Katriana Ciccotto, a young post-abortive woman, recently shared her abortion story on Channel 5 News in the UK in an attempt to end the stigma surrounding abortion. She argued that because one in three women in the UK has had an abortion, the shame of abortion needs to end. But the number of times a moral wrong is committed does not suddenly make it a moral right.
In the interview, Ciccotto explained that she was using birth control when she became pregnant, as is the case with most unplanned pregnancies. As previously reported by Live Action News, a survey by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service found that 51.2 percent of abortion patients were using at least one type of contraception when they became pregnant.
After learning she was pregnant, Ciccotto explained that she told the nurse she couldn’t have a baby. “And my exact words were, ‘I am in no financial or emotional position to have a child.’ But most importantly, and I feel OK saying this now, is that I didn’t want to have a child. It’s as simple as that, I didn’t want to have a child.”
Whether a child is considered wanted or not doesn’t change his or her inherent value. Every human being, from the moment to fertilization, is a unique individual with his or her own right to life. A human being’s life should never be taken away because one person has labeled him or her unlovable or unwanted.
This woman needed an abortion despite using contraception
"I was in no financial or emotional position to have a child… but most importantly, I didn't want to have a child. Simple as that."Katriana was using the contraceptive pill when she fell pregnant – she 'felt like a monster' for wanting an abortion and is now campaigning to end the stigma around the issue.One in three women in the UK will have an abortion by the time they're 45 – so why are they still made to feel ashamed?Marie Stopes International | Marie Stopes United Kingdom | #SmashAbortionStigma
Posted by Channel 5 News on Monday, December 9, 2019
There were many options in front of Ciccotto at that moment, but rather than offer much-needed financial or emotional support or the option of placing her baby for adoption, the nurse gave her a phone number to call for an abortion. Ciccotto was eventually connected with Marie Stopes International — essentially Europe’s Planned Parenthood. She booked an appointment for an abortion and questioned if she should tell her parents or her friends, or even her baby’s father.
“I had booked my procedure and there was a two-week period – an interim – between when I made the first initial phone call and the procedure. And the first two days of that period were the darkest. I was by myself, I didn’t tell anyone. My mom was on holiday at the time and I couldn’t burden her with that. I couldn’t call her whilst she was on holiday and tell her that I was pregnant,” she said.
READ: Minutes before her abortion, she changed her mind and walked out: ‘No guilt. No shame. No regrets.’
For Ciccotto to feel that she would be burdening her loved ones with the news of her pregnancy points to a large problem in society today. It’s the notion that we have the potential to be a ‘burden’ to those who love us. (Sometimes this societal attitude leads to depression, suicide, and even the legalization of euthanasia.) Ciccotto should have looked for support in the people who love her but instead she hid her pregnancy as something to be ashamed of. When she finally told her mother, three days before her abortion, she was crying, and her mother told her that she had an abortion herself at about the same age. But even with her mother’s support, she felt shame. That shame wasn’t coming from her mother, or anyone else. It was coming from inside herself.
“I felt like I was a monster,” she explained. “I felt like I was the worst, most guilty person in the world and I tried to suppress this and go to work as normal.” Then, after learning that one in three women in England has had an abortion, she looked around the cafe she was in and thought, “I can’t be the only monster in here.”
Yet, the frequency of an immoral act doesn’t make the act moral. It doesn’t remove the immorality of its nature. It doesn’t matter how many rapes occur — rape is still morally wrong. It doesn’t matter how many people are victims of abuse; abuse is still wrong. Lying, stealing, and killing are all wrong no matter how many people commit them. Ciccotto called herself a monster despite her rationalization that abortion was the right thing to do. It wasn’t. It never is.
Women who become pregnant and don’t want to raise children don’t have to be mothers. But they don’t have to have their preborn babies killed to accomplish this. They can choose adoptive families for their children. For every one newborn placed for adoption, 36 couples are waiting to adopt. Women today get to hand pick the people who will raise their babies. And they can also choose whether or not to be a part of their children’s lives through the option of open adoption. What they don’t have to choose is death for their child, simply because they don’t want her.
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