Forget your biological clock, ladies. Here’s another internal timer set to ring: the abortion alarm. Just for you, Jezebel’s Erin Gloria Ryan confirms that 25-years-old is the perfect age for an abortion.
“There's a point where [a woman is] financially and emotionally mature enough to support a child and her body is still capable of making babies — but what about the alternative?” Ryan asked in breezy piece for Jezebel, the site of “gossip, culture, fashion, and sex for the contemporary woman.”
Apparently, it’s a question Ryan gets a lot because she writes “publicly and frequently about how women should be able to control what happens inside their own skin” and “every time a friend gets knocked up and wants to end her pregnancy, she ends up confiding in me, a person she knows will not tell her she's going to hell for choosing abortion.”
What will send her friends to hell? Peeing in a litter box “because the line for the bathroom was too long. Also your engagement ring is made of a conflict diamond.” Glad Ryan doesn’t take things too seriously – who says you can’t advocate snuffing out an innocent life and enjoy a good laugh?
Ryan said she has counseled so many pals (ranging “in age from 17 to their early 40s”) to off their offspring that “a clever anti-abortion rights/baseball might nickname my phone's address book, ‘Murderer’s Row.’”
Ryan plugged several factors into her abortion timing calculator: “account access, ability to keep life plans intact, affordability, and likely relationship status." Bringing a pregnancy to term is a definite no-no for girls under 18 because, for a teenager, “it's not a question of IF you'll experience massive hardship as a result of bringing a child into the world … it's a matter of how much of a lasting lifefuck will result.”
But according to Ryan, there are unfortunate obstacles to teenagers hoping to shrug off the consequences of their actions. For instance, 88 percent of U.S. counties don’t have an abortion clinic, and – the horror – a girl might have religious parents who inspire “Bachmannian hang ups about when life begins.”
Jezebel is not exactly a friend to the pro-life – or, rather, the anti-abortion – side, challenging even the life terminology in the past.
By mid-twenties, women can express serious interest in pregnancy, Ryan said. But a woman who considers an abortion at this age should remember, “it's more emotional to abort when you know the guy's last name.” Late twenties means a graduation from the worry about the abortion cost. Ryan suggests a “designer abortion” – maybe even a “Marc Jacobs abortion, in teal.” But my favorite color is purple!
Take precautions though, ladies, as that abortion clock winds to a close. “Who knows when you'll find another guy willing to repeatedly fuck your aging-out-of-online-dating carcass.” When a woman hits thirty, life’s path travels downhill – from relatives’ wagging their time-warning fingers to the birth defect possibility. And really, what woman would want to suddenly find herself beyond her child-bearing years without ever having gotten that abortion she’d always dreamed about?
Wait … that abortion alarm is starting to sound awful similar the tick-tock of the biological clock. The real irony is that what Erin Gloria Ryan seems be saying is the best time to have an abortion coincides with the best time to have a baby.
Ultimately, Ryan concluded that 25 is the optimal age for a woman to abort. Unfortunately, Ryan left out a couple of statistics women might want to factor into their ideal timing calculations: statistics such as women with abortions demonstrate an 81 percent higher rate of mental health problems – and a 155 percent higher rate of suicidal behavior.
Oh well, let’s just hope they peed where they should, and avoided politically incorrect jewelry. They wouldn’t want to end up in hell.
