WHEN A discussion is entitled "Abortion: A Woman's Perspective," many would expect a talk highlighting both sides of the abortion debate to clarify a "woman's perspective." But because Hoos for Life hosted last Wednesday's discussion on this topic it was, as expected?, biased.
The discussion, which featured a post-abortive woman and a practicing physician, seemed to focus on the question: "Is abortion good for women?" The flaw in choosing this focus for the discussion is that not many individuals, even abortion proponents, actually believe abortion is "good." Until pro-lifers realize the issue of abortion is a matter of choice and not a matter of good and evil, these discussions will only continue to polarize both sides of the debate.
The discussion opened with a woman describing her personal experience with abortion, which she described as the "murder of [her] own baby." She had been raped while engaged to her current husband and chose to abort the pregnancy because of the unknown paternity of her child. She discussed her experience with post-abortive stress and a sadness that never really went away. She spoke from the heart and said she believes all women will suffer from an abortion.
But the entire time she spoke, I was struck by how she connected all of the depression she felt after the abortion with the abortion itself and not by the rape that resulted in the abortion. Not one time did she discuss healing the wounds of rape and not one time did she discuss how this could have affected her mental condition. For many individuals, keeping a rapist's baby would have resulted in similar stress and depression, a situation that would harm both the unwanted child as well as the mother.
But Dr. Karen Poehailos does not believe abortion is ever the best option for women, not even in situations of rape or when endangering the life of the mother. She provided medical expertise on the topic and informed us that she believes forcing the delivery of a dead baby to save the mother's life is better than purposely killing the baby to save the mother's life. She prefaced this answer by referring to herself as a Catholic and reminding us that she is morally opposed to abortion. And yet, she was supposed to be the medical voice of the discussion. Sure, she discussed all of the short-term and long-term consequences of abortions, such as physical issues like bleeding, low-weight births and an increased risk for breast cancer, and the mental consequences like Post-Abortive Stress Syndrome, even suicide. But she made sure to emphasize throughout her entire presentation that the pro-choice community is providing misguiding data that is misleading women into "hideous" abortions.
Pro-choice individuals do not believe abortion is "good for women's health," as Poehailos says they do. And few argue vehemently that "abortion is safer than childbirth," another myth Poehailos says permeates our society. Abortion should never be anyone's first choice in birth control, and it should never be abused by women as a viable replacement for responsible sexual practices. But the issue Hoos for Life ignored in its discussion is the very important issue of a woman's right to choose to weigh the pros and cons of such a decision for herself. Few women look forward to an abortion, and all women should be provided with the health information Poehailos provided in her discussion. We cannot ignore the harmful consequences of abortion, and we cannot treat it like just another medical procedure, as it has complications all its own. But all women deserve the right to be in control of their own bodies.
Poehailos says some abortion proponents treat abortion as a method of genetic engineering to get rid of children from crisis pregnancies that are more prevalent in minorities and people of lower socioeconomic backgrounds. But she did not discuss the huge issue of unwanted children and our broken foster-care system. It is unfair to a child to be born into an environment where the mother cannot provide for her child. It is also unfair to a mother to carry an unwanted child to term just to put it up for adoption when there are already so many unwanted children in this country.?
Abortion is not purely an issue of medicine, and it is not an issue that everyone can or should agree upon. It is intensely personal and intensely private, and whether abortion opponents can believe it, not every woman wants to have children. Poehailos said she had "never had a woman who didn't look at the floor" when telling her she had had an abortion. And after hearing her views, I know why.
Lindsay Huggins's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reacvhed at lhuggins@cavalierdaily.com.
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