I wrote this once before, but I saw this post and felt the need to say it again:
I was born in an extremely religious country in which, strangely enough, abortion was legalised fairly early on.
This doesn't actually mean it's easy to access to it, because of society's views on it, that trickle down on gynaecologists as well. About 70% of gynaecologists in my country consider themselves conscientious objectors, which means it is basically impossible to access voluntary interruption of pregnancy, except if the woman's life is at risk (or if you pay a shit ton of money in a private clinic, money that, often enough, one doesn't have).
This (sadly) doesn't mean we receive any kind of sex Ed in schools (no, not even the crappy kind often showed in films) or any real help/guarantees for new parents, so basically you just have to pray that the condom won't break, because it's near impossible to actually have an abortion and you have almost zero support if you actually decide to keep an unplanned baby. That said my country is now also trying to make those laws even more restrictives (ex banning abortive pills, prediliging the hiring of doctors, nurses and anestheticians who are C.O.etc.), hiding the way our governement tries to rule over women's bodies behind our rapidly decreasing fertility rate.
One summer, while I was still in high school, me and my friends had to drive for over ten hours to reach the only region of my country where the objectors rate it's lower than 15% because one of my friends couldn't wait two months for the only gynaecologist who performed it in our area. I was the only other girl in my friend group and, at my friend's request, I stayed with her the whole time. It was a traumatic experience, even not being the one having to undergo the procedure. Half of the nurses treated her like dirt and one of the counsellors (that are hired to help women or, more in general, people with a female reproductive system, in this kind of situations) started ranting about hell and damnation, while gripping my friend's wrist so hard it bruised. I literally had to pry the woman away from my friend and to throw her out, and I only managed to do so when I threatened to press charges.
While I always knew on an abstract level that in other countries, countries extremely close to my own, having access to abortion (or even to a morning after pill) was easy, easier than in my home country and decisely less frowned upon, it was all just news for me and I never really paid it much attention.
Then I left my country and studied abroad for a while and, during this time period, I met my partner. A couple of years later I discovered I was pregnant and I panicked. I was scared shitless because while I love kids, I hadn't planned on having one back then (or even now, to be honest). Even then I thought about it. If I decided to keep the baby I would have had actual support from the institutions, both economical and time-wise so my choice was actually mine and mine alone, not influenced by a frightening lack of resources.
I decided not to continue the pregnancy. I went to the clinic with my boyfriend and the procedure was quick, painless and nobody tried to make me rethink anything by guilt-tripping me with tales of eternal damnation.
I never felt any kind of guilt about it while living there. Nobody was forcing down my troath pro-life Ads or picketing the clinic when I went to do a check up specifically meant for people who had had a "traditional" abortion.
What I am trying to say is that, even if you don't know it there IS a right way to do things and we should all fight to make them available to the largest number of people we can.
Religious guilt is never gonna be the answer. My country tried to make it as such. Now our fertility rate is at an all-time low from which I don't think we will ever recover and there are whole generations of women literaly terryfied of falling pregnant, because if they do they are gonna lose their jobs and everything they worked for in their lives, without the possibility of actually making a choice on their bodies.
Religious guilt is never gonna be the answer, the possibility of chosing in authonomy for your body and for your future is.
And yes, it isn't perfectly relevant to the post, maybe, but Idgaf, because that was MY abortion, and it is extremely freeing to talk about it as such.
ellievsbear
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
dededos
andulkaphoto
