Abortion rights and women's nature

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, there were 1.3 million abortion in the year 2000, which means that in that year alone, 2.1% of women 15-44 had one.  I would read the entire report, because it's interesting to note that a woman's age, marital status, religion, ethnic group, whatever, is not a real good indicator of whether or not she will have an abortion. 
The abortion rate is going down, and with widespread contraceptive information, we can probably cut it in half again, especially if emergency birth control becomes widely available.  Still, even if we cut it in half, that means that we can expect around 700,000 abortions a year.  And every single one of those women has a reason--the report breaks it down into categories like "inadequate finances", "not ready", "would change life too much", etc.  Only 3% of women do it for their health, only 3% do it because the fetus is sick or something like that, and only 1% say it's because the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest.
Apparently, the other 93% of women who get abortions are cold and heartless, or so one would think after the explosion that Amy Richards's article describing her experiences with a procedure (not abortion but like it) called selective reduction, where a multiple pregnancy is reduced to one fetus. 
I read this article on Sunday when it came out; my friends and I were hanging out, reading the Times, and auto magazines, drinking coffee and beer and just chatting.  I read a few sentences from it aloud, mostly because alot of people didn't even know that this procedure existed, and I thought my friends would find it interesting.  They did--I pointed out that with all these new fertility drugs on the market, multiple pregnancies are becoming extremely common and that means that this procedure is, too.  In fact, if you are pregnant with 6 or 7, then not having a selective reduction is considered downright irresponsible by a lot of doctors--you are putting yourself and the children you bear in great danger.  Then the conversation moved on and I can assure you that no one even thought for a moment that a woman in Richards's situation was selfish or cold or whatever for doing what she did.  In fact, I said out loud what I said later in my blog, I wouldn't have fussed about it nearly as much as she did.  Her choices seemed to be clear enough--on one hand, she could have one baby and take care of it properly while living her life, and on the other hand, she could turn her health and her livelihood over to the task of bearing three and then be up a creek when it came to actually taking care of them.  No one found this opinion odd.
Little did I know that this makes me and my friends callous and cruel people.  I'm surprised to find out that we are, and I'm sure that they would, too.  On average, I'd say we're good folks if asked.  We pay our taxes without bitching, even give to charity occasionally.  We like to have fun, but if we see someone in trouble we'll help.  The couple who's house I was at intervened when they realized there was a domestic violence situation occuring in their neighborhood.  Fair to middling on the morality scale, I'd say.
Of course, so were alot of Nazis, so I guess we're not off the hook.  But I will say this--the major reason that no one around the table thought the story sad or odd was because we took pity on this woman.  From my point of view, she was in a tough spot and she did the right thing.  It's exactly what I would suggest to a friend who came to me in this situation for advice--give one baby a good life instead of give three a tough one.  And I would not recommend that out of some callous, selfish place, but out of genuine concern for my friend and the family she is planning.

But, according to comments like these at Trish Wilson's (not Trish's post itself, which I thought was very well-put), women who just suck it up and get this procedure done are selfish.  And when pressed, a number of people complained not about Richards's reasoning so much as her attitude.  So cold.  So callous.  So analytical.  And her boyfriend!  So compliant.  So complacent.  Just rolling over and accepting his girlfriend's decision without a fight.

There is little doubt that if Richards had taken the proper feminine attitude towards her procedure, then she would have garnered alot more sympathy.  Perhaps a little weeping for the children that might have been?  A bit more melancholy and grief?  Serious regret that things had to be this way?  The perfect model, it seems to me, for women who do something that is frowned upon by official society is that of the prostitute with the heart of gold--particularly the one in Crime and Punishment.  I wish that I did not have to do what I have to, but oh, society has put me in this rough spot and every day I live with regret for my immoral actions. 

