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Abortion Denial Is Often About Privilege
Whether you’re in the US, Finland or Argentina, opposing abortion often comes from living in a bubble.
When I moved to Argentina, I was shocked to find out the country, as most others in Latin America, didn’t allow for women to terminate their pregnancies legally and safely, in a hospital.
Do I want to live in a country that doesn’t allow women to have full reproductive rights? It was a tough pill to swallow.
I had lived in a type of privilege bubble in Europe all my life, having been born in Finland, one of the first countries in the world to give women the right to vote and where abortion has been legal through my entire life.
When I started talking about the issue with people at school, I was shocked to realize many of the people I considered friends thought abortions should remain banned.
Argentina is a Catholic country, and I shouldn’t have been surprised by this. A lot of people do still have considerations about the immortal soul of a fetus, and they quote the Bible to express their opinions. I didn’t want to be culturally insensitive, but some of the stuff I heard was just mind-boggling.
“They should think about what they’re doing before they start having sex.”
