I've never been very political about abortion rights. Whether I ever decided to have one or not, to me an abortion is simply something I felt all women should be entitled to do and without cruel judgment. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't left in complete shock when I heard about an abortion counselor from Cherry Hill Women's Center in New Jersey, who decided to have her abortion filmed. I totally get where she was trying to go with this, but does anyone else out there find this sort of bizarre? Wait until you see this video!
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Emily Lett claims she had her abortion filmed to help "bust the stigma" associated with abortions. "I could have taken the pill, but I wanted to do the one that women were most afraid of," she said in her article for Cosmpolitan.com. "I wanted to show it wasn't scary–and that there is such a thing as a positive abortion story. It's my story."
Emily claims that a lot of women who have abortions (even the ones who are confident about their decision) get plagued with guilt. Society makes them feel like having an abortion is cruel and selfish, so her video was an attempt at making women feel like what they did wasn't bad. I was 100 percent with Emily until I actually saw the video for myself.
Don't get me wrong, there was nothing graphic about it. In fact, all you see is her face and all you hear is her breathing deeply and humming throughout the procedure. But even so, watching that video did make me cringe. And not in a I-think-abortions-are-evil kind of way. Not at all, more in the way I cringe when I'm watching a birth video or waiting for a nurse to insert an IV needle in my arm. It's just not something I have the stomach to watch.
And while I totally respect her decision to have an abortion and her motive behind the video, I still think it was sort of nuts to film it. Again, this is coming from a woman who would NEVER be okay with someone filming her giving birth. There are just certain things I'd prefer to keep sacred and away from the internet–that's just me! Tell me though, am I wrong for feeling weird about something a woman did to inspire the rest of us women?
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