In Poland, Argentina, but also in France, the Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy (IVG) is at the heart of the news. For the 46th anniversary of the Veil law, Vuibert editions publish “History of abortion, stories of women”. Why doctor reveals the good leaves to you exclusively.
Anne’s story
The psychologist meets Anne, a pregnant 16-year-old girl who is overdue for an abortion.
Anne did not return to consult after the announcement of a positive test, her boyfriend wants her to continue the pregnancy. This one is 27 years old and comes from a family of 11 children. For him, one more child, despite unemployment, is not a problem. Anne comes from a very different family: she is a very shy, very protected young girl who, unlike her younger brother, struggled in her schooling, which required “a lot of people to be behind her”. She ended up confessing her pregnancy to her mother who accompanies her to the consultation. This one evokes at the turn of the interview, the drama that was the story of his own sister. At the same age as her daughter, she had a child by a 30-year-old man whom she had to raise alone. It is her daughter’s hesitation to make a different choice from her boyfriend, which makes her think back to this family event.
“I didn’t know my aunt’s story,” Anne said. We didn’t talk about it. This had remained hidden as a shameful secret in the family. When I make the connection with what is happening today for Anne, the mother says she doesn’t understand: “It’s a psychologist’s thing”, she says. She will talk about it again with her sister because she herself was too young at the time.
Anne will have her abortion abroad accompanied by her parents. When I see the post-abortion teenager again, she still doesn’t talk much. Her mom tells me that talking to her sister helped her understand that her daughter didn’t get pregnant on purpose. She tells me about her husband who already didn’t like this boyfriend, but who frankly hated him. Two days after the operation, when she was still bleeding, he came to pick her up on a moped to go camping and swimming at the edge of a lake. Anne’s father forbids her to see him again.
I understand this confidence as the fact that the reality principle is often lacking in adolescents, but fortunately not in parents. I meet the parents without the teenager. Her father is really too bad with what happened to his daughter, he evokes during this consultation his suffering of having lost his parents, of having found himself an orphan in adolescence. This girl, their first child, represents for him all his family. At home, he just cries and can’t talk to her anymore. We have a long exchange on the accompaniment of this teenager. His wife is very helpful.
When I see Anne again during the last contraception consultation, she is accompanied by her boyfriend. She is radiant and spontaneously tells me that she was able to talk to her father again. She told him that she wanted to decide for herself whether or not this boyfriend is a boy for her!
To learn more, read: Abortion stories, Women’s stories – Because you have to talk about them and above all listen to themby Luisa Attali, Karima Bettahar, Elisabeth Guceve, Françoise Hurstel (Compiler) and Israel Nisand (Prefacier).
Reading sheet : Voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion), legalized in France in 1975, remains a right to be defended because it allows women to choose and have a safe abortion. Abortion is experienced differently by different women and can be a painful event for many. This is why abortion should not be reduced to a medical act and should be accompanied by words: it can then become a constructive event in a woman’s life.
This is what six health professionals – gynecologists, psychoanalysts, psychologists and midwives – wanted to share in this book. Their point of view, forged during their years of accompanying women and reinforced in their support group, is developed through the accounts of 23 clinical cases. Teenagers or mothers, alone or in couples, women, faced with the choice of abortion, are confronted with their history, that of their parents or their couple, with the silences and violence that sometimes cross them. In a word, they confront themselves. Each story is unique: this is what the authors wanted to show, based on their clinical practice, their experience of listening and prevention. These stories reveal what can help women who have had an abortion grow through speaking. This book is intended as a tool for all professionals, whether doctors, midwives, psychologists, nurses, social workers, so that they are made aware of and trained in caring and group exchanges.
It will also be of interest to all those who defend women’s rights and in particular the right to choose.
