Misconceptions about reasons for abortion and the complexity of making a choice

ANNA NELSON
Feb 3, 2017
2 min read

Regrettably, most people have an incredibly biased perception on women that decide to go through an abortion and why they choose to do so. Pregnancy termination is a complicated issue and probably one of the hardest decision one has to make in a lifetime.

People need to realize that most women that have made this decision do not do it so lightly. It is usually with a lot of contemplation, soul-searching and weighing out the future scenarios that the final decision is made.

Furthermore, depending upon where the woman lives, she also has to worry about access to safe abortion pills and services. There are many people; however who think that women’s reasons for pregnancy cancellation center around utilizing it simply as a birth control method -

However, that is not the case.

So, why do women have abortions?

Many women of every race, age, education, status, rich or poor who choose to buy abortion pills or services, give reason having to do with the inability to bear the responsibility of being a parent and/or because of other dependents, as well as due to concerns they have about their future children.

These reasons are quite different from the common view that women’s basis for pregnancy terminations center around convenience (an easy way out). It seems that when making an abortive decision, women base their decision on whether they are financially stable enough to care of a child or to support the children they may already have.

Therefore, for those who believe that aborting is the easy way out - women who actually experienced abortion, iterate that it is usually the opposite case.

The pain of knowing that you are not financially capable enough or emotionally/mentally prepared for taking care of a child is difficult for anyone to accept. Therefore, the right to do – something that’s a very difficult and painful decision- is hard for any woman to make. Something that will be with her for the rest of her life.

But you may say what’s so complex about making a decision about abortion?

Having an unplanned pregnancy is not something we would wish for us to happen. Yet, when it occurs there are guaranteed opinions of how a woman “could have let it happen”. The most common of judgments passed by people is that the women facing unplanned pregnancy are responsible because she was not using contraception. This however, couldn’t be farthest from the truth.

It is a statistically proven fact that half of unintended pregnancies happen when the women is on birth control.

Given the aforementioned fact, when faced with the reality that the birth control failure, most find themselves in a dilemma – for some it’s an unthinkable act, while others find that it’s their only way out of their predicament.

Research shows that women who choose an abortion consciously examine the moral aspect of their decision. Ironically, many of these women think that aborting is wrong, however most of them also think that birthing a child – whom they have no means to take care of is more sinful. Therefore, they make the decision to terminate.