Post by Logan on Jan 28, 2016 7:29:57 GMT -6
Roe's End? Supreme Court case will decide the future of abortion access in the U.S.
After nearly a decade as a single mother raising a son, born from an unexpected pregnancy, she was finally able to focus on her own future; her own dreams; her career plans. Her son was now older, increasingly independent, and she too could finally experience more freedom.
But then, a man who claimed to have known her from college raped her. Two months later she discovered she was pregnant. Shattered and violated, her future plans quickly fell out of focus.
April considered adoption, yet the emotional weight of carrying a rapist's child for nine months was too much to bear. "Being forced to live that night out every day ... I couldn't handle it," she says. "The negativity that I was feeling would affect the child coming into this world, I didn't think that was fair. I would have been unhappy, my child would have been unhappy, my existing child would have been unhappy, and everything around us would have reflected that."
The choice became clear for the 35-year-old Texas woman, still hoping to establish her career and prioritize her own goals. She decided to terminate her pregnancy, joining the majority of women who do so – mothers. Some 61% of women undergoing abortion in the U.S. already have at least one child, and half of them have two or more children, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Unfortunately, April (whose name has been changed to protect her privacy) also shared another trait common among women who choose abortion – she lacked financial security; more than 40% of women that have abortions are poor. So instead of simply booking an appointment, April first had to find the money. And she, like many low-income women in Texas, was hit with the added burden of navigating an obstacle course of onerous rules and regulations strategically crafted by anti-choice state lawmakers.
Read more: www.austinchronicle.com/news/2016-01-29/roes-end/
After nearly a decade as a single mother raising a son, born from an unexpected pregnancy, she was finally able to focus on her own future; her own dreams; her career plans. Her son was now older, increasingly independent, and she too could finally experience more freedom.
But then, a man who claimed to have known her from college raped her. Two months later she discovered she was pregnant. Shattered and violated, her future plans quickly fell out of focus.
April considered adoption, yet the emotional weight of carrying a rapist's child for nine months was too much to bear. "Being forced to live that night out every day ... I couldn't handle it," she says. "The negativity that I was feeling would affect the child coming into this world, I didn't think that was fair. I would have been unhappy, my child would have been unhappy, my existing child would have been unhappy, and everything around us would have reflected that."
The choice became clear for the 35-year-old Texas woman, still hoping to establish her career and prioritize her own goals. She decided to terminate her pregnancy, joining the majority of women who do so – mothers. Some 61% of women undergoing abortion in the U.S. already have at least one child, and half of them have two or more children, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Unfortunately, April (whose name has been changed to protect her privacy) also shared another trait common among women who choose abortion – she lacked financial security; more than 40% of women that have abortions are poor. So instead of simply booking an appointment, April first had to find the money. And she, like many low-income women in Texas, was hit with the added burden of navigating an obstacle course of onerous rules and regulations strategically crafted by anti-choice state lawmakers.
Read more: www.austinchronicle.com/news/2016-01-29/roes-end/
