Talking about abortion should not be taboo
Women can talk about being pregnant, not being able to fall pregnant or never wanting to fall pregnant. But terminating a pregnancy? That’s unspeakable.
Women talking about being pregnant, not being able to fall pregnant, never wanting to fall pregnant, needing IVF to fall pregnant, or wanting to adopt are all acceptable topics of conversation.
But talking about terminating a pregnancy is absolutely unacceptable.
Just ask Kayla Boyd, the latest woman to fall foul of what society deems appropriate reproduction chat.
Kayla, wife of Brisbane Broncos star Darius Boyd, opened up about the pair’s decision to have an abortion last year and the backlash had been significant — including deplorable comments from strangers telling her to “keep your legs shut”.
It seems when it comes to the wives of famous sportsmen we really only want to know what they have for breakfast and which beauty products they use.
In a statement, Boyd said she felt “lost” and “confused” when she fell pregnant four months after having miscarried her second child in April — which had occurred a week after her grandmother’s death.
The 29-year-old, who has a one-year-old daughter Willow, told The Courier-Mail she feared suffering a second miscarriage when she discovered she had fallen pregnant again in early August.
She terminated her pregnancy two days later.
“That’s why I reacted so quickly in needing to make that decision. I didn’t want to get attached to the fact that I could have another baby and then I could miscarry again,” she said.
“I felt like that’s what I had to do. The first time (I was pregnant) I didn’t feel lost, I didn’t feel scared or confused and I really felt that way this time.”
Following an article posted by the Daily Mail describing her decision as “disturbing”, Kayla was forced to defend her decision.
“I did not get an abortion because I was afraid of miscarrying again, that was not the sole reason that lead me to make that choice, I had about 10 reasons,” she said on her website.
“Importantly, I terminated because it wasn’t the right time in my life to have another child and it was the right decision for me and my family!”
Sharing stories of terminated pregnancies continues to be a taboo topic.
Exhale website co-founder Aspen Baker says one of the reasons for this is because the warring sides of “pro life” and “pro choice” means the topic of abortion continues to live in a highly politicised battleground that leaves very little room for people to share their stories.
Exhale coined the term “pro-voice” to represent its approach to creating a social climate where people could share their experience with abortion and be supported and respected.
Baker has publicly shared her experience with having an abortion and said at the time of it there was only one person she spoke to who showed any sort of empathy for what she was going through.
It was in stark contrast to the amount of people asking how she felt or falling over themselves to say “I know how you feel” when she was pregnant for the second time, she said.
You don’t need to have had an abortion to show empathy to people who have.
But you do have to have a screw loose to think it’s your place to criticise a perfect stranger for a decision they made about their life.
Kayla Boyd’s decision to share her story of having an abortion was a brave one and whether she knows it or not there were thousands of women who breathed a sigh of relief when reading it and said “I know exactly how you feel”.
Originally published as Talking about abortion should not be taboo