In this essay, I share my personal take on abortion and shed light on the transcultural stigma surrounding the issue faced in America and abroad. I offer a thought-provoking exploration of the controversial history, patriarchal society as a whole, the and ongoing challenges of reproductive rights.
Dalianny Corporan - 1/13/2023
I hear Conservatives ask that question all the time to progressives like me who support the right to an abortion. To be honest, I don’t remember who I was before my existence. I did not know who I was before I was born, or what my thoughts or feelings were if I had any at all. I do not know if a fetus thinks or feels, but what I do know is that many Conservatives are constantly fixated on a 6-week fetus’ heartbeat. There are two stereotypes of pro-lifers, the swooning mothers, and the slut-shaming incels disguised as “Christians.” Some of them of real, but I know that’s not all you guys, so please just be patient and read my essay. I think y’all can learn something.
So I’ll answer your question: I would not care if my mother decided to abort me.
I know this triggers you. So, before you shoot back at me, I would like to ask you back, would you really care if she did? Would you have mourned over my death as if you lost your child? Or, would you just have called her a whore and a murderer? Would any of you have tried to convince her to seek out non-existent counseling and support services in her underserved community? Would you have really cared for my life? Or would you only want to end hers?
Life and Children
My mother is not from America. She is from the Dominican Republic where abortion has always been illegal and still is. Luckily, she was supported. I was born in 2001, and she was comfortable having a third child in her love marriage while living in an okayish economy. My parents immigrated to America two years after I was born.
I’ve had the privilege of being a young woman raised in America where the right to have an abortion seemed primordial. I don’t remember a time before the legislation of Roe v Wade because I wasn’t alive on this earth.
The same year Roe v Wade turned into federal law was in 1973 in America, my mother was two years old in the Dominican Republic, and even though the vernaculars were worldly different, the dated, traditional culture was the same: Women should stay at home and be housewives without having a credit card to their name, and men should be the independent providers bringing food to the table.
Twenty-eight years later, she birthed me naturally, and she liked being a housewife, and my father liked being the provider. They liked their traditional lifestyle. My father chose his life, and my mother was pulled into it. She didn’t have the choice to be independent and childless like my father could’ve been. In her time, women were expected to become wives and mothers, and nothing more. If she chose another path, her family and society would have brought her too much shame. My mother was safe within the small, limited perimeters of her life.
Roe v Wade and History and Recent Overturn
The passing of Roe v Wade happened during the ongoing Civil Rights and Feminist Movement. The Feminist Movement, which was dominated by white women, took the attention away from the Black civil rights movement in America. This is why the majority of feminists today fail to see the intersectionality between sex and race.
At the same time, many Dominicans were immigrating to New York City to escape the violent and infamous US military-backed Cabral dictatorship and civil war on the island, but these weren’t my folks. We left in 2003.
According to History, Roe v Wade was a landmark legal decision issued on January 22, 1973, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure across the United States. Before Roe v. Wade, abortion had been illegal throughout much of the country since the late 19th century. Since the 1973 ruling, many states imposed restrictions on abortion rights. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, holding that there was no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion.
For a long time, I felt like it wasn’t in my place to write about abortion. I’ve never had or needed an abortion. I am unable to vote in the United States and implement change in local and national elections, and most Conservatives don’t want to listen to a 20-something-year-old college girl who doesn’t have a full-time job or her own apartment. To be honest, I feel powerless in this fight, but I know my unabating concern for the safety of women and others adds value to the conservation because I know I’m not alone. Too many of us are scared about the future of this country and where it’s heading.
The State of Reproductive Rights in America
Today, up to 22 states have now banned restricted abortions in post-overturning. All the states in the south and southeast region of the United States have either restricted or banned abortion including Louisana, Florida, Missouri, and North and South Carolina. This will leave many girls, women, and many others living in fear.
Rights to contraception are now in danger as well. Now states like Missouri even want to criminalize and ban birth control altogether. What does this mean for women who want to be safe? Can anyone be safe anymore? Are women expected to just be celibate like in my mother’s Catholic country?
It is also important to note birth control is not only a contraceptive. It regulates a woman’s period, relieves endometriosis symptoms, and prevents ovarian cysts. Birth control is supposed to be a medical resource for women and many others.
I read an article from The New Yorker the women who feel trapped and even sought abortion treatment from Mexico. There is a story of a Texas woman who needed to get an abortion so she can escape her domestic abuse from her husband. American and Mexican women have worked together to facilitate this process. It’s ironic how Mexico is helping Americans while knowing how Americans view Mexico so poorly.
The Stigma of Abortion
Women who seek abortion are often slut-shamed and are accused of being irresponsible murderers by conservatives because of religion. You believe life begins at conception, but what is the life the unwanted child will live? Neglect, abuse, violence. Many times the person who wants the abortion is struggling with their own trauma as well on top of the burden of an unwanted child. Is that a life you want a child of God to live? To live as a burden? I thought we were all supposed to be loved on this earth by our Lord.
