Dear President Trump,

Imagine this. You are a 19 year old girl. You just broke up with your long term boyfriend and you’re going through a rough time. You are sitting in your room with your roommate when you feel it. The tug against your stomach that you feel every time you need to throw up. You rush to the bathroom and empty everything you ate that day into the toilet. Your roommate holds back your hair and comforts you, but you know something isn’t right. This is the third time today you’ve thrown up, but you feel fine in between. Finally, you finish. “Are you OK?” your roommate asks you. “I need to go to the store.” Your roommate tries to talk you out of it, but she just ends up coming with you. She watches you pick up the pregnancy test and gives you a hug. You don’t know how you’ll react if it comes back positive. You can’t support a child. The two of you drive home in silence and you administer the test when you get home. Positive. This was the story of a fictional character, but this could happen to any woman who is sexually active with men. This girl wouldn’t know what to do or how to seek help. The government provides very little support to pregnant women and abortions are frowned upon. What should she do?

Abortion is when you remove a fetus from the womb before it can survive outside the uterus. It is what many women resort to if they feel that they can’t support their child. Americans need to get more financial and emotional support for pregnant women so they don’t need to feel that an abortion is necessary.

Many women don’t qualify for Maternity Benefit, or Family Income Supplement, and if you don’t, you are in a lot of trouble. This financial support could help support women and their children, who would not be able to live properly otherwise. Also, many women are discriminated for getting pregnant. Despite the current wage gap, pregnant women are paid even less, and are mentally demoted by their coworkers. There is a stereotype around pregnant women and mothers that they won’t be reliable in their work commitment. This could be true for some women, but many are as or more punctual as any man. This stereotype holds women back when they come back from a maternal leave. They may have gone away at the top of their field, but come back out on the bottom. When abortions were illegal many women thought the risks of pregnancy were too high and became involved with dangerous abortions. On the WHO website, they state that unsafe abortions cause nearly 13% of all maternal deaths. 47,000 women die from unsafe abortions each year. On Women on Web they show that under 1 in 100,000 women who have a safe abortion die. This is much less than unsafe, or makeshift, abortions, yet these are what many women turn to when they can’t get another form of help. Even though we are trying to help women feel safe not getting abortions, part of supporting them is giving them the option of abortion. This gives them an alternative to unsafe abortions.

The effect of abortion is many children aren’t born. While this is already bad, if women feel that they really need an abortion, even if they can’t get it done from a licensed doctor, they will get the operation done. This means they could get hurt from getting their abortion done by a fraud, or themselves.

The other side of this is that abortion ends the life of a child and that the fetus is in pain during the abortion. This may be true but isn’t protecting the life of the mother just as, or more important. Safe abortions are vital for the health of the mother, and if we outlaw abortions they turn to risky options. Furthermore, if we don’t have the freedom to choose what we do with our bodies, it’s not freedom. Also, studies show that babies cannot feel pain until the twentieth week, while you can only get an abortion before the twenty fourth week. Only 1.5% of women who have abortions get it after 20 weeks. After 20 weeks, many mothers start to notice their fetus kicking. The fetus’s digestive system starts to get warmed up and they produce a substance as a result of their developing digestive system. If the woman aborts after 20 weeks the fetus will come out around the size of a banana.

The women of America need you, President Trump, to make more support for pregnant women and mothers. When we make knowledge about the hardships of pregnancy and why people should treat them as equals common knowledge, it will be a great step away from abortion. When we make financial relief for them, they will be able to move past abortion and have their children without judgement or worries. When we make pregnancy as safe as possible, with better procedures for labor and delivery, women won’t turn to abortions. When we make sex education more informative and lasting, many women wouldn’t even get an unwanted pregnancy in the first place. Until then, abortion needs to remain available to any pregnant woman.

Sincerely,

Olivia V.