Abortion

I believe that one of the most important gaps we need to bridge, as people who care about women's rights, is the gap in understanding about abortion.

It's possible to believe fully that you are right, and to argue passionately for your side, and to engage in the democratic process to encourage legislation that supports your belief, all while acknowledging that a good-hearted, reasonable person might end up disagreeing with you. It's also possible to do all of this without believing that every political loss on your side is a failure of the democratic system.

Here are of my personal beliefs on abortion. I'm putting this out here so you know my biases, since those biases will influence the information I present in this wiki. - It's normally fine. - It can be morally dubious in some edge cases, such as purely voluntary very-late-stage abortion. But those cases are rare, and I think that more harm than good comes from attempting to criminalize it. - Some women who get abortions were pressured into it, and this is a grave injustice. Rather than banning abortion, I would like to see these women receive support, including material support, to stand strong in their choice to have a child. - Some women who become pregnant are pressured by their partner and family to have the child, and seek abortion anyway. - Some men are less careful with sex, or feel more free to pressure women into risky sex, because they expect that they can just make her get an abortion if she gets pregnant. My guess is that this happens much less when abortion is illegal, even if illegal abortion is available. I.e. my guess is that many men who feel comfortable pressuring their girlfriend into a legal abortion would not feel comfortable pressuring her into an illegal abortion. I don't have any data on this, and I'd be interested to see data if it exists. - Related to this, I've heard anecdotal examples of men becoming more respectful of a woman's sexual boundaries when she declares that she would plan to have the child if she became pregnant. - Some men engage in "baby-trapping", which is sabotaging birth control in order to get their girlfriend or wife pregnant when she didn't want to become pregnant. This is done in order to trap her in an abusive relationship with him, to tip the balance of power in the relationship in his favor by making her dependent on him for resources, or simply because he wanted a baby and she didn't. Legal abortion makes it much harder to do this, and I've heard anecdotal examples of women using abortion to escape this situation. My guess is that many fewer men attempt "baby-trapping" when abortion is legal, but again, I don't have data. - For most women in the US today who have had abortions, my guess is that the abortion had a net positive impact on her life, compared to the alternative of having to have the child. I am also going to guess that finding unbiased data on this is basically impossible. - There have been cases in other parts of the world, and in some situations in the US, where legalized abortion has made women's lives worse by making men feel entitled to pressure women into casual sex, or prostitution, and then pressure them into abortions. For example, the feminist movement in Latin America has sometimes advocated for banning abortion because it was being used in this way. We should be vigilant about situations like this evolving in the US, and we should take it seriously when people present information to us that suggests this is happening in the US. You can't just assume they're making it up to try to manipulate you. - It's important for women and men to take sex seriously, regardless of what the abortion laws are in your area.

While I'm writing all this out, I'd like to acknowledge that it often feels offensive to women who support abortion for people to dispassionately weigh pros and cons for whether to take away her legal access to abortion. For people who don't get this, imagine that someone was dispassionately weighing the pros and cons of whether you should be legally allowed to say "no" to sex. It sort of feels similar.

Menstrual Extraction

https://www.womenscenter.com/menstrual_extraction.html

https://www.womenshealthspecialists.org/self-help/menstrual-extraction/

https://sistersoflife.org