Abortion is a "good thing"?

Telling the Stories Behind the Abortions by Cornelia Dean

Read the Article on NYTimes.com

Published Online Nov. 5, 2007




The photograph summarizes the entire sentiment of the article: abortion is a "good thing"(quote taken from later in the article). Dr. Susan Wicklund, whose career mostly entails performing abortions, seems both celestial and enterprising. The hand placement conveys a sense of resolution, while the upward tilt of her head, facing away from the camera, makes her appear like a visionary, looking ahead to the future. The bright sky reminds one of well-being, and the expansiveness of the sky makes her appear as though she's alone in her "struggle." To me, it even appears like she's floating (like an angel), since you can't see the ground or any landscape. The New York Times' viewpoint on the controversial subject is truly "as clear as day" from the first glance at this photograph.



"Determined that other women should have better reproductive care, she began work as an apprentice midwife and eventually finished college, earned a medical degree and started a practice in which she spends about 90 percent of her time on abortion services. "

Better reproductive care? Not only is Dean determining that an increased availability of information about abortions would constitute "better reproductive care"(emphasis mine), wouldn't "reproductive care" involve PRESERVING the zygote/embryo/fetus/baby? (It's so annoying to have to refer to the baby by different names at different developmental stages!) But, how is preventing reproduction performing reproductive care? The terminology is awkward, and invokes images of doctors addressing legitimate health issues. Last I checked, pregnancy wasn't considered a health problem, except in extremely rare cases. Circulatory issues, diabetes, cancer...these are health problems. Abortion is a procedure utilized to end undesired pregnancies, not to improve the state of a woman's reproductive system; therefore, I would have appreciated if the writer wrote a sentence like, "Determined that other women should have a more pleasant and informative atmosphere while terminating pregnancies...", since this to me is a more accurate phrasing, with less connotations of pregnancy as a medical concern. Notice, by the way, that this article is actually in the "Health" section of the NYTimes.com when abortion may be better categorized as a social or legal issue.

"'We don’t talk about it,' she said in a telephone interview. 'People say, ‘Nobody I know has ever had an abortion,’ and that is just not true. Their sisters, their mothers have had abortions.'"

and

"Dr. Wicklund said that at current rates almost 40 percent of American women have an abortion during their child-bearing years, a figure supported by the Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive health policy. Abortion is one of the most common operations in the United States, she said, more common than tonsillectomy or removal of wisdom teeth. 'Because it is such a secret,' she said, 'we lose sight of how common it is.'”

and

"According to the Guttmacher Institute, about a quarter of pregnancies in the United States end in abortion."


This news story is about Dr. Wicklund's book where she describes, "the circumstances that lead her patients to choose abortion, and the barriers — lack of money, lack of providers, violence in the home or protesters at clinics — that stand in their way," The goal of the book is to " to encourage more open discussion of abortion and its prevalence." Why, then, with this diverse content, does Dean emphasize the abortion rates? There's no mention of the issues that the book directly addresses, only the procedure's prevalence. I speculate that Dean focuses on this point because of the (il)logic that if "everyone's doing it, it must be OK." But really, I wonder how abortion rates can be employed in the argument for or against abortion, since even the most exorbitant of numbers undergoing the procedure would not alter the morality of the action. The morality, not the commonality, is the nucleus of the contention.


"Dr. Wicklund said she would put more credence in opponents of abortion rights if they did more to help women prevent unwanted pregnancies. Instead, she said, many of the protesters she encounters 'are against birth control, period.'"

I actually agree with Wicklund on this one. Abstinence is/has been essentially a myth for decades (for study, click here), so if you want to prevent abortions, you have to prevent pregnancies via birth control. However, I find it very interesting that this is the extent of the elaboration of the pro-life position, and that nowhere in the article does one observe the mention of morality or religion.


Weigh in below!