{"id":31719,"date":"2024-06-23T21:37:05","date_gmt":"2024-06-23T21:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cincinnatirighttolife.org\/?p=31719"},"modified":"2024-06-23T21:37:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-23T21:37:05","slug":"pivoting-to-unwanted-and-coerced-abortion-a-manifesto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cincinnatirighttolife.org\/pivoting-to-unwanted-and-coerced-abortion-a-manifesto\/","title":{"rendered":"Pivoting to Unwanted and Coerced Abortion: A Manifesto"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Monica Snyder<\/a>,\u00a0Charles C. Camosy<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Eric Scheidler<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, originally published June 16, 2024, Public Discourse<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we continue to seek ways to extend robust legal protection to prenatal children and to persuade our pro-choice brothers and sisters that such laws are necessary to forge a truly just society, we should all be able to come together to stop unwanted abortion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was angry [at] my mother for encouraging me to get an abortion. I was mad at my boyfriend for (unwillingly) giving me the feeling that he didn\u2019t want this child and therefore also encouraging me in the direction of getting an abortion. I was mad at people who would have liked it if I had the child but didn\u2019t pressure me enough.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The testimony above,\u00a0posted anonymously<\/a>\u00a0at the website ShoutYourAbortion.com, reveals the largely hidden reality of abortion in America. Could anyone, regardless of where they stand on the political question of abortion, read this woman\u2019s lament and describe her abortion as a truly free choice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we as a society show up for women so that they don\u2019t find themselves in these situations? The pro-life movement has long focused on decreasing access to abortion. And while laws advancing prenatal justice have always been, and continue to be, a crucial part of pro-life work, they have never been the full answer. We must also find ways to decrease the demand for abortion, including the demand a woman\u2019s partner, parents, employer, and community place on her to get one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past two years since the United States Supreme Court handed down the\u00a0Dobbs<\/em>\u00a0ruling overturning the federal right to abortion enshrined in\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>, our country has seen a seismic shift in our abortion law and policy. Pro-life advocates have built on this historic legal victory by enacting laws that limit abortion and serve prenatal justice. But as we have seen all too clearly, this is not enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The growing availability of mail-order abortion pills has undermined the impact of these state restrictions, and other states have responded by moving in the opposite direction. Not only have these states stripped away even modest limits on abortion like parental notice and sought to limit the activities of pro-life advocates, they have aggressively promoted abortion to women in more restrictive states, even offering to pay for their abortion-related travel expenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, public opinion has\u00a0shifted<\/a>\u00a0dramatically<\/a>\u00a0against<\/a>\u00a0the pro-life movement. Since the\u00a0Dobbs\u00a0<\/em>ruling, the number of Americans who identify themselves as \u201cpro-choice\u201d has hit historic highs. More Americans than ever say that abortion should be legal under any circumstances, while those who say abortion should always be illegal are at their lowest number since the 1990s. These trends are even more pronounced among younger Americans\u2014the demographic that actually faces the decision whether to get an abortion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, as demoralizing as these trends have been for the pro-life movement, a growing body of research underscores a new opportunity to advance the cause of prenatal justice while better serving women and families. This research shows that in a majority of cases, abortion is anything but a free choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we will show, only about one-third of women, reflecting on their abortions, describe the experience as a truly free choice that had a positive impact on their lives. For the rest, those abortions were not in line with their values, were consciously unwanted, or were even coerced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, we have an unprecedented opportunity to build common ground. Let us take the growing ranks of those who say they\u2019re \u201cpro-choice\u201d at their word. Let us invite them to join us in working to ensure that no woman ever gets an abortion she doesn\u2019t really want. In doing so, we can save more lives than we could ever hope to with the patchwork of abortion limits enacted since Dobbs<\/em>\u2014including in states without any such limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unwanted Abortions Are Common<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heartbreaking testimonies like the anonymous one above are sadly all too common. The pro-life movement has long known that women are frequently pressured into abortions, but new research reveals the problem is far more widespread than even many pro-lifers expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of women who\u2019ve had abortions,\u00a024 percent describe theirs as \u201cunwanted\u201d or \u201ccoerced.