childless women who aborted their babies

Will Abortion Bans Mean Fewer Childless Couples?

Sue Fagalde Lick abortion, abortion and childlessness, childless women who aborted their babies, men who don't want children, Roe v. Wade, women who don't want children , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Since a June 2022 Supreme Court decision allowed U.S. states to ban or severely restrict abortion rights, the birth rate has gone up, particularly where it’s most difficult to get an abortion. Not a surprise, right?

Dubbed the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court ruling said there is no constitutional right to an abortion. The ruling ended nearly 50 years of legal abortion under Roe v. Wade and opened the doors for the individual states to make their own laws about abortion.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which offers a state by state analysis of the abortion situation, says fourteen states have outright bans on abortion. Abortion is protected by state law in twenty-one states and the District of Columbia and is at risk of being severely limited or prohibited in twenty-six states and three territories.

In an NPR interview, Caitlin Myers, a professor at Middlebury College, discussed a study by Middlebury and Georgia Tech that showed a 2.3 percent increase in births. They also see people flooding from abortion-banning states to other states for abortions. These options are not available to everyone. In a large state like Texas, for example, where births increased 5.3 percent, they might have to drive hundreds of miles to find a state where abortion is still allowed. Travel to access abortion requires money, time off work, and sometimes access to child care. Aborting via medication by mail is another option, but it may not be the best option for everyone, and it’s not easy to get a prescription.

While people are still having abortions, some feel trapped in unwanted pregnancies and are having babies they might not otherwise have had, Myers said.

In an article for NBC News, writer Suzanne Gamboa said a study by the University of Houston’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality showed the Texas teen birthrate for Latinos has risen dramatically since the abortion ban. “Texas women delivered 16,147 more babies in 2022 than in 2021. Of those, 84 percent were delivered by Latinas. In addition, the average fertility rate rose 5.1 percent among Latinas while the overall fertility rate for Texas rose by 2 percent.”

Another factor: For many, abortion is something done quietly, often in secret. How do you keep it secret when you have to go to such efforts to find someone willing to do the procedure? It might be easier to just have the baby.

What has this got to do with being childless by marriage? When I was researching my Childless by Marriage book, I was astonished by the number of women who had had abortions, sometimes more than one. Many were encouraged or even ordered to do so by partners who did not want any children. For some, the aborted pregnancy turned out to be their only chance to become mothers. If abortion had not been legal and relatively easy to obtain, would they have had children? Would they be raising them alone after their men dumped them?

I have more questions than answers about all of this. I am Catholic and not a big fan of abortion, but I hate to see people’s rights so restricted. I have not had an abortion, nor have I helped anyone else through the process, so you readers may know more about it than I do. What do you think? How will the abortion ban affect people in situations where one partner is unwilling to have children? If you have personal experience in this area, would you be willing to tell us about it? Have you considered what you would do if you fell pregnant and didn’t feel able to have the child? If you live in another country, what is the abortion situation there?

(photo by Ashley Jones, Pexels.com)

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The marvelous Jody Day interviewed me on June 29 about my new book No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s. If you missed it, you can watch it here.

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‘He made me have an abortion’

Sue Fagalde Lick abortion and childlessness, childless women who aborted their babies, men forcing women into abortions

Relax, that headline does not refer to me. I have never been pregnant, never had an abortion.

It refers to the many women I have interviewed or read about who aborted their only pregnancies because the men in their lives insisted they weren’t ready for children. This makes me so angry. The question isn’t whether or not one believes abortion is wrong. The question is whether somebody else has the right to tell you what to do with the fetus in your own body. What man is worth letting them make such a huge decision for you? It’s the worst form of abuse. In most of these cases, the women were not teenagers. They were grown women who in other circumstances would have welcomed a baby. But because Mr. I Don’t Want to Be a Dad said no–or not yet, which eventually became no–they aborted.

They thought they would keep the man by aborting the baby, but in almost every case, the man dumped them anyway. And the women never got over it, especially when they lost their only chance to be mothers.

Laura always thought she’d have children, but she didn’t marry until she was 29. Her stepchildren were nearly as old as she was. Her husband seemed to want more children, but when she conceived, he changed his mind. “It’s either the baby or me,” he told her. Remembering this ten years later, she begins to cry. Her husband assured her they could try again later, when it was a better time, so she had an abortion. But every time she tried to talk about having a baby, he refused to discuss it. “That attitude went on for seven more years.” She pauses to blow her nose. “I just turned to him one day and said, ‘Bob, are we or are we not going to have kids.?’ And he said no.”

Sarah did it more than once. Shortly after she left her home country to be with Clay, she discovered she was pregnant. Clay said it was too soon. They needed time to get a house, to become more settled in together. She agreed to have an abortion, thinking there would be another chance. But the day she came home from the hospital, he told her, “No, we’re not going to have kids.” 

Sarah was 33 then and still hoping, but he didn’t change his mind. In fact, the same scenario happened again. This time she had deliberately stopped taking her birth control pills. He was furious and insisted she have another abortion. She did. “He talks so reasonably,” she said, her voice trialing off.

Grrr.

I have interviewed other women who were comfortable with their decision to have an abortion. They had not planned to have children and believe they did the right thing. For example, Joyce and her husband Tom got pregnant when her IUD failed. They agreed to abort and believe they made the right choice.

I’m not here to debate whether abortion is right or wrong or whether or not it should be legal. It’s a personal choice. What I’m saying is that if you are the one who is pregnant, you have to be the one to make the decision. Don’t let anybody force you into it, especially if you know you want children. If the man in your life is insisting you have an abortion that you don’t want, dump him, not the baby.

What do you think about all this?