Comments Elsewhere

ericvfsu: “However, it is also possible that having an abortion does increase somewhat the possibility of depression or other disorders. Is anyone out there willing to objectively consider that possibility? I know, I know – more studies, better designed studies, this one not conclusive … All true. However, if an effect were at some time established, how would you digest that fact? Just asking.”

That’s a good question, and an important one.

I can’t speak for anyone else, of course, but my answer is that I’d digest it the same way I’d digest any other fact about medical risks attendant on abortion, or any other medical procedure: it should be honestly and neutrally documented as a side effect, and women allowed to make their own decisions in light of the knoweldge. (The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for how I’d take a genuine demonstration that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer, if it ever happened.) I think Lucinda Cisler makes the point excellently in “Abortion law repeal (sort of): a warning to women,” in regard to the particular case of restrictions for “safety” in the case of late-term abortions:

3: Abortions may not be performed beyond a certain time in pregnancy, unless the woman’s life is at stake. Significantly enough, the magic time limit varies from bill to bill, from court decision to court decision, but this kind of restriction essentially says two things to women: (a) at a certain stage, your body suddenly belongs to the state and it can force you to have a child, whatever your own reasons for wanting an abortion late in pregnancy; (b) because late abortion entails more risk to you than early abortion, the state must “protect” you even if your considered decision is that you want to run that risk and your doctor is willing to help you. This restriction insults women in the same way the present “preservation-of-life” laws do: it assumes that we must be in a state of tutelage and cannot assume responsibility for our own acts. Even many women’s liberation writers are guilty of repeating the paternalistic explanation given to excuse the original passage of U.S. laws against abortion: in the nineteenth century abortion was more dangerous than childbirth, and women had to be protected against it. Was it somehow less dangerous in the eighteenth century? Were other kinds of surgery safe then? And, most important, weren’t women wanting and getting abortions, even though they knew how much they were risking? “Protection” has often turned out to be but another means of control over the protected; labor law offers many examples. When childbirth becomes as safe as it should be, perhaps it will be safer than abortion: will we put back our abortion laws, to “protect women”?