Abortion: To Look or Not To Look, That is The Question

Britni commented on my post Abortion – A Retrospective

“Thank you for sharing this. More of us need to talk about it, because we’re not alone.

I do want to ask– were you required to look at the ultrasound before having the abortion? I know that some states make women do that, and I think it’s pretty cruel. When I had mine, I was not shown the image on the screen, and would not have wanted to look. I think it would have been too hard.

Was it a personal choice to see it before aborting? Or something that you were made to do?

And are you glad that you saw it, or would you rather have not?”

Hey Britni! The one thing that hits home every time I talk to someone else who’s had a termination is that there is so much repressed pain. It’s as if we’ve somehow conditioned ourselves into thinking we’re to do this thing and then forget about it. Never speak of it again. But, for a lot of women, there is a sense of bereavement. It was not a decision taken lightly and we know exactly what it is that we have done. In any other situation, there would be counselling afterwards, but we’re supposed to walk away from our aborted foetus and behave as if nothing momentous has happened.

The idea that some women might be ‘forced’ to look at an image of the baby they are about to destroy sounds like the most horrendous cruelty and yet, in some situations where women are going back for the third or fourth termination and using it as a form of contraception, I can see that a short, sharp shock might be necessary. However, for rape victims, it would be extremely unfair to saddle them with that guilt when they were already having to shoulder the issues associated with being the victim of such a violent crime.

It is necessary for the professionals involved in an abortion to take an ultrasound to assess where the baby is in the uterus and how far along the pregnancy is. The latter is important because it decides the method of the termination. As I recall, you could take the pills if your gestation was less than eight weeks. Any time over that and you had to have the surgical intervention.

The system in the UK is incredibly kind, no one would have forced me to look on the screen and see the baby that I was about to terminate. They keep the monitor facing well away from the patient. In fact, the ultrasound lady kept asking me if I was sure, when I asked her if she would turn the screen towards me.

It was the right thing to do for me. I knew it at that moment and I know it now. I wanted the full horror of what I was doing. Perhaps as some type of punishment, but also because I could feel my baby moving and it just seemed wrong to turn my back and pretend it didn’t really exist. I wanted to see him.

Circumstances meant that I had no anaesthesia either. I felt everything and it was more painful than I could ever describe. But, in many ways, that was good. It helped my skewed brain to deal with it all better. It hurt me just as much as it was hurting him, mentally and physically.

When I think about my baby now, I can see him in my head – what I saw on the screen gave him a physical entity and I can mourn that. Somehow, it makes it easier to deal with than just a vague and ghostly might-have-been.

And, because of that, I’m really glad that I did not indulge my own masochistic tendency by asking to see the remains of the aborted fetus in that container.

Originally posted 2010-04-05 19:20:55. Republished by Blog Post Promoter