Recent legislation regulating abortion in New York and the fervor around a similar proposed bill in Virginia have ignited a national conversation around later abortion. The president included the issue in his State of the Union remarks and the debate is raging on cable news shows, in opinion pieces and social media posts. But this proxy war is not about the later abortions actually happening in the country.
We know because we are the families who have gotten them.
We are later abortion patients and their partners who are concerned with the politicization of this issue at the expense of both truth and compassion. While we do not speak for every later abortion patient and do not pretend to represent everyone who seeks this care, we can speak for ourselves and our families.
The stories we hear being told about later abortion in this national discussion are not our stories. They do not reflect our choices or experiences. These hypothetical patients don’t sound like us or the other patients we know. The barbarous, unethical doctors in these scenarios don’t sound like the people who gave us compassionate care.
Our cases, the ones that would be affected by the legislation in question, constitute a relatively small number of abortions. So while these cases are incredibly rare and specific to each patient’s unique circumstances, they are being broadly misrepresented and are playing an outsized role on the national stage.
The decision to terminate a pregnancy is never a political one, it is a personal one. Later abortions stories are often ones of tragedy and loss. For others they are stories of relief. They feature struggles with hope, women betrayed by their bodies and the incredible complexity of pregnancy. Many stories are ones of overcoming the many obstacles and restrictions our states have placed on these procedures.
We are not monsters. We are your family, your neighbors, someone you love. We are you, just in different circumstances. Due to ignorance, many of us may not have supported later abortion access before facing a crisis ourselves, accepting restrictions on healthcare we never imagined needing. Now we recognize that our laws may not be able to draw neat lines around each of our stories, allowing these procedures in certain, hyper-specific circumstances and not in others, because we know people will be left outside those lines. As people privileged enough to speak up, that is unacceptable to us.
Americans must start having a more nuanced conversation about later abortion that reflects the experiences of patients and the expertise of physicians. We need to start listening to people with first-hand experience instead of talking heads, priests and politicians.
We’ll tell you our stories if you can muster the compassion necessary to hear them. We understand that talking about later abortion can be uncomfortable. It requires us confronting the terrible reality that pregnancy, even a wanted one, is not always a blessing. It means we have to consider decisions being made with imperfect information. When we talk about later abortion, concepts we thought were simple become complicated.
Therefore we are asking Americans to weigh the restrictions on later abortion against our stories, not the hypothetical cases that have been fabricated to win political points.
With the manufactured crisis over later abortion, opportunistic politicians are seeking to exploit an already stigmatized, marginalized group of people. Our hope is that this crusade may yet lead somewhere constructive, that as ideologues turn the country’s attention to abortions that happen later in pregnancy, there may be space for education and empathy.
This is only possible if it includes the stories of real patients. And there is no good faith effort at a conversation on later abortion that does not include us.
Signed,
Scott Agatone, Pennsylvania
Jonathan Arzt, New York
Lindsay Arzt, New York
Amy Avery, California
K. Barnidge, Missouri
Peter Barar, Texas
Michael Barcone, New York
David Barnes, California
Lori Beiner, New York
Julie Bindeman, PsyD, Maryland
Lee Blecher, Maryland
Mia Blecher, Maryland
Sarah Bogdanski, New York
Heather Browne, Virginia
Katherine Bryant M.D., Virginia
Kimberly Buller, California
Susan Burgess, South Carolina
Egypt Burton Charles, Georgia
E. Chanzes, Georgia
J. Chanzes, Georgia
Erika A. Christensen, New York
N. Clark, California
Katrina Co, DMD, Florida
Katie Coyle, New Jersey
Jeimy Cruz, California
Malika Daniels, Georgia
Kate DeMonte, Illinois
Krista Burnett Drake, Indiana
Cassie Dunbar, Kansas
Karen Engelhart, New Jersey
Holly Fahner, Michigan
Ashley Feco, Missouri
Carla J Finis, Idaho
S. Margot Finn, Ph.D., Michigan
Brittan Foster, Arizona
Rachel Freedman, Ph.D., Maryland
Dessi Freeman-Barnes, California
Val Goehring, Maryland
Jillian Goldman, Pennsylvania
Krista Goodrich, Maine
Kate Grum, Pennsylvania
Laura Guerrero, New York
Robyn Gurin, New York
Nicole Gunderson, Minnesota
Nada Haq-Siddiqi, New York
Alejandro Hernandez, California
S. Holt, California
Erica Goldblatt Hyatt, DSW, LCSW, MBE, Pennsylvania
Susan Ito, California
Ashley Johnson, Washington
Erika King, Missouri
Marissa Lawson, Florida
Debbie Lewis, California
Amy Lynn, Colorado
Katie Lyon, California
Emily Lopez, Illinois
John Mayer, Oregon
A. J. Mazur, Michigan
A. G. Mazur, Michigan
Tara Mendola, PhD, Massachusetts
Stephanie Millender-Grubb, California
Sonya Miller, Pennsylvania
Gabriela Morrison, Oklahoma
Laurie Myers, California
Hanna Neuschwander, Oregon
A. Noland, Florida
Miriam A. Nunberg, Esq., New York
Sarah Orem, Virginia
Marketia Patterson, Georgia
Katie Paul, California
Martha Pearson, New York
Thomas Pearson, New York
Doug Patterson, Georgia
Dana Peirce, DVM, Maine
Rose Penchansky, Tennessee
Melissa Perisanidis, Connecticut
Megan T. Piasecki, Ohio
Dan Probst, Missouri
Patricia Probst, Missouri
Jenifer Putalavage-Ross, Texas
Kala Radigan, New York
Josh Riman, New York
Louis Romero, New York
Kelsey Rooney-Dorst, Oklahoma
Lamar Saxon, Texas
Reneé Saxon, Texas
Lauren Sharpe, New York
K. Shea New Jersey
Dana Sloope, Florida
Adam Sloope, Florida
Amy Soprych, RN Illinois
Dorothy Spence, Oregon
Shira Sussi, New York
Adam Swank, Iowa
Mindy Swank, Iowa
Kadie Tannehill, Missouri
Justin Tannehill, Missouri
Chris Taylor, Colorado
Margaret Thoele, Illinois
Ryan Thoele, Illinois
S. Thompson, Alabama
Alexandra Tronnes, Wisconsin
Hadleigh Tweedall, Tennessee
James Utz, Missouri
Melanie Wahl, Missouri
Jonathan Watling, MD, Maine
Dana Weinstein, Maryland
Ayanna Whitmore, New York
Nicole Williams, Kansas
Phil Wood, Missouri
Janet Zaretsky, Texas
Note: This letter was updated on 2/8/19 following the State of the Union
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contact: abortionpatients.com@gmail.com
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