Ultimately, what these conversations reveal is that we are still nowhere near a point of women being able to freely admit they have had or will have abortions, without the demand that such an admission be accompanied by shame. That is the rule Cunningham is being punished for breaking – she is not considering an abortion for the ‘right’ reasons (those presumably being ones that involve enough suffering to ‘atone’ for the abortion, such as rape or terminal illness) and she is not hanging her head or crying about it.