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Resources Needed Most by Women Facing Unplanned Pregnancy
The above list was found in Real Choices, Listening to Women; Looking for Alternatives to Abortion a very insightful text by Frederica Matthewes-Green who met with women throughout the country in various pregnancy shelters. She explores why women turn to the "miserable alternative" of abortion, and explores compassionate, life-affirming, hopeful solutions to the problems women with an unplanned pregnancy actually face. Surveys were mailed out to 1980 women; 194 surveys were returned between June 7 and November 8, 1993, resulting in an overall return rate of 10.4%.
Of significance in the ranking by the women was the need for shelter appearing twice in the top 5 services needed most.
"While pro-choice advocates present abortion as an act of autonomy, pregnant women experience it rather as a response to abandonment. Pregnancy is the icon of human connectedness,
binding the woman to her child and the father of the child.
Abortion shatters those connections and leaves her desolate.
Thus, when I asked women what they would have needed
to finish their pregnancy, over and over they've told me:
'I needed just one person
to stand by me.'"
Frederica Mathewes-Green, Gender, Culture, Ethics, Faith