By Sarah Larson

In February 2011, as the U.S. House of Representatives was considering a bill to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) took to the House floor to speak about her personal experience with abortion. Speier was 17 weeks pregnant when she experienced complications resulting in fetal unviability. The speech by Rep. Speier was unique, as most women in the U.S. are uncomfortable publicly discussing their abortion experiences. Although the publicity surrounding her statements had a major impact, they avoided the real discussion that American women should be having about their reproductive rights.

Public debate on abortion has long focused on women who have – what I am controversially calling, for lack of a better term – “good” abortions; those that occur because of undesirable circumstances such as fetal or maternal health, rape, or incest. Indeed, even the controversial Ms. Magazine article on the topic emphasized these cases.

But the highlighting of “good” abortions does not reflect the data on women’s use of the service. In 2008, more than 825,000 abortions were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a rate of 16 abortions per 1,000 women age 15 to 44. Of these abortions, few women specified that rape, incest, or the health of the fetus or mother was their reason for obtaining an abortion.

The major reasons cited for abortion related to a woman’s future – 74 percent of women in a Guttmacher Institute study reported that continuing with the pregnancy would negatively impact their education, career, or other children. 73 percent said that they could not afford a baby at the time of the pregnancy. And indeed, there are major ramifications to pregnancy – half of women who have a child between the ages of 15 and 19 receive a high school diploma before the age of 22, compared to 90 percent of women who do not have a child.

This disparity between the discourse and the reality has palpable negative consequences. The issue of a woman’s right to an abortion has become a discussion about victims of circumstance. But in reality, women have abortions because it allows them to succeed. Women are the gender responsible for the carrying, birthing, and, more often than not, rearing of children. Access to abortion has not just allowed them to terminate pregnancies that are unviable or borne of sexual assault; it has allowed them to be students, doctors, lawyers, and political leaders. A poorly timed pregnancy has powerful ramifications – NASA would never have sent a pregnant Sally Ride into space.

Women in the U.S. should be discussing all abortions, even those they chose to have for personal or financial reasons. They should be talking about what a difficult, heart-wrenching, and deeply personal decision it is to terminate a pregnancy. They should be speaking out about the nearly half of pregnancies in the U.S. that are unintended, and how five percent of women age 15 to 44 have an unintended pregnancy every year. And when American women have that dialogue, we can consider the full ramifications of a pro-choice stance – to return to the astronaut example, it literally lets us reach for the stars.