Opinion: I don't fit in either camp on abortion. I know we need to prevent more unwanted pregnancies.
I am reminded of the saying, “Sanity is when you can hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time and still function.” That’s me on abortion. For those of you who have taken clear sides on this issue, my own thoughts will perhaps challenge but not satisfy your own view.
So, after a leaked preliminary decision, we have a Supreme Court final ruling coming out soon. And our political landscape has become even more bitter and divided as we have one more issue to spar over: Roe v Wade.
This is something I have thought about for a while. I find myself not comfortable in either pro-choice nor pro-life camps. I support and encourage planned pregnancies in my professional work and want to work with folks on every spectrum of the issue to provide readily available birth control to anyone who needs and wants it.
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Growing up in Denver, my father, also a psychiatrist, served on a medical review board before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. He would make decisions as to whether a woman’s emotional life was in danger should she proceed with giving birth. Exceptions before Roe allowed for women to have abortions in Colorado in such circumstances.
As an intern I was on an obstetrics rotation when I learned of the opportunity to be present for an abortion. Although highly ambivalent and naive at that time about what would transpire, I asked to be present. My teaching physician and his nurse certainly had some personal connection with each other, evidenced by the back-and-forth teasing comments while the woman was under general anesthesia.
When the developing fetus was removed from her uterus, my reaction then was aghast. A jellied mass with an internal structure — a future human life — now lay on the table. Having seen my reaction, the doctor later told me I shouldn’t have come. To me there was something very wrong about what had just happened. I don’t say this from any traditional religious or moral reasons. It just felt wrong. Of course, I have no idea what the young woman was up against in her own life or how she made this decision.
Since then I’ve been impressed with how the "procedure" is often described on billboards as just "health care" — the reality of a life ended is lost. States have grappled with how far a pregnancy can still go forward with abortion still permitted. The issue of viability becomes an increasingly gray area as medicine’s ability to keep alive a fetus at younger ages improves.
And yet, those who are anti-abortion 100% can forget or ignore that the emotional, physical, and economic price of having a baby is immense. The effect on a couple with even a planned pregnancy is akin to a psychologist colleague who calls the impact of a newborn a "natural family crisis." It is overwhelming even for those who have excellent health care and all the support and resources available to them. I know this from watching my daughter and son-in-law as they navigate a new addition to their family and the obstacles they face with work, sleep, and the upending of their lives. And for young single mothers with minimal social support, bringing a baby into their already chaotic lives can be catastrophic.
I am struck by some of the women I see professionally who don’t want children and yet are not using birth control — and certainly the onus should be on their partner or partners as well. Men have an equal responsibility to make sure that they and their partners are as protected as possible until they decide it is time to bring a child into their lives.
And I’m aware that some women have and will die as a result of having illegal abortions by friends, themselves, or ill-trained others. Women will continue to seek abortions. We must be ready to make them available as early as possible in a pregnancy and with the best and safest methods.
Somehow, we need to reach an equilibrium where we all work to prevent unwanted pregnancies — by making birth control and sex education (including for those who identify as LGBTQ) easily and readily available. And even that runs up against obstacles by those who promote celibacy until marriage — a very unrealistic approach. We should assume our teenage children, boys and girls, are sexually active and talk with them about preventing pregnancy until they are ready.
Lives are lost. Preventing unwanted pregnancy is the best course.
David E. Drake, D.O., is an Iowa psychiatrist and a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School. Contact: drakeoffice@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: Somehow, we must prevent more unwanted pregnancies
