The Latest Attack on Women's Lives

The most recent attack on abortion rights is focused on late term abortions. As people debate over the actual number of abortions performed and the different meanings of "late term abortions," "D & X procedure," "third trimester abortions," and "intact D & E procedures," the real issue, the realities of women’s lives has been obscured. When a woman is pregnant and does not want to be, whether it is because of fetal abnormality or because the pregnancy was unplanned, who has the right to decide whether or not she will become a parent? The debate over abortion has always split between those who believe that women, in consultation with their health care providers, are capable of making their own decisions about when they are able to take on the responsibility of a child, and those who believe that women’s choices must be regulated by the states and courts. Unsuccessful at outlawing abortion, anti-choice forces are focusing on late abortions in an attempt to deny access and choice to another group of women.

Women have abortions to prevent real tragedies in their lives. Real women. Women just like you, your sister, your daughter, your mother, your friend. Those having later abortions are not that much different from the 99 percent of women who have abortions early in the pregnancy—just more desperate and often, more at risk for tragedy:

The 12-year-old incest survivor, trying desperately to deny the pregnancy, until someone finally recognizes what’s been going on;

The 45-year-old woman who thought she was menopausal, not pregnant;

The welfare mother of two—faced with cutoffs of Medicaid funding for abortion, the new welfare rules denying her support for another pregnancy, and the need to feed, house, and clothe her children—who is forced into a later abortion because she couldn’t find the money for this vital medical care any sooner;

The rural women—from one of the 84 percent of U.S. counties with no abortion provider—who has to go through hell to even find an abortion provider, let along organize the transportation, finances, and support system to make the two state-mandated trips to the clinic before she can have an abortion;

The recovering alcoholic, newly sober, who recognizes that she needs to work on her own health before she can become a parent, particularly of a child that may have fetal alcohol syndrome;

The battered woman, who after months of abuse and struggle is finally free of her abuser, and who recognizes that her chance of freedom is short-lived if she continues her pregnancy;

The woman who discovered that the genetic testing she hoped would give her good news about her very-wanted pregnancy instead gave her news that if this same pregnancy continues, her baby is not only doomed, but likely to destroy her future chances for a successful pregnancy;

The woman whose life is literally on the line from a pregnancy gone horribly wrong.

These real women could be any of us. But as the Christian Coalition, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Right have led the debate with graphic descriptions of the fetus, not one of these real women is in the picture. The anti-abortion forces may once again succeed in restricting abortion rights (as have already for young women and poor women) if women are invisible.

For women who need later abortions, the statistics about number of procedures and the distinction between types of procedures is meaningless. Whether we are 1 of 500 women or 1 of 50,000, if a woman has decided that for her own well being and her family’s that she cannot continue her pregnancy, this has to be her decision. Women of all ages, races, ethnic, economic, and religious backgrounds have abortions for many different reasons; each reason is as compelling and legitimate as the next. The debate over late abortions is about women’s lives and women’s choices; our voices must not be lost in the debate over numbers and names of procedures.

Susan Yanow is with the Abortion Access Project of Massachusetts; Jeanne Clark is with Women Organizing for Change.