to have had an abortion and feel ZERO shame or regret

[GetOrfMoiCase]

In AIBU because it is a popular topic. I know I am not being unreasonable.

Thread is in response to a report I heard on the news yesterday which was shamefully presented, regarding abortion access.

There is a thread on MN currently about it www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1222273-Chipping-away-at-abortion-rights-govt-appoints-Life-as-sexual-health-adviser

Apparently there is a twitter thingummy going around 'I had an abortion' for people to discuss guilt free abortions.

Just thought it would be appropriate to have a thread on here for people put a positive side of abortion.

My story: got pregnant 5 years ago. My dd was 10. I was in a relationship of 6 months duration and had recently started a new job. Condom failure. My partner and I agreed that we didn't want a baby, I booked an abortion and had it without a backward glance. No emotional fall out afterwards. No guilt.

"I don't know anyone who's flippant about contraception."

Really?

"Well it was some sick joke of a park I was made to walk through then, because I didn't enjoy it at all."

Do you think it should be an enjoyable experience then?

stillfrazzled
If you don't like abortion, express your disapproval by not having one. Let other women approach the issue with whatever feelings are natural to them. Including not being that upset

Makes sense. Personally I'm against animal cruelty, but I express my disapproval by not being cruel to animals myself.
I support your right to choose what to do with your pet.
Just don't show me pics of your bunny in the moulinex k?

I agree with you on theft, but that has nothing to do with abortion, which is a legal act. Sorry, it is not an analogy at all.

How about someone voting for a political party you detest? You don't like the idea, you think less of the person for their choice (if you like) - but you recognise that in a democracy, you have no power to stop them, nor should you.

And cushie, the only support I would want is the support for my legal right to make that choice just because I felt it was right. And perhaps the acknowledgement that how I felt about it afterwards was my business and no-one else's.

Again, cruelty to animals is illegal. Not an analogy.

I think it should be a supported experience, and it wasn't.

I was made to feel like a bad, nasty woman on a conveyor belt in a clinic and it was all my fault.

Netto, your last sentence in that post fills me with terror - note to self, get my appointment to get my coil checked .

The sad thing is that there are some women who treat abortion as a feminist issue, that it is a womans right to choose and therefore use it as a form of contraception. Thankfully these women are in the minority but i have encountered them in the past. I am a feminist, i do not feel that abortion is a right and i think it would be a very sorry situation if the procedure that youngwomanwholives in a shoe describes wasn't in place. I know a woman who had an abortion, without this sort of counselling and she has regretted it for the rest of her life, her mental health suffering significantly. Im not saying the counselling would have changed her mind, but it might have helped her to live with her decision.

I think that every woman needs to be comfortable with this decision, its a MASSIVE decision, and as such, should not be trivialised.

oh netto, sorry my flippant post to your last remark was with regards to merina coil, you have reposted while i dithered and typed/

Sunshine, if it isn't a right, what is it? A privilege? One that can be withdrawn?

I take your point about seriousness (and even purely on health grounds, agree it shouldn't be used as contraception), but it MUST be a right. Anything else is too easy to change or curtail.

Not liking the way some women approach it is the price of keeping what IMO is a vital human right.

stillfrazzled
"if it isn't a right, what is it? A privilege? One that can be withdrawn?"

Of course.

The idea that abortion is a human right is a novelty of our culture.
Slavery was once regarded as a "right" too.

Well, I had an abortion when I was 17. It was the right thing to do and I don't feel guilty about it, nor do I talk about it much either. I did not make the decision easily but in the circumstances it was very much the right thing to do.

I understand that this is a sensitive issue and painful for some but why the hell should women not speak out about having an abortion and not feeling guilty? This whole assumption that a woman will be racked with guilt after having an abortion is something that is used to fudge the issue and make it harder for women to make the decision to have them.

I'm glad that the Op has been brave enough to start this thread.

You do come up with some interesting comparisons .

We're obviously going to have to agree to differ. Having already been compared to a slaver, an animal abuser and a criminal I am not confident that the point I'm trying to make (I make my choices, you make yours regarding legal acts, we both butt out of each others' business) is really getting across.

Feeling gulity is irrelevant to the issue of abortion.
l I believe that it is wrong to own a slave and it should be illegal.
Whether you feel guilty about it is neither here nor there as far as I am concerned.
How many slaveowners felt guilty? They were doing what they had to do to get by. Most farms would have gone under if they had given their legally bought slaves their freedom.
It would have been like expecting farmers today to give away their Massey Fergusons.

