Editor,
I want empathy; at least some. In recent weeks, I’ve found myself getting more and more disappointed by the lack of empathy expressed by my fellow Albuquerque citizens with regard to the upcoming abortion ban vote. Although I can’t see myself ever getting an abortion past twenty weeks, or even before that point, I can still imagine how difficult a position some women find themselves where they may have to choose to undergo such a surgery.
And yes, abortions are major procedures, both in terms of expense and in that they carry risks. Less than one percent of women who have abortions get them past twenty weeks anyway, and it’s usually terrible complications that bring them to that decision.
Some proponents of the abortion ban make it sound as though there are tons of loose women killing babies as a means of regular birth control, even at the last minute — at or around nine months — as if that sounded likely for a mother to do at all. This is not the reality of abortion.
The stigma that’s placed on women who might not be able to carry through a pregnancy for personal reasons — physical, emotional and/or financial — is horrible.
I would like this rhetoric to stop.
A lot of men, and even some women, have a hard time imagining how awful it would feel to be forced to carry through an unwanted pregnancy. By restricting a woman’s access to a major surgical operation such as an abortion, Albuquerque’s voters will be limiting our medical rights and overall oppressing the entire female sex. I can’t help thinking of horror story scenarios here and the thought makes me sick.
Not that bearing children is always a horrible experience, but it does take a physical toll, and when a woman is not ready to have a child the pregnancy can take an immense mental toll on her as well. That’s also not accounting for the fact that some fetuses have complications that result in death in the womb or painful, brief lives that end almost immediately after being born.
Even in some desired pregnancies these complications arise, and the woman’s pregnancy, despite being something she had longed for, becomes a traumatic nightmare for her. These are specifically the cases that require “late-term” abortions.
So, Albuquerque voters, please ignore the rhetoric depicting women as baby-killing sluts. Because we’re not that. Women are not sluts or breeders. We’re humans with emotions and sentience and the capacity for pain, and we’re deserving of rights.
Abortions only cause serious harm if they’re performed through underground channels as a result of restrictions that limit our access to decent treatments and resources. When you see those graphic — and possibly fake — images around town, remember that if this ban passes, that’s when the real horrors will occur to living, pain-capable women.
If you respect yourself as a woman, or you are a man who respects women, please have some empathy and vote against this ban.
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Kendall Lovely
UNM student