And what about the mother? Is it fair that she lives with a child because of cultural stigma because she felt like she had no choice? Why should she live with the burden and the child has to feel that? The child didn’t ask to be born, so why do you want them here so badly?
There are organizations that help women through pregnancy, but what about the undocumented women who cannot apply for these federally funded programs? Even if the undocumented women can apply with a taxpayer number (ITIN), that could impossibly impede them from a path to citizenship. Pregnancy cannot always get easier with help.
Many Conservatives consider the abortion bans as a victory, but this “pro-life” ideology has traumatized many. I read on the news there was a pregnant woman, Nancy Davis, in Louisiana who was forced to travel 1,400 miles to New York while carrying a skull-less fetus because she was denied the right to an abortion at her local hospital. Davis said “I had to carry my baby to bury my baby” because she couldn't abort where she lived and had to travel far to terminate her pregnancy. The ban and restriction of abortion will only hurt and mentally scar women and girls.
Many Conservative women who claim to be “pro-life” have never even been pregnant, and say things like “I would never do that for my child,” but have never been in that kind of situation. Let’s get out of hypotheticals.
Because they’ve never experienced it, they don’t understand the physical and emotional toll it takes on a woman, let alone the trauma from the complications that can happen. That is why there is no empathy. They don’t know what is like to carry a lifeless body like Nancy Davis. They also don’t know what it is like to go through an ectopic pregnancy (a fertilized egg growing outside the uterus) and understand how they will die without a safe abortion procedure. They don’t know what is like to experience a sexual assault and have to relive the violation with a reminder.
Conservative women who can still say there are against abortion by ignoring stories like Nancy Davis and many others should question where their morality lies because those are not the actions of a Christian. Even my Christian parents believe in abortion when a woman has been violated.
I’m lucky enough to not be in a vulnerable position. I live in Delaware where abortion is still protected under the law. I live in a safe, small town with my nuclear family. I don’t worry about the possibility of being homeless, and I don’t have to work and risk being in a predatory environment. I think about the women, girls, and queer people that cannot say the same.
Cisgender women (born female, identify as a woman) are not the only ones affected, but transgender and nonbinary people as well. This will affect transgender men and non-binary who still carry their biologically female productive system. So many of these individuals are left out of the discussion and that saddens me. They deserve a platform too.
Women, Society, and the Power of Words
The leading cause of death for pregnant women is murder.
Why do men not care if they hurt us? Why do men feel entitled to women’s bodies? Why do men think this is okay? What words are said about women towards women?
Women have historically been defined and belittled to their body parts. Many people don’t know that words such as “female” and “vagina” by definition reduce women to their reproductive parts. When they say “the future is female” the phrase is not as empowering as it seems, and the correct anatomical term for a woman’s private area outside sexual reproduction is “vulva.”
The word “hysteria” originates from “uterus” in 1900 BC in Egypt associating women’s internal parts with mental illness. The ancient Egyptians identified the symptoms of hysteria (depression, seizures, imminent death) with spontaneous movements of the uterus. It was the first mental illness labeled on women. Freud deemed hysteria as only exclusive to women. From the beginning, women are out of their minds before men can empathize with their pain.
When a woman speaks her mind, she is powerful. So, what are women taught growing up as girls? Stay quiet. Don’t speak up. Just sit still and be good. Girls and women in society are conditioned to be silenced and our power is taken away.
I know a good Christian wife is to submit to her husband, but we shouldn’t take submissiveness too far. Telling girls and women to “cover-up” to not provoke men and don’t even consider their actions to be predatory and horrific, but expected. I remember being as young as nine years old and men would look at me flirty when I was a kid who barely understood the concept of a kiss. The extremities of Christianity allow evil to be rampant on this earth.
The Future
There will be a new generation of children born into broken homes and adverse situations who can potentially become a threat to society. Child protective services and the foster care system fail to protect and nurture our nation’s children. Not every born person has caring adoptive parents waiting for them. There are too many single women left alone without money or the proper resource to take care of themselves and the child they never wanted.
Society changes when people change. Is this the society you want? Where do the children of God experience unnecessary and preventable suffering and pain? Do you want a child born unwanted?
The woman you see walking inside the clinic who you are so quick to judge was born under the same creator as you. Do you ever consider the pain she is feeling? Do you think she’s happy walking into that clinic? This will be the most difficult decision of her life. She will remember this forever. Do you think she’s happy to experience the excruciating pain of the procedure and the societal guilt that comes with it? Because she knows that will be better than a lifetime of regret and resentment? Why do you want to make this more difficult for her? Because of what the Bible says? Doesn’t the Bible say to love thy neighbor? So why would you give all this hate to this human being that should be given the most support? Do you want to forget she’s a child of God too because of this sin? I thought we were all sinners. Nobody is pure, so what makes you better than her? Because the unborn child could’ve been you?
I want to ask you Conservatives, who are willing to tolerate the suffering and death of others while carrying your guns, what if your mom killed you so she could live?
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