Early on in the pandemic, a raft of articles appeared about making decisions in a crisis. Slow down, they all suggested. One by Art Markman in the Harvard Business Review is typical of many others.
Human beings hate feeling helpless, Markman suggests, and they prefer to act quickly to assert some agency, “even when inaction would be more prudent”.
The last line reads: “it is best to take your time when making decisions rather than acting on gut feelings. Those quick actions may reduce some of your anxiety in the short run, but they are likely to create more problems than they solve.”
There were many, many such articles, and none that I recall resulted in the authors being accused of not trusting human beings. Most of us recognise that decisions made in situations of high stress are often rushed and regretted.
Listen to women, except when women are saying anything that you don't like. Listen to women, except when they are challenging the abortion consensus
When it comes to abortion, though, apparently none of that wisdom applies. No woman or pregnant person needs extra time to reflect. They all know exactly what they are doing. To suggest otherwise is demeaning, degrading and disgusting.
It is a kind of erasure of anyone who experiences anything other than the acceptable emotions around abortion. Listen to women, except when women are saying anything that you don’t like. Listen to women, except when they are challenging the abortion consensus.
Some women are granted exceptions. If they demonstrate their pro-choice credentials strongly enough, they will be allowed to suggest that abortion is a messy experience or even the worst experience of your life.
Lucy Burns has been praised for her memoir of her chosen and wanted abortion, called Larger Than An Orange. It is part-diary, part-prose poem and part-reconstruction of the pro-life and abortion clinic websites she visited obsessively after her termination.
Burns states that anyone who wants one should be able to get a free, safe and legal abortion and then continues, “but I have just killed something that was living inside me”.
Sheer terror
The title of her book comes from some of the advice she looked up on the internet. “Go to the hospital if you pass something larger than an orange.”
She is also told that when she takes the second dose of medication, she will feel the need to push. She should go to the toilet and bear down. “When you are finished, don’t look down. Just flush.”
The cool, detached advice does not reflect the reality of pain, sweat, the desire to vomit, the sheer terror that she experiences as part of her medical abortion at home.
Why not look down? In case you see something that looks recognisably human? Burns requests her ultrasounds and medical records from the clinic. Photocopies of the ultrasounds are printed in crude black and white in her book.
Anyone who refuses to see the three-day waiting period helped at least some women make a decision to carry a baby to term should also stop calling themselves pro-choice
Her first thought when she sees them is that this is why they don’t show you the screen. She feels like she might gag. The next lines are unpunctuated and incoherent.
Burns’ memoir is acceptable because she does not abandon her tribe. She talks about the chaos of body and mind she experiences after abortion but she does not question abortion itself. It is literally unthinkable in some circles to question abortion, to question what it does to a woman, to her body or to her mind. Erasure again.
Some truths are stubborn. They refuse to be flushed or erased. Carol Nolan TD established that there were 7,536 initial consultations for abortion in 2019 and 6,666 abortions. Nearly 900 women potentially changed their minds although they may be other reasons why they did not follow up on the initial consultation.
Post-abortion counselling
Burns does not consider herself to be pro-choice. She feels that pro-abortion is more honest.
Anyone who refuses to see that the three-day waiting period helped at least some women make a decision to carry a baby to term should also stop calling themselves pro-choice. Because they are not really pro-choice. They are pro-anything that makes access to abortion easier and against providing calm, safe spaces for women.
The Health Service Executive runs a 24/7 nursing helpline for those who have had abortions. In 2019, the first year of legal abortion in Ireland, there were 2,793 calls to the nursing helpline for post-abortion support.
The Cork-based Sexual Health Centre’s 2019 annual report says that of 504 crisis pregnancy sessions, 235 were for post-abortion counselling.
These figures do not garner publicity. They are drowned in a chorus demanding an end to the waiting period, an end to the 12-week limit, an end to anything that stands in the way of more and more abortion.
Across Europe, 15 countries have waiting periods, ranging from seven days in Italy, to six days in Belgium, to five days in the Netherlands, to three days in Germany. There are EU-wide laws mandating a 14-day cooling-off period if you buy a dress on the internet and Irish law decrees14 days to change your mind if you sign an insurance contract.
Abortion activists want to strip away a mere three days from women facing an irrevocable decision, happy to fly in the face of everything we know about decision-making in crisis.