In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Janice Mac Avoy, one of 113 attorneys who submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to strike down contested provisions in Texas' omnibus antiabortion-rights law (HB 2), writes about how her decision to have an abortion at age 18 allowed her to achieve "personal and professional success."
Mac Avoy explains that she learned she was pregnant 35 years ago, when she was 18 and "about to become the first person in [her] family to graduate from high school." Mac Avoy had secured a college scholarship and had plans to attend law school. "I was determined to break a cycle of poverty and teenage pregnancy that had shaped the lives of the previous three generations of women in my family -- all mothers by age 18," she writes.
Mac Avoy writes that she obtained an abortion with the help of a friend who drove her to Planned Parenthood. "This was a deeply personal and private choice that I have never regretted," she continues, noting, "I also never felt compelled to talk about it publicly until now, as I witness the erosion of the very freedoms on which I built my life."
According to Mac Avoy, "Across the country, abortion is becoming a right in theory but not in fact, particularly for young, poor women -- like I was at 18." She adds that abortion stigma has "creat[ed] a culture of shame that silences women who have exercised their constitutional rights" and created a "vacuum [that] has been filled with misperception and misinformation -- including from the Supreme Court." She writes, "We are told that abortion is harmful to women and that those who choose to have one come to regret it." Such claims are "backward ... paternalistic," and "wrong," Mac Avoy writes, noting that "95 percent of women who have had an abortion say that it was the right decision for them, and even among those who expressed some regret, 89 percent state that having the abortion was still the right decision."
She continues, "Nearly 1 in 3 women in this country will have an abortion," which "means that while no one talks about it, pretty much everyone, including the Supreme Court justices, whether they are aware of it, knows someone, works with someone and respects and cares about someone who has had an abortion -- and doesn't regret it." According to Mac Avoy," "It is critical that the court hear the voices of women like me whose access to safe and legal abortion allowed us to take control of our destinies and decide for ourselves when or if we would start our families. It is critical that we share with the court what abortion means to us: the ability to break the cycle of poverty and teenage motherhood, to escape abusive relationships, to achieve higher education and to preserve our health."
Noting that she would have been unable to access abortion care if the challenged provisions in HB 2 were in effect at the time, Mac Avoy writes, "If I had been forced to raise a child 35 years ago, I could not have put myself through college and Columbia Law School," obtained a job at a "prestigious law firm and risen through the ranks to become a partner," or "met my husband and given birth to two amazing children in my late 30s when I was financially and emotionally ready to raise them."
She writes that while every woman's story in the amicus brief is different, every signatory is "successful because we exercised our constitutionally protected right to have an abortion without interference." She concludes, "The Supreme Court must once again reaffirm this freedom so that my daughter does not grow up in a country where her reproductive choices are as limited as her grandmother's were" (Mac Avoy, Washington Post, 1/22).
On Roe Anniversary, Mother of Two Shares Reasons for Having Abortion
In a related opinion piece in the Washington Post, playwright and abortion-rights advocate Karen Hartman discusses her decision to have an abortion at age 42, when she was married and caring for two children.
Hartman, co-founder of Together for Abortion, writes that while she always supported abortion rights, she was unsure about having the procedure because she had "never known of anyone in my situation considering an abortion." She writes, "I didn't fit the profile you tend to hear about: an impoverished teen, overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising a child and faced with the prospect of having to drop out of school." She explains, "I was happily married. Both my husband and I had established ... careers. And we were veteran parents. In addition to my [college-age] stepson, we had a six-year-old son. We could do this -- if we wanted to."
After deciding to have an abortion, Hartman notes that, when going to the clinic to obtain care, she "was struck that both the woman before me and the woman after me already had kids at home, and spousal-looking men in the waiting room." She writes, "It turns out that 60 percent of women who have abortions are already mothers. As I've become more of an abortion-rights activist, I've learned that married mothers represent a subset of secrecy and shame within some very progressive circles. I wasn't as anomalous as I'd thought."
Hartman notes that while she was able to re-focus on her career after having an abortion, she was also reluctant to disclose her decision to undergo the procedure because she was concerned "that people would judge [her] as a bad mother, both for accidently getting pregnant and for ending the pregnancy" and that she "didn't want to expose [her]self and [her] family in order to make a point."
However, she explains that while she "value[s] the right to privacy ... its byproducts can be loneliness, silence and shame." Hartman writes, "Perhaps the one third of American women who choose abortion before age 45 can use a little less privacy, and a little more solidarity. That's why, two years after my abortion, I offer my story" (Hartman, Washington Post, 1/22).
