The Human Drama of Abortion: A Global Search for Consensus

1. Listening to Women

 1 Listening to Women Why They Have Abortions Only women know exactly why they end up making the difficult decision to have an abortion. Consequently, there is no better way to help us understand the issue than to listen to their stories. The story of each woman, rich or poor, younger or older, illiterate or highly educated—related here as told to us over the years—is unique and serves to illustrate the variety of circumstances that lead women to choose to terminate their pregnancies. The Story of a Peasant Rosa belonged to a family of peasants, and her husband worked a small piece of land. She had had six children, one after the other, with the interval between them determined only by prolonged breastfeeding. One had died of diarrhea before his second birthday. Rosa looked old and wasted for her thirty-one years. She was always the first to get up to prepare breakfast and to see that the children were ready in time to go to school. She did not want them to have to go through the same hard, painful experience that she had gone through on so many occasions when there was not always enough food, particularly during the two years of drought, when even the cow had almost died of starvation. The older child, a twelve-year-old boy, was his father’s pride, but he was of no help to his mother. It was her ten-year-old daughter, who often stepped in and took care of her younger siblings. At this pont, it was clear to Rosa that five children were enough. God alone knew how difficult it was for her to keep them all well fed, dressed, clean, and loved. Her mother, however, said that children were a blessing that God gives to women and that Rosa should be grateful to  The Human Drama of Abortion receive them. Her mother’s influence lost much of its strength after the birth of Rosa’s seventh child. As usual, Rosa gave birth at home. The placenta was retained, and she bled heavily. Luckily, the only neighbor who had a car was home and could rush her to the hospital in town. At the hospital, Rosa had to undergo a massive blood transfusion to save her life. Before she left the hospital, the doctor who had saved her explained that another pregancy could kill her and she should not have any more children. He forgot, however, to tell her what to do to avoid pregnancy. Rosa had heard about birth control pills but did not have the money to purchase them every month. Someone at church taught her how to use the rhythm method, but her husband would not always agree to abstain during her fertile days of the month, and she did not dare go against his wishes. Rosa was terrified of the possibility of getting pregnant again and leaving six small children without a mother. She followed the advice of her mother and neighbors, using herbal vaginal douches after coitus, but eventually her menstruation was late again. She drank all kinds of herbal teas and took all kinds of medications she got at the pharmacy to no avail. Then she was told that all the herbal concoctions and drugs she had taken would have damaged the fetus, which would be severely deformed if the pregnancy were allowed to continue. Finally, she went to the local abortionist, who succeeded in causing uterine bleeding. The abortion was completed at a hospital, where she was taken with a severe infection from which she recovered after a few days. This time, determined not to take anymore chances, the doctor offered her a surgical sterilization, which she gratefully accepted. A Middle-Class Urban Woman Maria was a thirty-four-year-old married woman with four children. Her husband worked in a bank and earned a good salary. The family lived a comfortable life, but expenses increased as the children grew. Public education was inadequate, tuition at the private school they were attending had risen, and Maria and her husband wanted all their children to have the opportunity to go to college. The couple had intended to have only three children, but Maria had tired of using the pill and they had decided to stop for a few months and practice abstinence during the fertile period of the menstrual cycle. Listening to Women  The method had failed...