<\/a>\u201d More than\u00a0one million abortions<\/a>\u00a0annually in the United States mean roughly 240,000 women procure unwanted or coerced abortions every year. These women are significantly more likely to say that their abortions conflicted with their maternal desires and moral beliefs. They also say that if they\u2019d received more support from others, they would have continued with their pregnancies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another 43 percent of women describe their abortions as \u201caccepted but inconsistent with their values and preferences.\u201d Only 33 percent of women say their abortions were wanted and consistent with their values. These women are the only ones who reported that their abortions improved their mental health. The other 67 percent of women reported more negative than positive emotions from their abortions, especially those who felt their abortions were unwanted or coerced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shout Your Abortion<\/a>\u00a0brings depth to these data. The abortion storytelling project includes all types of testimonials. As the name suggests, Shout Your Abortion has many examples of women who considered their abortions to be empowering. But the website also often features women struggling with complex emotional reactions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I remember that night in bed, my partner told me he didn\u2019t want to keep the baby, and I\u2019ve never felt so much heartbreak in my entire life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u00a0Anonymous<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote how sorry I was for not being ready for them. I wrote about the kind of life I felt they deserved. I asked them to please come back to me one day. I held my belly and cried harder than I\u2019ve cried before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u00a0Katie<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he had no attachment whatsoever to the pregnancy, saw it only as a problem needing to be dealt with, he was certain carrying this baby to term was the wrong choice. I was devastated. I cried for days and agonized over my decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u00a0Anonymous<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

These experiences are especially tragic since many Americans report wanting larger families than they end up having. Half of childless Americans aged forty-five and older\u00a0wish they\u2019d had children<\/a>, including 10 percent who wish they\u2019d had four or more. Americans\u2019 preference for larger families is\u00a0at its highest since 1971<\/a>. Yet fertility rates continue falling\u2014especially in pro-choice states<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unwanted Children Are Uncommon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0the\u00a0Turnaway Study<\/a>\u00a0found that when women are denied abortions, \u201cmental health rarely seems to suffer.\u201d This study, conducted by abortion rights advocates, compared outcomes of women who obtained abortions to those who sought abortions at clinics but were turned away (because they were past the clinics\u2019 gestational limits). The study found that only one week after being denied an abortion, more than a third of women (35 percent) said they no longer wished they\u2019d aborted. This statistic improved dramatically over time. Five years after being denied abortion,\u00a098 percent of women<\/a>\u00a0who raised their children themselves no longer wished they\u2019d aborted them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Turnaway Study also found that women who aborted saw\u00a0both negative and positive emotions decrease<\/a>\u00a0over time, whereas women who were denied an abortion\u2014especially those who had struggled over the decision to abort\u2014had decreasing negative emotions but\u00a0emergent positive ones<\/a>. This was particularly true for women who had more social support for their pregnancies. As a twenty-one-year-old Midwestern woman described it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Emotionally I think being with my friends and my family and them understanding was probably helpful. So, it made me be like \u201cokay, it\u2019s okay to have this baby. It\u2019s okay . . . My family\u2019s going to help me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Some of the women who were denied abortions said \u201cthey felt their child motivated them to have a better life or career or to avoid drugs and alcohol.\u201d Bonding to their children led them to retrospectively view their abortion denials in a positive light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coerced Abortions Are Far Too Common<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though there is some disagreement about how and why it affects the abortion rate,\u00a0instances of intimate partner violence (IPV) are correlated to abortion.\u00a0<\/a>Physical violence is used to coerce women into having abortions they don\u2019t want. For instance, this past year, police accused a Florida man of\u00a0killing his pregnant girlfriend when she refused to have an abortion<\/a>. One might think we can trust health care providers in these spaces, but a physician\u00a0slipped an abortion pill into his pregnant ex-girlfriend\u2019s drink<\/a>\u00a0(and got three years in prison). A nurse practitioner recently\u00a0did something similar<\/a>. And then there was the case of the Connecticut man who wanted\u00a0his pregnant girlfriend<\/a>\u00a0to abort so he could be with his \u201cother girlfriend.\u201d When she refused, he sent a hitman to murder her.