintended pregnancy."
Anti-abortion activist Day Gardner of the National Black Pro-Life Union says many blacks are unaware of their community's high abortion rate.
"We don't talk about it," Gardner said. "It's a silent killer among us."
She contends that abortion-rights supporters tempt black women into abortion by suggesting they can't afford to raise the child. But Gardner also acknowledges that some black women make this argument on their own.
"We had the whole civil rights movement - now we're in a place where we're moving further toward equality," Gardner said. "So women think, 'For once, I can see the American dream. I can have the house and the job, but it would postpone it to have another child. I can't afford to take time off.' "
Dr. Vanessa Cullins, a black physician who is Planned Parenthood's national vice president for medical affairs, said the allegations of "black genocide" do not help women meet day-to-day challenges.
"These actions take attention away from medically proven ways to reduce unintended pregnancy - comprehensive sex education, affordable birth control, and open and honest conversations about relationships," she said.
Looking beyond racial dividing lines, Cullins views the right to abortion as an important component in the ability of all American women to determine the right size of their family.
"Groups that become assimilated in U.S. culture and experience economic opportunities naturally decide to limit family size, because they want to take part in the American dream," she said. "Nowadays, that usually requires two people bringing in the income. If you're a single mother, achieving the dream is all the harder, so it makes sense to limit family size so you can shower as much support as you can on the children you have."
Georgette Forney, who had an abortion when she was 16 and is now an anti-abortion campaigner who heads Anglicans for Life, says she often sees economic pressures triggering abortions, even in middle-class families.
"In one situation, the husband was adamant that they were on track to pay for their two sons' college education, and a third child would throw off his whole calculation," Forney recounted. "So that baby was aborted, and that woman was devastated. It was a five-year process to recover."
Forney said she also encountered a single mother who was worried she might lose custody of her daughter in light of a suit by the biological father. The woman then became pregnant, Forney said, and had an abortion in violation of her own beliefs because she feared having a second child would jeopardize prospects for keeping her daughter.
"We've begun to depend on abortions," Forney said. "We feel we have to choose between our unborn child and our born children. We shouldn't have to choose."
Martha Girard, on the other hand, says she's appalled by the notion that women should lose the right to choose.
A hospital ultrasound technician from Pleasant Prairie, Wis., and a mother of three, Girard had an abortion two years ago, at age 44, when she mistakenly thought she was too old to get pregnant.
Having been through three difficult pregnancies previously, and coping with a mentally disabled eldest son, she felt abortion was the prudent choice.
"I knew that this pregnancy would end up badly - I could feel it - and we've already got enough problems with the mentally ill son," Girard said.
"I was very sad and depressed the first week," she added. "But because it's hard on you emotionally and some women regret it, that doesn't mean it's wrong, that you shouldn't have done it, that someone else should decide for you."
She also failed to realize she should keep her knees together. It's not rocket science.
Likely conclusion: It appears that the decision to have an abortion, by and large, is an econimic decision.
so is going out, knocking somebody in the head and stealing his wallet.
“It wasn’t hard to realize I didn’t want another child at that time,” Mathias said. “I was trying to take care of the one I had, and going to college and working at the same time.”
I can imagine how she felt but I wonder if she thinks God is going to buy her reasons.
I got a call and as soon as I saw it on my MDT my stomach dropped. I instantly recognized the destination as the Robbinsdale Clinic. As I pulled up to the customers house I saw an 18 year old girl on her front steps crying. All I wanted to do was just keep driving, but I figured she would just call someone else, and perhaps I could say something to her on the way.
I had no idea what to say, so I told her how hard a time I was having driving her, that I knew where she was going and what she was planning and for her to not let anyone talk her into anything she wasn't sure about. Best I could come up with at the time.
When we got to the clinic we had to run the gauntlet of the protesters who yelled at us and waved signs at us. I dropped her off and as I drove back out through the protesters I stopped and rolled my window down and a Lady approached me and I just broke down. Big hairy ugly guy blubbering like a little girl. I got it together enough to tell the Lady the girls name and we prayed for her.
One of the hardest things I ever had to do. All these years later I'm still shedding tears.
Couldn’t agree more, and really represents a sad state of affairs.
Truly is a shallow, selfish and perverse set of logic that devalues human life to the point of a few dollars more being of greater value than a son or daughter.
How often do we hear that the woman in the tale had a child at 17, aborted another or two in order to get “ahead” and now is a “successful” 28 year old with yet anohter child, all indications being that none of the fathers were the same, and none of the sex partners are present...
Indictment against both the woman and the men(s) moral character and fidelity.
Note that I am avoiding defining a specifc racial group, but I think the numbers quaoted tell us anyway.
And, yes, it is white mans fault of course.
God Bless
Actually, it doesn't "just happen" to anyone. It's not like a car accident or food poisoning. You have to actively seek out an abortion.
Besides the one husband who was “on track” with his two son’s education (by murdering his son’s sibling), where are the fathers? Besides the rare instance of rape or incest - it takes two to tango. The fathers bare just as much responsibility for these abortions as the mothers.
Monica Lewinsky showed these women everything they need to know about birth control.
Just wear a blue dress.
Cheers!
If we passed a law that said any mother could murder her child at any age because the child had become “inconvenient,” we would be laughed off the face of the earth. But we permit, and even condone, murdering an unborn child who is inconvenient.
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Perhaps it would be best to consider tomorrow “Alveda King Day” instead.
I can not even read a statement like that without getting sick to my stomach. Sick people. God have mercy on their souls.
No, sex outside marriage (especially when you know the consequences), is a dumb decision. Even with zillions of birth control methods, thoughts of how a relationship outside of marriage or with a different man might affect them and their child, what’s the upside and lessons learned... not to mention diseases, are not enough to have self-respect, esteem and think of the picture down the road?
I guess we women are so stupid we need men to decide we can kill our children... not that there’s a benefit to them as well.
You were troubled to your very soul, and you were "just" the cab driver. There are 30, 40 milliuon men out there who were the "partners" of the weeping women and the "fathers" of the wretched, wasted little ones.
There are grandparents who know their grandchildren's bodies are in a biohazard disposal system or a municipal landfill. There are friends and relatives who called and made the appointment, provided the transportation, or even paid for the kill.
There are people who repair the disposal in the clinic sink when the shredder mechanism jams. There are lab techs who slice off tissue and organ specimens to send to the researchers who have a constant demand for babymeat.
There are lawyers, politicians and judges. There are receptionists, security guards and police.
And don't forget the men (or woman) who actually stand there in their surgical scrubs and greet new life with a knife.
This doesn't just destroy the babies. On some level, inwardly, outwardly, it's destroying us all.
The financial strain excuse is bogus. There is no law that requires women to keep, support and raise a child she bears.
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