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This November, Oregonians will vote on Measure 106—which, if approved, would ban publicly-funded abortions.
Related: Why Is an Anti-Abortion Measure on the Ballot in America's Most Pro-Choice State?
Nationally, politicians have long been embroiled in disputes over the right to terminate pregnancies. In Oregon, 40 percent of the 8,506 abortions performed each year are funded by the government or by the health insurance plans of state public employees.
Hanna Neuschwander, a Portlander and longtime WW contributor, knows firsthand how crucial access to abortion services are.
In a piece she penned for Longreads, titled "A Birth Plan for Dying," Neuschwander recounts the deeply painful decision to terminate a pregnancy late in its term, after discovering potentially fatal abnormalities in her daughter River's brain.
"I accept that some degree of suffering is unavoidable, that it even has value in instructing us to be more compassionate emotionally, morally, spiritually, and politically," Neuschwander writes. "The outcome that terrified me the most was not that River would suffer, but that she would never feel the redeeming joy that makes suffering tolerable."
Neuschwander acknowledges that in some states her abortion, performed days before Oregon's legal cutoff, would not have been possible. She notes: "The problem is there is no right way for your child to die."
Not long after Neuschwander's gut-wrenching abortion procedure, she says Donald Trump appeared in a televised debate against Hillary Clinton, garishly and incorrectly summarizing late term abortion. Neuschwander says she immediately ran to the bathroom and threw up.
"I don't seek pity," writes Neuschwander, "but to have your worst personal pain be the site of the most toxic conversation in public life is awful. It is awful every day."
To be clear, Neuschwander's decision—a termination of a wanted pregnancy after intensely difficult moral reasoning—is not representative of all abortions. And to consider every abortion to be the most difficult decision of a person's life is a dangerous denial of human rights to bodily agency.
But in sharing her experience, Neuschwander offers a crucial first hand perspective of the importance of abortion access.
The full article, well-worth reading in its entirely, can be accessed here.