I don't have to point out that this irritates me.  It irritates me especially for personal reasons--I, like Richards, have been called out all over the place for not having, or at least pretending to have the proper feminine attitude towards things.  Particularly in the arena of child-bearing.  I've never really wanted to have kids, not since I was a kid myself.  And much of the time when people would ask and get my honest answer, this pious look came over their faces and they'd say, "Oh, you'll change your mind when you get older."  And now that I'm older, the reply has changed a great deal.  They seem concerned for me, like there is something wrong with me.  I've had men and women both suggest and sometimes outright say that I'm not really a woman if I don't want children. 
I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  It's a well-worn cultural myth that our uteruses send out baby rays that we are powerless to resist.  The most common manifestation of this myth is the biological clock--the belief that once a woman has reached a certain age and hasn't had a baby, her body goes into overdrive and her brains leak out of her head and it's all she can do to keep from tackling the next man and insisting that he impregnate her right this minute.  Exhibit A:  Ally McBeal. 
Under such a belief, it's not to see why we might judge a woman harshly who sucks it up and thinks analytically about her decisions regarding childbirth.  We don't think of women as analytical thinkers, and especially not so when it comes to children.  And since a woman's love of her children is so wrapped up culturally in the myth of a woman's brainless emotionalism, it's easy to make the leap that if a woman simply and quickly chooses an abortion after weighing all the evidence and doesn't get bogged down in what she thinks are needless displays of feelings she doesn't really have, then she's cold and cruel.

As I pointed out in my comments, our need to have public displays of approved emotions from women doesn't create anything but deceitful women.  It always boggles my mind how we demand these displays and then turn around and cough up stereotypes about lying, deceitful women.  We need to make up our minds.
One of the funniest things I ever saw on Sex and the City was the episode where Miranda finds out the baby she's carrying is going to be a boy.  It's not that she doesn't care, but it's nothing to get excited about.  She knew she was pregnant, and she knew it would be either a boy or a girl, and since one is equal to the other in her mind, there is no reason to get all wound up about either.  I could see myself feeling the same, that it's silly to get all excited about something like that.  Still, it clearly upset people that she wasn't exploding with joy that the baby had a sex, so she faked it, and it was pretty funny.  I related--I do that all the time, pretend that something is important to me that's really not because, well, that's how girls are supposed to feel.
Okay, I realize abortion is a heavier topic than that, but the same thing still applies.  You know you're going to do it, you've thought about it, it sucks but the decision is made, so why rend your clothes and throw yourself on the floor with grief?  When men are stoic types, they are admired, but women's very womanhood is called into question.
Still, I suppose if it made people feel better, we should have a ceremony around abortion so that people have an official way to show that they don't think it's a great thing, a walk in the park.  I do believe in Japan they have one.  However, it only seems fair that if we're going to have to show official displays of grief over abortions in order for them to be acceptable, then miscarriages should be treated the same.  They are roughly the same thing, so why treat them so differently?

It's a good question to ask overall, in fact.  We treat miscarriages and elective abortions so differently in this country that it should give us all pause.  As Trish points out, a woman who has an abortion is pretty much expected to treat it as the loss of a child on one level or another, as she perfectly illustrates with the cliche of the woman walking down the street looking longingly at the children that are the same age as hers would have been.  A woman who miscarries is usually treated with alot of sympathy, sure (though not always), but her loss is hardly treated as the loss of an actual baby.  Where I'm from, at least, it's still standard to console women who have miscarriages by telling them that they will have more chances.  The miscarriage is a loss of a potential baby, but so is getting your period when you think about it.  The only sane response to a miscarriage is to treat it as a loss and a setback but certainly not the end of the world.
Physically, there's not really a difference between an abortion and a miscarriage.  I do believe the medical term for both is actually "abortion", but one is induced and the other spontaneous.  The difference gets even hazier when a difficult miscarriage is hurried along to protect a woman's health--a few years ago a friend of mine had exactly that happen to her.  Her pregnancy was all out of whack and she started to miscarry.  The fetus was dying and it was taking forever, making her sick as a dog and leaving her vulnerable to infection, if I remember correctly.  So, they went ahead and performed a D&C--but still, one could pretty much call that a spontaneous abortion.
Physically, they are the same.  Socially, they couldn't be more different.  What's the difference?  Well, the difference is women's autonomy--a miscarriage is an act of god, and we usually say it's for the best that god has his reasons.  An abortion is an act of woman, and therefore it's usually considered selfish, that her reasons are not good enough. 
Which brings me back to the 1.3 million abortions a year figure.  It's a huge number of women, and each and everyone has her own reasons.  It seems to me that it's arrogant of us indeed to think that there is any measure that can be applied to 1.3 million a year, every year, to separate the acceptable and the unacceptable abortions.  It's not an easy decision, and it's rare the woman that has one thinks that her other choices were better.  The reason that I think that pro-choice is the feminist stance is because it's the stance that argues that a woman should be considered as capable as a man to make her life choices.  And I also think that it's a shame that we feel women's choices should be subjected to rigorous tests to make sure that they were made regretfully enough.