Abortion and sin

Wow, a nice, non-controversial title, huh?

So I'm working my way through the interviews (and dang did I take a lot of interviews!) annotating them and transcribing bits I want to quote, and I just got to a really interesting conversation I had almost forgotten about.  My interviewing techniques completely broke down - yes, I am asking yes and no questions here, and yes, that's awful.  what can I say.  Actually, I was not only asking poor interview questions, I was also asking really insensitive ones - I had several times been told not to ask about abortion at all, because the taboo on talking about it was too strong, and when I asked about it in the past I had, indeed, had a few people just shut down on me.  So it was wise advice I received, but I think I was also wise to disregard it sometimes.

Anyway, I am not presenting this as an example of camila being an awesome interviewer. But I thought despite my incompetence, the result was interesting  With hemming, hawing, and some translating from tagalog cut out, it looks like this:

Me: What kinds of questions do you get the most?
Gladys (teenaged RH activist/youth educator/general badass): Mostly girls asking about missed periods and pregnancy.
Me: What information do you have for them?
Gladys: We can give them counseling [talks a bit about early-pregnancy counseling]
Me, diving headfirst into cultural insensitivity: Do they ever ask about abortions?
Gladys: Sometimes we get girls who inquire about abortions, but then they decide to continue the pregnancy.
Me, surprised that she answered calmly, and that they talked about it at all: We talked earlier about the taboo on talking about sex - are the youths who are open to talking about contraceptive use generally open to talking about abortion, too?
Gladys: Yes.
Me (continuing to be surprised): Are they open to the idea of actually having abortions?
A pause.
Gladys: When the contraception fails, they are open to do abortions.
A pause.
 Gladys: There are young pregnant women who are open to having abortions when they get pregnant, but as long as their parents don't know they are pregnant. But that's only 10%.  For the young pregnant women whose parents know about her pregnancy, she'll still continue the pregnancy.
Me: Are the parents opposed to abortion?
Gladys, looking at me like I'm a complete idiot: Yes, of course. They believe that abortion is a sin.  And that it may cause harm to the child-bearer.
Me: And the young people don't believe this?
Gladys: They have the same beliefs.  They both think that abortion is a sin.  It's still quite a sin to them.Me: Can - can you explain a little more?  They agree that abortion is a sin, and have the abortions anyway?
Gladys:  Sort of.  They agree with their parents on abortion, that abortion is a sin
Me: But...
Gladys: If the knowledge about pregnancy - if only the boyfriend and the girl knows about the pregnancy, then they push for an abortion.   They may go for an abortion.  The barrier is - I mean, the thing that stops them from getting an abortion - is the parent's knowledge.
Me: so in the percentage where the parents don't know, and they do have an abortion, do they still believe it's a sin? Or is it - I mean, is it only a sin if their parents know?
Gladys: They think it is still a sin, but that they lack a choice.  They still consider it as a sin, but they still prefer an abortion.  And if the parents know about the pregnancy and about the abortion, well... if the parents will know that she had an abortion, she's dead.


So - the way I parsed this conversation - everybody agrees that abortion is a sin, but it's not actually moral objections to abortion that cause teenagers with unwanted pregnancies to continue their pregnancies.  It's not even the high risks involved in cheap, illegal abortions. It's their parents' moral objections - or more specifically, the punishment (and "she's dead" might sound like an exaggeration, but by this point in my trip, I made no such assumptions) that their parents would enact if they knew about the sin.

Either way, Gladys describes teens who feel like they have no choice.  If the parents don't know, then they have to abort; and if their parents do know, then they have to continue (and get married, in many communities).

And look back at the start of the conversation - these young people, if they are lucky enough to have an RH advocacy group active in their area, only seek information AFTER they think they might be pregnant.

Sin?  The idea of sin's not preventing abortions, or causing them.  It's knowledge that's determining these kids' actions - their own knowledge about contraception, and their parents' knowledge about their actions. 

Then again, the original sin was the pursuit of knowledge, so maybe I'm reading it all backwards...