"I make my choices, you make yours regarding legal acts, we both butt out of each others' business"
That bit is coming across loud and clear.
So can I dismember my hamster now without getting any grief about it?

Dunno. Is it legal to dismember hamsters?

Then madam, the law is an ass

Eh?

Small wonder you're still frazzled.
Let me help you understand:
A law that allows for the death by dismemberment of a sentient fetus, but not a hamster, is an ass.

The trouble is, things are only legal or illegal because as a group of people, a society, we decide whether to allow it or not. So theft is only illegal because we have decided it should be. Abortion is still illegal unless there is a lifethreatening problem for the baby or the mother (categories A and B) or if there would be a significant detriment (but not lifthreatening) to the health including mental health of the mother. This is the category C abortion. Over 99% of category C abortions are due to a threat to the mental health of the mother - there is no legal elective abortion in the UK just because you feel like it, you hace to convince two doctors that your mental health would seriously suffer if you didn't have a termination.

A lot of the recent press news is surrounding the question of whether mental health is, on balance, best presereved by offering a termination or by witholding one - i.e. yes it is traumatic for a woman to bear an unwanted child, and to raise or give away that child, but it is also traumatic for many (but not all) women to cope with the emotional aftermath of the termination. If the second is worst than the first then most category C abortions are technically illegal, because they would be detrimental to the woman's mental health.

Which brings me back to the OP - the point made, if I get you correctly, is that a lot of the post-abortion trauma is actually just society's expectation that you ought to suffer and feel guilty, i.e. is unnecessary, preventable trauma if we all agreed this was an ordinary acceptable thing to do. Noone should tell you that you "ought to feel guilty". On the other hand, many women do genuinely feel remorse, grief, are affected by "what ifs", have fertility impaired by the procedure etc. And noone should tell you that you "ought to get over it and move on".

A really interesting dilemma - if (and its a big if) it could be proved that on average the mental health of the pregnant woman suffers more from having an abortion than from carrying the baby to term, should we allow these abortions at all? Is it parochial to attempt to "protect" women in this way? Should we follow the informed consent route? Should counselling be mandatory and separate from the organisations which profit from providing an abortion service, and are therefore bound to be pro-choice in stance? Are they bound to be pro-choice in stance?

Minefield!

I have not posted before, but have read with interest.
queenmary do get your facts right: a fetus does NOT feel pain (the neocortex is formed in the 3rd trimester) and they are not sentient (Rhawn, 1999, an academic article on Fetal Brain and Cognitive Development).
A hamster, however, does feel pain and does have a consciousness. Not to mention stillfrazzled's distinction that dismembering a hamster is in fact illegal!

correction: category C requires proof of a detriment to the mother or her other children, not just the mother.

escapeartist the arguments about third trimester neocortex development are contradicted by studies of neonatal pain for infants born in the second trimester - they clearly have a pain response. Links on the Bliss message board somewhere.... could search for them if anyone wants them. It is routine practise to offer extrememly premature infants pain relief on the clear clinical understanding that pain is present.

the tenuous conclusion now is that babies in the womb are somehow in a state of sedation through a process which noone has proposed and for which there is no evidence, and when they are born the are suddenly able to feel pain even though a baby of the same gestation in utero wouldn't be able to. IMHO it's bosh and the experience of pain comes much earlier, certainly before 24 weeks.

im (limited) e, most are done on cat c if an unwanted pg. no real discussion of maternal mental health takes place. it's a box ticking exercise to legitimise the surgery. (rightly imo)

I dont the Op is bragging or that anyone should feel ashamed or guilty , some people feel uncomfortable with the idea of abortion and it makes them feel
better knowing women are racked with guilt for ever .

I am glad the op has been spared years of feeling guilty or ashamed. It would be much worse bringing an unwanted child into the world , parenthood is hard for those whoare ready for it , for someone who is not ready and geniunely did not want a child it is much worse on the child and parent.

The actual number of late term abortions (after 24 weeks) in the UK is actually tiny: only 136 in 2009 mostly due to catastrophic foetal abnormalities. It's a total red herring to talk about late-term abortions.

Michaela: "if (and its a big if) it could be proved that on average the mental health of the pregnant woman suffers more from having an abortion than from carrying the baby to term, should we allow these abortions at all?"

The key words here are on average. A decision should not be taken about an individual woman on the basis of an average. It should be taken on whether, for her, the mental anguish of having an unwanted pregnancy and child will be greater than the mental anguish of an abortion. And I think that, in pretty much all cases, the woman herself will be the best judge of that.