What if I told you that I am a produce of abortion failure? What if I told you I was pregnant and want to cut off the fetus? You will immediately consider that I am a weirdo and condemn this inhumane action as normal people do. However, the trend has coincided with a drop in abortion rates worldwide. As nations across the globe have expanded the grounds on which women can access reproductive health services, the quality and safety of abortion care has improved, as has maternal survival. Thus the question is still there: “Are abortion rights misused by women? Will these can-be-acceptable decisions end up the stigma from society?”. Let’s be clear at some points.
The abortion-rights movement (also known as the pro-choice movement) is a sociopolitical movement supporting the view that a woman should have the legal right to an elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy, and is part of a broader global abortion-rights movement. We have to be clear that a abortion-rights supporter doesn’t fully consider his or herself as a “pro-abortion” person. Meanwhile, people who support abortion rights see abortion as a last resort and focus on situations where they feel abortion is a necessary option. Among these situations are those where the woman was raped, her health or life (or that of the fetus) is at risk, contraception or birth control was used but failed, the fetus has physical and mental disorder, financial constraints, overpopulation, or she feels unable to raise a child. Those are rational and justifiable reason that could be advocated by abortion-rights campaigners and even herself, the woman.
Conversely, people who oppose abortion often call themselves “pro-life”. However, the only life many of them are concerned with is the life of the fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus. They are much less concerned about the life of women who have unintended pregnancies or the welfare of children after they’re born. Many of women suffered from the hurtful pain and cruel discrimination even though she’s not able to afford her own self and can’t stand the thing that she had been betrayed or bullied or raped. Their belief legally has groundworks and has been demonstrated by examining figures on the Guttmacher website. Approximately 862,320 abortions were performed in 2017, an enormous statistic.
“I had an abortion five years ago when I was 18.” publicly said by Jordyn Close - an abortion storyteller. She was driven to share her story to dispel stigma. Most of the harassment she received comes from strangers on the internet. “I’ve received death threats from people who claim to be “pro-life,” and anti-abortion websites have posted my personal information, which led to hate mail being sent to my home, and right-wing Facebook groups have made memes about me.” in a public speech. These words will not come from a fearful soul, it starts from a burning heart suffering from the pain and demands a basic right. According to some harassed person stories, the most common offensive names reported from the Internet strangers included: “baby-killer,” “murderer,” “bitch,” “slut,” “whore,” and “killer.” More detailed insults included being called an “unfit mother,” a “diseased cow,” and “devil worshiper.” One person recalled a more specific string of insults, “I’ve been called a baby killer online, an absolute piece of shit and disgrace to the...family, disgusting.” It makes me wonder: How much vitriol and emotional abuse should we expect people to suffer for trying to protect their right to a safe and common health care procedure?
There’re a lot of ways to be a good listener. One is to ask open-ended questions. You can question yourself or someone that you know: “How do you feel?”, “What do you hope for, now?”. Another way to be a good listener is to use reflective language. If someone is sharing about their own personal experience, use the words that they use. If someone is talking about their abortion and they say the word “fetus”, so do you. When we reflect the language of the person who is sharing their own stories, we are conveying that our interest in understanding who they are and what they’re going through is extremely real. Empathy gets created the moment we imagine ourselves in someone else’ shoes. It creates a culture and a society that values what makes us special and unique. Its values make us human, our flaws and our imperfections. Moreover, it generates the empathy that we need to overcome all the ways that we try to hurt one another. Stigma, shame, discrimination, prejudice, oppression. A pro-voice make an impact on abortion as a politicized and stigmatized issue understood and discussed. Far beyond definition as single right or wrong decisions, our experiences can exist on a spectrum.