'She made me feel dumb and trashy': Women attacked for making choices

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

Life and death

Abortion: The rise of anti-abortion terrorism
By Kimberly Greager
Native Sun News Today Correspondent
nativesunnews.today

Since the pivotal 1973 case of Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in the United Sates, not only have the abortion laws been under attack, so have the women that receive abortions and the doctors that provide them.

The most common way women are attacked for their choice to get an abortion is through shame. Rose traveled to Fargo, North Dakota, in 1990 when she was a freshman in college to receive her abortion. She lived in a small, eastern South Dakota town, and the Fargo clinic was closer to her than the Sioux Falls one. She says the actual surgery was fine and she was treated well in Fargo, but how she was treated once she returned to her home-town health clinic for her after-care was detrimental to her self-esteem.

“She made me feel like shit, when I most needed support and perhaps some tenderness. She hurt my feelings and helped to trash my self-esteem, she made me feel dumb and trashy,” Rose says.

Rose was initially scolded for being irresponsible and “partying too much” by the care-giver at her local health clinic. When Rose protested by telling the care-giver that she had been on birth control for years but had forgotten to take a pill during finals, she was then told she would “probably drop out soon” anyway. She was so hurt and traumatized that she refused to go for any regular pap-smears until years later.

She went on to complete college, and today Rose is the proud mother of two, a successful business owner, and a human and civil rights activist.

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Abortion. Few words incite so much emotion, or conflict.

Of the health care giver who made her feel so bad about herself years ago, she says this, “I proved her wrong. Maybe those harsh words made me the mom I am today, very open and honest with both my kids about all forms of sexuality and protections to take. What's right, what's wrong, freedom of choice and that their bodies are theirs, they are the ones who say what can or cannot happen to them. That the words yes and no are strong words....and standing up for your rights...whatever you believe, is alright. That no one has the right to talk to you or treat you like shit. So maybe…just maybe, I'd tell her thank you for making me a stronger woman than I might have been.”

While shame is the most common feeling women experience when they have an abortion, some feel real fear.

Lily and her husband decided not to have children for a number of reasons, and though they used birth control, she still became pregnant twice. Lily and her husband decided together to terminate both pregnancies.

“I was on birth control both times I became pregnant. I was as responsible as I could be regarding contraception…My choices were respected by my husband, and it was a mutual decision. There is no shame in my circumstances, so I cannot be shamed,” she says.

Her first abortion was in 2013 while she was living in Florida, her second was in 2015 while she was living in South Dakota, though the laws in South Dakota ultimately forced her to travel to Colorado for the second abortion.

“The date of my 2015 abortion was almost exactly two weeks prior to the day that the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs was attacked by a man with anti-abortion views, who called himself ‘a warrior for the babies.’ He killed 3 people that day, and injured 9 others. I cried that day, for those injured and killed, and for all of those who will live in fear that someone might kill them for making choices about their own bodies," Lily says, "It’s taken me a long time to get to this point, but I won’t be afraid… I will always support every woman who comes to the decision to have an abortion, or not to have an abortion. It is often a very difficult choice, either way, and every woman deserves a voice and a choice, and every woman deserves to have control over her own body and life…Right now, we face a staggeringly upsetting reality where we can’t choose, whether through location, finances, parents, spouses, religion, legislation, politics. There is no choice if there is no realistic alternative. And if we can’t choose, do we really have any freedom?”

Threats and violence against abortion clinics is nothing new - since Roe v. Wade, just some of the acts of violence have included 187 arsons, 42 bombings, 100 acid attacks, 26 attempted murders, and 11 murders, according to a 2017 Violence and Disruption Statistic report by the National Abortion Federation (NAF).