Emails from readers
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Dear Kat,
I really hope you don't mind me contacting you like this, but I felt really compelled to get in touch after reading The Equality Illusion. A lot of it has been really eye-opening, and there were some experiences I didn't know I shared with other women. However, I really wanted to get in touch because of a specific section of your book, dealing with abortion and Life's talks aimed at schoolchildren.
I was at one of those talks and, 12 years later, I am really angry about it as it turned out to be quite a formative experience for me. There was no anecdotal evidence about the talks in your book, so I thought perhaps you might be interested in hearing about what it was actually like. (As I say it was a while ago but I have tried to remember things as accurately as I can.)
The Life representative who visited started off by telling us about the reasons women have abortions. I didn't hear anything about not wanting to bring a child into a difficult or dangerous environment - the only example I remember clearly was an anecdote about a woman whose pregnancy would have interfered with her holiday. This is obviously a completely unrepresentative and manipulative example. She then went on to basically dismiss the notion of a woman being impregnated by a rapist: I remember her telling us that if 1,000 women were raped, less than 1 would get pregnant. I have no idea if that statistic is right. She told us it was because when you are that scared, your entire body shuts down and it is actually very difficult for your reproductive system to function as it should.
We then watched a slideshow featuring images from various abortions. (Please keep in mind that I was 14 when I saw this; the year below me, ie 13 year old girls, where also shown them in a separate talk.) There is one image which has stayed in my mind forever and I will probably never forget it: essentially, bits of foetus that have been removed from a pregnant woman. There was blood everywhere and it was incredibly gory - she made sure we all noticed the tiny foot in one corner of the picture. One girl in the same talk as me passed out; another ran out of the room in distress.
Afterwards, the woman told us that she was selling badges of a tiny pair of feet: she explained that they were a life-size replica of a foetus' feet at a certain number of weeks (I'm not sure, now, how many). I remember seeing girls walking around for ages afterwards wearing these badges on their blazers, and I am ashamed to say I had one too.
I distinctly remember, a couple of days later, overhearing a couple of girls in the year above me talking about the presentation. One of them said, "I used to to think it was a woman's right to choose, but I've changed my mind about that now."
The whole talk probably lasted less than a couple of hours, and yet I can see now that it has really affected me. I didn't lose my virginity until I was 19 because I was so terrified that I might need an abortion - I thought it was something that I would never be able to get over. I think I have a healthier attitude towards abortion now, but I still worry about pregnancy a lot more than I think I should.
I am still absolutely furious that my school not only allowed this to happen, but actually perpetrated these kinds of ideas (it was a Catholic school - we spent at least a term studying abortion in great detail, but I think I had one lesson on how sex actually works). It was so manipulative and dishonest. I feel really angry that I let myself be conned in this way, and I quite often feel like the unbelievably negative attitudes I was exposed to throughout my education concerning sex have done more damage to my life (certainly my sex life, there is absolutely no question of that) than an abortion would ever have done. If I had children I would never, ever let them be taught about sex in this way. It is a total disgrace.
Anyway, that is a first-person perspective on the Life talks. Admittedly not very objective but I want to be honest about how I feel. I hope I haven't ranted too much and that you are able to find some of this useful. I haven't really discussed the experience in such great detail before and I feel much better for it. So thank you for that at least.
'Sarah'
PS Sorry! I forgot to add one other very important detail: being told that whenever you take a contraceptive pill you are giving yourself an abortion, because it prevents the fertilised egg from growing inside you. To this day I have still never taken a contraceptive pill because I basically think it is too big a deal for me.
