According to most feminist ideology, legal abortion frees women from limiting their career goals to care for an unwanted child, increases their independence, and puts them on equal terms with men.
However, modern feminists and society as a whole often overlook the fact that the availability of abortion on-demand makes women the subject to the desires of others.
Its legalization allows husbands, boyfriends, families, and even other women advocating in the name of “liberation” and “feminism” to pressure women to abort an unplanned pregnancy. Women often feel that unless they abort, they will have no support or future. While the outside party continues on as if nothing has changed, the woman is the one who lives with the mental and physical consequences.
MTV’s Markai and James, a teenage couple who had decided to abort their unborn child last year, are one example.
After her abortion, Markai discusses the “necessity” of the procedure and how abortion clinic workers coaxed her to think of her baby as “nothing more than cells.” In response, James refers to the unborn child as a “thing”. Yet, Markai is upset by this statement. With tears in her eyes, she points to her already born child sitting across the table from her and claims to James, “You will never feel my pain…A ‘thing’ can turn out like that…Nothing but a bunch of cells can be her”. As a man, James had not even realized the pain such a seemingly necessary decision had caused Markai.
Katrina Fernandez’s story further demonstrates the oppression caused by abortion. After weeks of postponing abortion appointments and hoping for reasons not to go through with the procedure, Katrina chose to abort. Fifteen years later, she now claims, “Not a single living soul told me I didn’t have to do [it]”. Because of societal pressure, countless women like Katrina have suffered depression and guilt for years due to their “choice”.
In 1923, Alice Paul, author of the original Equal Rights Amendment called abortion “the ultimate exploitation of women.” That statement still rings true today.
Abortion does not empower women. It merely denies a unique and special part of being a woman: the ability to bring new human life into the world. Because abortion is so readily available, many women are pressured to make choices against their will. Is this true independence?
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