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Gerri Santoro: Don't be surprised if you don't know the name. She wasn't anyone famous: just young, frightened, pregnant and already the mother of two young children and in a physically abusive marriage. She may be like someone you know. 

I think of her often.

I think of her most days when I drive by the local family planning clinic and see the protesters on the sidewalk, usually men, their bodies safely shielded behind placards of supposedly aborted fetuses. 

And I wonder: if the purpose of those graphic images is to cause people to think more about what abortion does, then why isn't Gerri Santoro's photo out there as well?

If her picture isn't out there, then we are getting only part of the story about abortion. We are not getting the story - the gruesome pictures - of what happens when abortions aren't legal. The photograph above shows Mrs. Santoro as the authorities found her, laying face down on the floor, naked on a bloody towel, in a Connecticut motel room after she hemorrhaged to death in 1964 from an illegal abortion.

I know many of you reading this are probably upset by the photograph of Mrs. Santoro-and are also likely upset by the photographs of fetuses on Shelden Avenue. It would be nice not to have to see-much less think about-either. But I think that if we are going to be shown-without choice-one kind of image, I think we should be asked to see the other. I do not think we can have any kind of full, thoughtful, discussion about legal abortion unless we do consider it honestly and fully, as something that involves not only fetuses but also women and men and children in a culture where lives are not always simple and easy and predictable-and where generosity of spirit and compassion are, sadly, in short supply, where people become pregnant for as many reasons as there are pregnant people, where some young women are lucky enough to have strong family support systems if they decide not to have an abortion but where-sadly, also-it is not hard to find fathers who throw their pregnant teenage daughters out on the street.

So, first, I want to talk about the images of abortion, and what happens when we are shown only a part of the story. 

Maud Lavin has argued in a recent book about the uses of images in American life that those in favor of abolishing legal abortion have this strategy: "...showing the fetus without reference to the mother's body and thus depersonalizing the mother" (147). That is, when we are shown only a fetus, we are being asked to forget that there was a woman involved who had a very difficult choice to make. She may have been raped, or she may know that the conditions of her own life will not provide a good life for someone else-as with Mrs. Santoro.

Keeping that in mind, Maud Lavin ends her argument by writing

Today, we have an abortion debate that's stuck. Dominated by fetal imagery, it talks about the sanctity of life without any broad discussion of our societal conditions of life and the hard-pressing factors that make up the choice of whether or not to bear a child. (154)

Yes, the sanctity of life is important-that's why it's so important to see Mrs. Santoro, dead because she did not have access to a safe and legal abortion. But it's also important to consider issues that tie into the difficult choices women and families have to make about children: we need to consider, as Lavin lists, "family allowances, adoption, health care for families of all classes, caring for children with disabilities, enforcement of child-care payments, and equal pay for women" (155). We need to consider day care, and easy access to healthy contraception, and the education about their bodies that helps women and men make healthy and informed choices within and about their relationships.

As a way of seeing how these other factors tie into abortion, consider the Netherlands: in the Netherlands, women (married and unmarried, adolescent and adult) have access to high-quality reproductive health services regardless of their financial means. As a result, in the Netherlands there are 6.8 abortions per each 1000 women; in the U.S., there are 23 abortions per each 1000 women aged 15-44.

Consider also countries where abortion is illegal: the illegality does not stop abortions but instead increases the deaths of women. In the developing regions of the world where abortion is illegal, there are 330 deaths per 100,000 abortions.

And, finally, consider how there are fewer pregnancies - and hence fewer abortions - when there's education about sex. In an article titled "Does Sex education Work?," Pamela DeCarlo of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies comments that

Other countries have been much more successful than the US in addressing the problem of teen pregnancies. Age at first intercourse is similar in the US and five other countries: Canada, England, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden, yet all those countries have teen pregnancy rates that are at least less than half the US rate. Sex education in these other countries is based on the following components: a policy explicitly favoring sex education; openness about sex; consistent messages throughout society; and access to contraception. ( Avert.org )

Acknowledging that these personal and public health issues cannot be separated from the issue of abortion in this country might, perhaps, help us find healthier, less polarized, and less hateful ways to talk with each other.

And talking with each other might help us better acknowledge and respect the rarely neat lives that have led us all to think and believe as we do.

Original Source (PDF file)