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, after\u00a0an abusive husband (unsuccessfully) tried to poison Catherine Herring<\/a>\u00a0with abortion-inducing drugs, her brother, Louisiana State Senator Thomas Pressly, introduced the Abortion by Fraud Criminalization Act. This legislation specifically criminalizes the act of covertly inducing a woman to ingest abortion-inducing drugs without her knowledge or consent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This kind of violence is far too common. Few know that\u00a0homicide is a leading killer of pregnant women in the United States<\/a>. An\u00a0October 2022 study<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0British Medical Journal<\/em>\u00a0found that American women are more likely to be murdered than to die of the three leading medical causes of maternal mortality: hypertensive disorders, hemorrhage, and sepsis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is some evidence that\u00a0IPV is also used against women who have abortions<\/a>. This has been used to attack anti-abortion laws. Some\u00a0suggest<\/a>\u00a0a correlation between states with laws restricting abortion and higher rates of IPV, but Catholic University\u2019s Dr. Michael New\u00a0revealed<\/a>\u00a0numerous problems with the study and showed that maternal mortality has actually declined since\u00a0Dobbs<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coerced abortion cannot be limited to the threat of violence from a partner. It is also very clearly\u00a0used as a tool by sex traffickers<\/a>, especially those targeting children.\u00a0A State Department report<\/a>\u00a0on sex trafficking noted, for instance, that human traffickers may force pregnant victims to undergo abortions, usually in unsafe and unsanitary conditions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much Work Has Already Been Done<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pro-life movement is diverse, with different organizations focused on law and policy, education and outreach, and the philosophical and moral arguments against abortion. But alongside these efforts, there have long been individuals and groups who have dedicated enormous resources to providing immediate assistance to women in difficult situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nationally, there are\u00a02,750 pregnancy centers<\/a>\u00a0providing hundreds of millions of dollars in goods and services to millions of pregnant women every year, typically at no cost. These goods and services include ultrasounds, STD testing, prenatal education programs, and material support like diapers, wipes, car seats, strollers, and cribs. Some states have passed\u00a0Coercive Abortion Prevention Acts<\/a>, identifying specific forms of coercion and penalties for them. Other groups working with pregnant women have undertaken projects that have included, for instance:\u00a0establishing rights of pregnant students on campus<\/a>;\u00a0b<\/a>uilding coalitions of maternal and infant health providers;\u00a0developing culturally sensitive prenatal care programs<\/a>;\u00a0building maternity homes<\/a>;\u00a0connecting pregnant women to supplemental nutrition<\/a>;\u00a0establishing Her PLAN<\/a>\u00a0(Pregnancy and Life Assistance Network); and strategizing about ways to\u00a0make birth free<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is in no way a comprehensive list. There are many more examples of concerted efforts by people (pro-life and pro-choice alike) who want to make sure no woman gets an abortion because she feels she\u00a0doesn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0have a choice. While these are all worthy projects, there\u2019s still much work to be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We Must Do More<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our nation cannot endure in the long term while millions and millions of our prenatal brothers and sisters lack equal protection of the law and are killed with impunity. Part of the answer when it comes to protection for prenatal children has to be legal protection. That\u2019s what it would mean for this nation to live out the full meaning of its creed. But this moment in time provides a new opportunity to focus closely on the forces that push women into abortions they don\u2019t want. This requires change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the change involves the language we use to talk about women who seek abortions and what motivates them. We should stop, for instance, referring to abortion as a \u201cselfish choice.\u201d Not only is such language unpersuasive to the pro-choice people we\u2019re trying to reach, it doesn\u2019t match the reality of abortion revealed by the research discussed above. Likewise, we should stop talking about abortions done for the sake of \u201cconvenience\u201d\u2014a word that trivializes the gravity of both the decision to become a parent or place a child for adoption and <\/em>the inestimable value of the child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, we should use language that calls into question the use of \u201cautonomy\u201d and \u201cfreedom\u201d that some of our perceived opponents use when they invoke abortion \u201cchoice.\u201d We should use language that calls into question the idea that abortion is merely a health care procedure rather than something freighted with trauma for women who believe they have no other options. This shift in our language invites cooperation with genuinely pro-choice people (those who want women to be able to choose life). It also positions pro-abortion advocates  (those who see abortion as an uncomplicated good) as a common opponent\u2014a group that is not very large, but that has an outsized influence on abortion policy. And then we must redouble our efforts to make sure pregnant women considering abortion have ample options other than abortion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But new plans and projects are required as well. Pro-life advocates, under the leadership of Charles Camosy and Eric Scheidler, launched a\u00a0statement on \u201cBuilding a Post-Roe Future<\/a>\u201d\u00a0in January 2023. The statement affirmed that loving and protecting both mother and child required significant changes in public policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few of its tenets include: <\/p>\n\n\n\n