{"id":922,"date":"2013-01-16T10:27:10","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T04:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/?p=922"},"modified":"2013-03-13T12:58:32","modified_gmt":"2013-03-13T07:28:32","slug":"abortion-myths-dispelled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/abortion-myths-dispelled\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion Myths Dispelled"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abortion stigma leads to several myths and misconceptions. Two days ago, we received a newsletter from Abortion Review with this excellent piece on abortion myths! We woud like to share them with you.<\/em><\/p>\n

Source: Abortion Review<\/em><\/p>\n

Speaking at a London conference organised by BPAS and the Margaret Pyke\u00a0Trust on 18 December, Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, began by noting\u00a0the absurdity of the law as it relates to early medical abortion procedures:\u00a0if a woman comes to BPAS with a spontaneous miscarriage, she can go home\u00a0with misoprostol in her handbag; yet if she comes for an induced abortion,\u00a0she has to go home with it in her vagina’. She went on to discuss the\u00a0following ‘five myths about abortion’:<\/p>\n

* MYTH 1: WOMEN DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT.<\/p>\n

\"ConfusedIn fact pregnant women are very\u00a0like non-pregnant women, or men \u2013 ‘they know what they want and we need to\u00a0be led by them’.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t mean, said Furedi, that no women are\u00a0ambivalent \u2013 their decision about ending the pregnancy can be shaded, and\u00a0they may make different decisions at different times in their lives, ‘but\u00a0that doesn’t mean that the decision they make is not the right one for them\u00a0now’.<\/p>\n

Furedi also noted that ‘women’s state of mind has become a hugely\u00a0contested area’, and challenged the way that discussions around abortion\u00a0counselling this year have ‘caricatured women as being vulnerable just by\u00a0needing an abortion\u2019.<\/p>\n

Some women do need more support, she said; but there\u00a0is \u2018nothing more unreasonable than assuming that a woman coming for an\u00a0abortion cannot make her decision.’<\/p>\n

* MYTH 2 \u2013 ABORTION NUMBERS JUST GO UP AND UP.<\/p>\n

The number of abortions is\u00a0not the problem \u2013 abortion can be a solution to an unwanted pregnancy.\u00a0Furedi also pointed out that, in any case, numbers have been pretty stable\u00a0for some years, which indicates that making abortion easily available does\u00a0not simply lead to an inexorable rise.<\/p>\n

* MYTH 3 \u2013 BETTER SEX EDUCATION COULD PREVENT THE NEED FOR ABORTION.<\/p>\n

\"sexedmyth\"Noting that this is a ‘hugely politically incorrect thing to say’, Furedi\u00a0said that while she does think better sex education would be a good thing,\u00a0she is not convinced that it would impact on abortion rates. First, ‘the\u00a0young people we see in the clinics are not, by and large, sexually ignorant\u00a0\u2013 they are pretty familiar with contraceptive methods, where to get them\u00a0from and how to use them. There may be a huge amount that young people need\u00a0to learn about sex and relationships but there’s a question about whether we\u00a0can teach them about these things in a didactic way, in school’. Second,\u00a0‘the majority of unwanted pregnancies and abortions happen to people who are\u00a0in their twenties’ \u2013 despite the prevailing idea that teenage pregnancy is\u00a0a huge problem, the numbers are actually quite small.<\/p>\n

* MYTH 4 – CONTRACEPTION CAN PREVENT THE NEED FOR ABORTION.<\/p>\n

Better access\u00a0and use can perhaps lower the rate of abortion, said Furedi, but it won’t\u00a0make numbers plummet \u2013 for the simple reason that people fail to use\u00a0contraception, and contraception also fails. Long-acting methods are likely\u00a0to be the most effective, but ‘when we counsel people we know that the\u00a0often don\u2019t want to use them’. There is a ‘huge gap’, Furedi explained,\u00a0between ‘what we think is perfect method of contraception and the young\u00a0people sitting in front of us, who are often suspicious of medical\u00a0professionals \u2013 and suspicious of adults in general \u2013 and don’t want to\u00a0be dependent on the doctor saying, OK, I\u2019ll take it out’.<\/p>\n

* MYTH 5 \u2013 ONLY CERTAIN TYPES OF PEOPLE NEED ABORTION.<\/p>\n

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There is a\u00a0persistent idea that the media helps promote, Furedi said, that ‘women who\u00a0need abortions are either victims or sluts’ \u2013 they are unmarried, young,\u00a0or women who haven’t sorted their contraception out. In reality, women who\u00a0have abortions are ‘just like us’, and abortion is a service that is\u00a0necessary for every woman.<\/p>\n

Other sessions at the conference discussed post-abortion contraception and\u00a0care in general practice, the GP’s role in pre-abortion counselling, and the\u00a0safety and efficacy of contraception in obese women. Read a report here: http:\/\/www.abortionreview.org\/index.php\/site\/article\/1249\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abortion stigma leads to several myths and misconceptions. Two days ago, we received a newsletter from Abortion Review with this excellent piece on abortion myths! We woud like to share them with you. Source: Abortion Review Speaking at a London conference organised by BPAS and the Margaret Pyke\u00a0Trust on 18 December, Ann Furedi, chief executive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[276,283,298],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-access-and-barriers","category-the-pro-choice-debates","category-blogs-on-abortion-stigma-and-other-social-barriers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/blog-featured-image-logo.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3O7nG-eS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asap-asia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}