The Human Drama of Abortion: A Global Search for Consensus

6. When Is a Pregnancy So Unwanted That It Ends in Abortion?

54 6 When Is a Pregnancy So Unwanted That It Ends in Abortion? No woman takes pleasure in having an abortion. For some women abortion may cause little stress, but for the majority of women, it is a very disturbing experience that they would much prefer to avoid (Barros, Santa Cruz, and Sanches, 1997). “Abortion is a horrendous ordeal”; “People who have not had to go through the trauma of abortion would do well not to comment on the subject”; “I found myself in this unfortunate position [of choosing to abort]” were comments made by women who defended the availability of the abortion pill (mifespristone) during a recent public debate in the United Kingdom (Daily Record Debate, 2002). Pregnancy has to be really very unwanted to lead a woman to undergo an abortion . In fact, many women who were interviewed following a voluntary termination of pregnancy commented that they had opposed abortion before they found themselves facing the choice to abort (Bengtsson and Wahlberg, 1991). Women in both developed and developing countries share this view. A study in Cuba, for example, where abortion is highly prevalent, showed that 78 percent of women who had had a voluntary pregnancy termination remained opposed to or were ambivalent about abortion (Alvarez et al., 1999). The authors commented that “frank approval of this approach to fertility regulation is minimal . . . in contrast with their attitude towards contraception, which is highly positive” (Alvarez et al., 1999, p. 129). Similarly, a study in Brazil found that a significant proportion of women who had had induced abortions continued to oppose abortion under any circumstance (Osis et al., 1994). These studies confirm, therefore , that abortion is a decision that women do not take lightly and their motives have to be very strong. Studies show that the many reasons for deciding to terminate preg- When Is a Pregnancy So Unwanted That It Ends in Abortion 55 nancy are fairly constant worldwide, although the prevalence of one reason or another may vary from one society to another. The most common reasons can be grouped as follows: the absence of the father, financial constraints, the inability to provide good parenting or interference with life prospects, conflict with prevailing social norms, health concerns, and lack of social support. The Absence of the Father Nelly was single, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of a peasant woman and an unknown father. She had migrated to the big city and was employed as a maid for a middle-class family. She worked as many as fourteen hours a day, Monday through Saturday, with time off only on Sundays and occasionally on Saturday nights. In her free time, she would get together with her boyfriend, who had promised to marry her as soon as he could find a better job. When Nelly became pregnant, however, no sooner had he heard the news than he disappeared. Even though Nelly had had a stepfather since she was only three, she had suffered the cruel words of her schoolmates and neighbors about the absence of her biological father. Determined not to have a child of hers suffer the same humiliation, she decided to abort. This story illustrates how heavily the absence of a partner who would assume his role as father can weigh on the decision to abort. This circumstance is prevalent not only among young, unmarried women but also among older women, who may have been abandoned by a partner or who may be in an unstable partnership (Torres and Forrest, 1988; Barnett, Freudenberg, and Wille, 1992; Justesen, Kapiga, and van Asten, 1992; Skjeldestad, 1994; Törnbom et al., 1994; Gupte, Bandewar, and Pisal, 1997; Törnbom and Möller, 1999). It appears that the lack of a functional family unit is a strong motivation to abort (Kero et al., 1999). Financial Constraints Flora was a twenty-eight-year-old wife and mother. She had two children, ages two and seven. The seven-year-old had been diagnosed with poliomyelitis, had been hospitalized for more than a month, and would now require expensive rehabilitation therapy to recover full 56 The Human Drama of Abortion use of his legs. In the midst of her child’s diagnosis and illness, Flora had lost track of the schedule she had been following in the rhythm method, and she had become pregnant. Her husband’s income was barely enough to feed their family of four, and now it was being...