Even though abortion is legal and is one of the most common medical procedures, women rarely talk about their experience.  This “hush hush” attitude of abortion adds to its stigma, and makes women feel like they need to hide and feel ashamed.  This makes it hard for women who need to get an abortion to talk to others about their concerns.  At Early Options® in NYC, we provide early abortion services like any other medical care. 

Imagine if abortion were offered as part of your regular family medical care.  If you needed an abortion, it would be available at your regular family doctor’s office, in a regular examination room.  The doctor would offer you early nonsurgical methods, the Abortion Pill, or the Aspiration Procedure.  The Aspiration Procedure would be completed on a regular examination room, like a pap smear, in less than 5 minutes. 

Is this too easy?  Some people think that if abortion were normalized, and less punitive, more women would choose to get abortions.  As a doctor who has completed abortions for over a decade, I don’t think so.  Unlike the perceptions created by people with extreme views, women do not take their decision to end a pregnancy lightly.  In fact, the same rate of abortion exists for countries that have legal and illegal abortion.  If a woman needs an abortion, she will find a way to get one.   But even in the United States, where abortion is a legal medical procedure, women often still feel like they completed a criminal act. 

It’s important for women to talk with each other about their abortions, and normalize the experience.  Otherwise, we are overdetermined by people who want to advocate a particular agenda and by a divisive political system.  It is important to learn from ordinary women who have had to make the decision to have an abortion as one of the many difficult decisions we have to make in our complex but ordinary lives.  Talking about abortion will help women get the kind of  high quality medical care that they need in the situation of an unwanted pregnancy.

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