How to Change Taiwanese People’s Negative Attitude Toward Abortion of Unmarried Women
Introduction
What do you think about the idea of abortion for married women? Do you think that it is immoral to kill an unformed baby by receiving an abortion simply because the parents cannot afford to raise them, or do you think that it is the parent's right to decide whether to do it or not? From the perspective of most Taiwanese people, it seems that the idea of carrying out an abortion is not only immoral but also impure, putting immense pressure upon some unmarried women and causing unwanted birth. By taking some actions, the public attitude toward abortion can possibly be changed, and thus further reduce unwanted birth, preventing potential family tragedies in Taiwan. We are going to approach this topic with three spheres that can be possible solutions, namely education, promotion, and linguistic form of the words that indicate the act of abortion.
The Problem
The atmosphere in Taiwan makes people regard merely abortion as some kind of terrible deed, not to mention that unmarried people's abortion, mainly because of numerous reasons such as sex education, society, and even linguistics issues. The lack of completeness of sex education in Taiwan has led to a general misconception about abortion in our society. Moreover, the Mandarin words that we use to describe the concept of abortion have always consisted of negative meanings, which further create more unnecessary biases. According to Granberg, (1980), "Approval of legal abortion is correlated with a general commitment to basic civil liberties." This quote shows that the approval of legal abortion is very important to basic civil liberties. Other than the approval of the law, the approval of the public also matters. Even though the law of legal abortion exists now anywhere around the globe, people's negative attitude toward it is still there, especially among those unmarried ones. If we want to reach an actual civilized status, our minds should change accordingly. We have conducted a survey to analyze the public's ideas about abortion. The following charts showed that people between the age of 19 to 25 seemed to possess a negative attitude toward the act of abortion. (Figure1~3)
Due to the incompleteness of Taiwan's sex education resulting from Taiwan's education system, the act of abortion has been deemed as unchaste, or even impure, especially among those teenagers whose ages are below 18. People would say that it is because they were unable to control their behavior or resist the temptation of sexual initiation so that they had early sex behavior that leads to unwanted birth. Nevertheless, accidents could have happened whatever measures we might have taken. Too much negative public opinion could result in overwhelming pressure on those pregnant teenagers, and it would not help but only makes the situation even worse. Thus, the Taiwan society's negative attitude toward abortion should be changed. In the following paragraphs, three possible solutions are proposed.
Solution 1
One of the best ways to fix the current situation is to change education. According to Khodakarami (2019), "The findings of this study also suggest abortion is associated with sex education." This quote indicates that it is very important that we should start with education if we want to discuss issues related to abortion. From our survey, we found that about 86 percent of people think that the change in sex education may help.(Figure 4).
The lack of sex education in Taiwan is a prominent problem in relation to the issue. Hence, it is crucial to not only value the importance of sex education, but also to enrich its content. However, Taiwan's education system concentrates mostly on the learning of subjects such as mathematics, sciences, reading literacy, etc. Sex education is often neglected due to the overwhelming loads of those subjects, and thus schools would even replace other subjects with sex education classes from time to time. As a result, some students in Taiwan lose the opportunity to learn proper sex health knowledge. It is the time for Taiwan's education to start to take some action, giving back students' rights to learn knowledge related to sex behavior. The act of improving the quality of sex education might shift people's negative attitudes toward abortion, which can further improve the current situation.
Solution 2
It is also important to promote the public about the matter of abortion. To promote the right to abortion, stopping negative public opinion toward abortion is important. The way to change their mind is to propaganda that abortion isn’t a thing to be seen as a horrible incident. What we should focus on is the crime of the perpetrators rather than further discussions on the victims (those who are pregnant and need abortion because of being persecuted), the public often blurs the focus because of abortion. In fact, according to the research Adler, Nancy E.(1992), it presents evidence that abortion is not likely to be followed by severe psychological responses and that psychological aspects can best be understood within a framework of normal stress and coping rather than a model of psychopathology. They think that the people who need multiple births are not themselves Good kind, but maybe those unmarried pregnant girls are just pure victims. They are stigmatized because of abortion, so we should promote abortion itself is not shameful but the basic right of victims. Another way of publicity is to encourage people to share their life stories, whether anonymously or publicly, is very important. The same physical experience may be able to take over the pain of a woman's miscarriage, and also allow the public to see 3 the true appearance of a miscarried woman. According to the research Abortion and mental health: Evaluating the evidence.(2009) ''Most adult women who terminate a pregnancy do not experience mental health problems. Some women do, however. It is important that women’s varied experiences of abortion be recognized, validated, and understood.'' In addition to stories, proper and universal sex education is also very important. By promoting the public, we can create a more friendly social atmosphere for everyone, and prevent unnecessary disputes.
Solution 3
In the aspect of linguistic form, the Mandarin words referring to abortion have a negative meaning. For instance, “墮胎”, “打胎”, etc, the general impression of such words is violent and negative, which has caused us to deny the correctness of the practice from the literal meaning of abortion. In fact, in English, abortion does not have any negative connect, it is just very This behavior is a natural expression. Therefore, most people in Western countries will not look at abortion in a different way. In their eyes, abortion is not enough to be a bad perception. On the contrary, abortion is so negative in Chinese. These negative words could have a bad influence on some people. It's easy to imagine the process of killing a chubby baby, and there is also the possibility of mystification and stigma. Thus it should be better to modify the usage of them or to change them. For example, using ‘’人工流產’’ to replace it. Since abortion has been difficult to change their negative and violent imagery in Chinese, it might be better to name this behavior with another name, which may make it easier for the public to accept such a statement. Only by having a proper and standard way to describe the concept of abortion can more people accept the idea of it.
Conclusion
''As the sex attitude is getting more and more open nowadays, the pregnancy and abortion problems of adolescents become more and more important issues.'' said by James Feng-Chen Lee(2006) The negative thought over the act of abortion among Taiwanese people has been there for a very long time, it is not easy to alter their minds speedily. In particular, we are often misled by the news media that abortion is always a negative thing, and it often exposes women who need abortion to a lot of unnecessary pressure and public opinion. Whether or not these women finally decide to give birth, there will always be unspeakable pain in their hearts. Therefore, we should start making some efforts like emphasizing the importance of sex education and having the right public consciousness on abortion, so that we can improve the current social issue.
References
Adler, Nancy E.,David, Henry P.,Major, Brenda N.,Roth, Susan H.,Russo, Nancy Felipe,Wyatt, Gail E. American Psychologist, Psychological factors in abortion: A review. Vol 47(10), Oct 1992, P1194-1204
A Study of the Adolescent Experience in Induced Abortion
B. Appelbaum, M. Beckman, L. Dutton, M. A. Russo, N. F., & West, C. (2009). Abortion and mental health: Evaluating the evidence. American Psychologist, P863–890.
Khodakarami, N. (2019). The Impact of Sex Education on Sexual Activity, Pregnancy, and Abortion.
李逢堅(James Feng-Chen Lee) ； 陳彥聿(Yen-Yu Chen)
臺灣性學學刊 ； 12卷1期 (2006 / 03 / 01) ， P25 - 40
Survey
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