It is one of the saddest issues we deal with at Teen Advice - frightened, pregnant teens who don't know what to do. Too scared to tell their parents, sometimes shunned by the boys who helped make them pregnant, many girls feel lost and alone. The idea of becoming a parent is terrifying for many teens, for girls without a supportive partner it can be paralyzing. Adoption, which is a good option, is often equally as frightening to teens who dread the stigmatization of being a pregnant teen and fear the discomfort and pain of pregnancy and childbirth. For many girls abortion seems like the only choice they can live with.
Most cultures are unkind to women and girls who have abortions. We are endoctrinated to see this option as selfish, cruel, irresponsible, even murderous. Ironically, there are times when abortion is the only responsible choice. Shame, fear and misinformation can stop a pregnant teen from seriously considering this option. For this reason many women and girls who choose this option suffer in silence, keeping their decision to themselves and handling it alone, or sharing it with a few trusted people and worrying that those people will change their feelings toward them. Anybody who thinks that abortion is taking the easy way out is fooling themselves. There is nothing easy about making a choice that is so contrary to the accepted norm of society.
Whether or not abortion is an option for you depends on a variety of things; your religious beliefs or personal feelings of morality, your family support system, your partner, your lack of a partner, your financial status, your level of education and/or employment, your physical health, your level of pre-natal exposure to drugs and/or alcohol, access to abortion services in your community, and the laws surrounding abortion where you live. There are many places in the world where legal abortion is not an option. For the purposes of this article we will not discuss the morality of or religious opinions on abortion. We will not discuss the laws or whether or not abortion is easily accessed in your area. We will not discuss any of the very personal things one must consider when deciding to choose abortion. In this article the only thing we will be discussing is what you can expect, physically and emmotionally, when you choose to have an abortion.
The purpose of this article is to remove many of the fears that teens have about what it will feel like to have a medically safe and supervised abortion. This article is in no way intended to promote the choice of abortion, nor is it intended to discourage a pregnant girl from making this choice. The information in this article will not be sugar-coated to make it appear easy to go through an abortion, nor will it be exaggerated to make abortion a frightening choice. Abortion is not an easy thing to go through, there is real discomfort, even pain, both physical and psychological, associated with having an abortion. The severity and degree of pain and discomfort will vary from individual to individual, there is no one "right" way to feel and no one "normal" experience to have. In this article we will discuss what you can expect the procedure to be like, what it feels like to go through on average, and what you may experience when it is over. We will also discuss warning signs that you may be falling in to a depression and what you should do if this happens to you. In this article we will discuss two types of medically supervised abortion, medical abortions using medications and surgical abortions.