What It Means When Women Don't Have Abortions

Dreams denied and lives not lived.

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

It’s good news for the anti-abortion movement and bad news for women, children, and the country: In every state where abortion is banned, abortion rates have plummeted, and even though abortion rates have ticked up nationwide, researchers have concluded that roughly 32,000 American women have given birth after not being able to access abortion in red states.

That means that between one-fourth and one-fifth of women living in abortion-hostile states who might have otherwise ended their pregnancies were not able to get abortions, and gave birth instead.

The details of what this means can be difficult for abortion rights supporters to talk about, because each of these 32,000 doesn’t just count a woman who was denied an abortion; it also counts a child who is now in the world, and deserves love and care and support. This is where the anti-abortion movement focuses their rhetoric (if not their money or energy): On the new babies, who most people naturally and rightly want to protect, and who we don’t want to think about not existing. And these 32,000 babies do deserve our attention, concern, and certainly our resources. Unfortunately, the anti-abortion Republican Party is largely blocking that from happening, and the anti-abortion movement isn’t pushing them to change.

That 32,000 number, though, isn’t just 32,000 babies who exist today and may not have if Roe wasn’t overturned. It’s 32,000 women who had their lives changed forever: Who now may miss out on love, stability, safety, adventure, freedom, future children, and even life itself.

The anti-abortion movement often talks about childbearing and motherhood as if it’s no big deal, a simple “inconvenience” that some selfish women try to avoid with abortion. But there is almost nothing more life-changing than having a child. It’s also one of the only big life decisions that you can’t undo. If you have a bad marriage, you can get divorced. If you hate where you live. you can move. If you buy a house, you can sell it. None of that is easy; undoing big life decisions is usually excruciatingly painful, almost always excruciatingly difficult, and usually excruciatingly expensive. But generally, the markers of adult life than many people take on can be undone or remade.

Children are the big exception. They change everything, especially if you are a good parent who dedicates significant time and resources to your children. They cannot be handed back to the universe, nor (for decent people) simply lived alongside in resignation. Some women place children for adoption, but this doesn’t undo the existence of those children, or the forever tether between birth mother and child. And most women, even those forced into childbearing, choose to keep and raise the children they birth, because maternity is complex and the tie to the children one gestates and births is deep and profound.

This relationship is so deep and profound — so sacred — that there is something especially ghastly about forcing women to enter into it unwillingly. It is on par with the abuses inherent to other situations in which women are forced to submit their bodies and souls to another: Forced marriage, forced sex. Forced motherhood lands squarely on that monstrous list.