Defenders of abortion tend to call themselves “pro-choice.” They believe that whether a woman chooses to have the baby or whether she decides to “terminate the pregnancy” should be her choice and no one else’s.

Well, what about women who really want to have their baby, but their husbands or boyfriends pressure them into getting an abortion? Where is the “choice” in those cases? Do “pro-choicers” support abortion in those circumstances?

I stumbled across a study from a couple of years ago that found that 73.8% of women who had an abortion felt pressure to do so. And that 58.3% got an abortion to make someone else happy, not themselves. And that 30% were afraid that they would lose their partner if they didn’t.

From Jonathan Abbamonte, Many American Women Have Felt Pressured into Abortions, Study Finds:

A significant number of American women who have had an abortion have felt subtle, or even substantial, unwanted pressure to abort, a recent study has found. The study, published recently in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, found that nearly three-quarters (73.8%) of women with a history of abortion surveyed admitted that they experienced at least subtle forms of pressure to terminate their pregnancies. More than half of the women reported that the perceived pressure was great enough to significantly influence their decision to abort. Of the 987 women surveyed, more than half (58.3%) indicated that they decided to abort in order to make others happy. Nearly 30% of survey respondents admitted that they were afraid that they would lose their partner if they failed to terminate their pregnancy. Further underlining the fact that choosing abortion is contrary women’s natural instincts, the study also found that two-thirds of the women (66%) knew in their hearts that abortion was wrong. Many women (67.5%) said that the decision to terminate their pregnancies was one of the hardest decisions of their lives. “These findings are alarming,” says Population Research Institute President Steven Mosher. “They suggest that a substantial number of women in America today who supposedly ‘choose’ abortion are actually being pressured into it by their husbands, boyfriends, or family members.” “If a man tells a woman in so many words that he will leave her if she does not get an abortion, that woman is being denied the right to freely choose her—and her unborn child’s fate. The threat of abandonment is a very strong inducement to the woman not to carry her child to term.” The study, led by Priscilla K. Coleman, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, included anonymous surveys from 987 women seeking post-abortion counseling services at crisis pregnancy centers nationwide. While the findings are not representative of all women in the U.S. who have had an abortion, they nevertheless reveal a significant real and widespread problem among many post-abortive women in America.

For the published study, go here.

Illustration by geralt via Pixabay, CC0, Creative Commons