Many don’t believe that over 60% of abortions performed in Canada or the US involve coercion to some degree (usually by a mate or parent). That’s a conservative figure. While some claim having a ‘choice’ is an essential part of a civilized country, it is evident that the decision is not purely between a woman and her doctor. As part of daily life in this country, girl gets pregnant, and boy does everything he can to manipulate her to have an abortion. The only ones ignoring this reality are those who place the right to ‘choose’ above the welfare of women.
Why would any Canadian woman tolerate being coerced into such a decision? Aren’t we all strong, independent, assertive, and outspoken? I catch wind of atrocities like this, befalling women in countries like Afghanistan, and the problem is blamed on cultural mentality.
The central reason is despairingly simple: Women’s lives are not valued, and even women themselves perceive their suffering as being unavoidable.
Not only in Afghanistan do oppressive mentalities plague women. In this country, a girl or woman discovering she is unexpectedly pregnant knows instantly that actually choosing whether to carry through or terminate the pregnancy is unavoidable. If she herself wants to keep her baby, she is fully aware that someone else will, at the very least, encourage her to look at her ‘options.’ In carrying through the pregnancy, the baby then becomes her ‘choice.’
I’m doubtful that this is what the pro-choice movement set out to achieve. Unlikely that, from its inception, part of its mission statement was: “…so that every woman getting unexpectedly pregnant would feel some degree of pressure to have an abortion.”
So, just like in Afghanistan:
Questioning culture is, of course, a politically incorrect approach. But we must refuse to bow before the altar of tolerance when it comes to what is truly unacceptable, wherever it occurs.
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I’m doubtful that this is what the pro-choice movement set out to achieve. Unlikely that, from its inception, part of its mission statement was: “…so that every woman getting unexpectedly pregnant would feel some degree of pressure to have an abortion.”
Thank you for this! Some people have the idea that a pressure has to be direct and intentional in order to exist, and thus ignore the subtle ways that individual actions affect the population as a whole. If only life were that easy.
Many people assume “choice” to be always and everywhere liberating. I always remember that scene in Sophie’s Choice, where the concentration camp guard forces Sophie to choose between her daughter and her son. She chooses, because not to choose means they both die immediately, but it haunts her until she can’t live with it anymore. A woman should never be put in that position. And yet, as you say, every woman in Canada that finds herself unexpectedly pregnant is immediately burdened with that choice.
The sad double irony here is that there is no shortage of people in the West who would promote legal, accessible abortion as part of solving the horrible maternal mortality problems in Afghanistan. And then, once it became legal and accessible, it would no doubt be used as a tool to get rid of all those inconvenient baby girls (as it has in India), thereby becoming an even greater tool of female repression.