The Weight of the Womb
By: Katherine Jean
Tags: Body, Politics, Health, Abortion, Identity

Despite the controversy, opinion polls show that more than half of Americans believe abortion procedures should be legal in all or most cases. Most actually happen well within the first trimester, the window that many would consider acceptable, with 91 percent taking place no later than 13 weeks gestation. Early medical abortions (like the second one I had) make up about 25 percent of all abortions. The 1.3 percent of abortions performed past 21 weeks are typically for medical reasons.

Abortions are also more common than you might think given our society’s polarized view of the procedure—current estimates predict that 24 percent of women will have one by age 45. I realized on a personal level how common the experience is when I started talking openly about my first abortion a year ago, before I’d even had the second one. Women I had known for years started telling me about their own abortions. I had a large circle of friends who’d had abortions at some point, and I’d never known because we all share this shame. We had all been hiding our experiences, even from our best friends.

Given the prevalence of abortion, many people who talk about it being “murder” likely know someone who has experienced it firsthand. These people are unknowingly calling their own friends and family murderers for having a medical procedure. The way that we, as a society, have decided to speak about abortion and the people who experience it has shunned people into silence. This has made it harder to normalize it as an important component of reproductive health care.

This stigma just doesn’t happen for other aspects of reproduction and pregnancy. Can you imagine a world where ejaculation is considered the equivalent of a human? Where ejaculation is heavily regulated, and anyone who ejaculates for purposes other than reproduction is shamed? Better yet, can you imagine a world where teenagers go to Washington, D.C., and protest unnecessary ejaculation?

Every mother who has had an abortion for a baby she loved wanted nothing more than a healthy newborn.

In application, that’s what laws restricting abortion amount to: the government stripping people of their bodily autonomy. They are steeped in a history of misogyny and patriarchy reliant on the systemic control of the female form.

The latest abortion outrage has come in reaction to New York strengthening the wording of its abortion laws. The internet is flooded with misinformation about New York making abortion legal “until the day the baby is born.” People are sharing photos of their healthy newborns, outraged at the idea of a fetus being aborted hours before its arrival.

In reality, the law simply safeguards protections already in place under other court rulings, including the right to late-term abortion when the pregnancy is deemed not viable or is endangering the pregnant person’s life. Typically, such procedures happen when something is horribly wrong with the fetus or the baby has died in the womb. In these cases, the baby is wanted. The baby is loved. The baby has a crib and a family waiting for them. The baby is deeply mourned.

New York’s previous law had people in need of late-term abortions leaving the state for the procedure. The update seeks to close that gap and allow anyone who needs an abortion to have the procedure without leaving the state.

This means that sharing photos of a healthy newborn, as a means of protesting laws that safeguard the right to abortion, is horribly insensitive to those who have had late-term abortions. To the parents who have grieved their babies. To the parents who have wept over their lifeless infants. You are suggesting that people who have chosen to end pregnancies so their children do not have to suffer are morally inept. You are blaming these people for birth defects they had no control over.

Every mother who has had an abortion for a baby she loved wanted nothing more than a healthy newborn. She wanted nothing more than to be able to share those same photos of her babies. Instead, she only has ultrasounds. Some of us even have ashes.