Does induced abortion affect future fertility and pregnancy complications? This question often cannot be answered without individuals, perhaps even inadvertently, wading into political commentary on abortion. Answers are often clouded by political agendas and funding sources, and co-opted and spun by either side of the abortion debate to push their own narrative.

On the pro-life side, I’ve sometimes seen the affects of abortion on fertility talked about like a horror story, showcasing a uterine perforation or the need for a hysterectomy because of a botched abortion, with nary a citation to help understand how often these outcomes happen. I’ve also experienced pro-life people unable to explain how, exactly, abortion can effect fertility. Talking about how bad abortion is for women can come across as a fear-mongering tactic in these kinds of situations and can make pro-life people seem ignorant. 

On the other side, you have pro-choice people who will outright deny abortion does any harm at all to women’s fertility or that it can affect future pregnancies. You’ll see them hail how safe abortion is and how rare complications are, often with a decontextualized citation, or claim that it’s irrelevant because abortion is safer than childbirth (which isn’t true, by the way). They can come across as blasé in their total denial, making abortion sound too good to be true. 

So…should we care about the answer to this question? What is the answer, and what should be done about it? 

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

Pro-choice people often bring underlying assumptions to the table when discussing abortion. Most of the time, while these assumptions play an important part in how they justify their position, they won’t say them out loud and may not even be able to articulate them. If we don’t reveal and confront these hidden premises in our conversations about abortion, we have a much smaller chance of getting a pro-choice person to think differently about abortion. 

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

There are times in my life that I look back and think, “Wow, I really wish I knew then what I know now.” 

One such time was a few years ago when I had a conversation with my pro-choice friend. Back then, I was not involved with the pro-life movement and I was only pro-life mostly by default as a Christian. I had not given my pro-life position much thought and I certainly had not thought about how to dialogue about abortion.

My friend and I were in the same department at graduate school. We had met on one of the first days of new student orientation and quickly became best friends. She was from India and was the opposite of me in many ways, but we made our friendship work. If I knew then what I know now about Indian culture, her personal background, and pro-life apologetics, our conversation would have gone much differently.