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A 16-year-old girl came into the Champaign office of Planned Parenthood for an abortion. She clutched counselor Linda Couri’s arm and looked directly in her eyes.

“If I’m having an abortion,” she asked, “am I killing my baby?”

The question stunned Couri, even after years on the job.

She gave a standard response: “Yes, if you go through with the abortion, you will be eliminating the product of your conception.”

Inside, however, Couri thought, “Well, isn’t that the question? Professionally, I was obliged to tell her the truth and morally I was obliged to tell her the truth. But what is the truth?”  Her answer to the question marked a path of personal challenge and rediscovery.

During her time at Planned Parenthood, Couri counseled many women. She taught sex education to inner city youths and passed out condoms by the handfuls. She had been on birth control for years and had many sexual partners – probably too many, she said.

A therapist by profession, Couri empathized with the teen. She also knew what it was like to experience an unplanned pregnancy.

In between undergraduate and graduate school, Couri became pregnant. She was 24 years old and had been dating her boyfriend for about seven months. Although she was using a diaphragm, she had lost weight and didn’t get the diaphragm refitted, likely leading to her pregnancy.

“My mindset was very pro-choice,” Couri said. “But I was always conflicted. I could never say it wasn’t a human life.”

So even though Couri adamantly supported abortion rights, she felt a responsibility to keep her baby.

“It was so stressful,” she said. “An unwanted pregnancy – it is honestly a humongous problem.”

Then one day a friend mentioned abortion. “It was like the best drug you can ever take,” Couri said. Suddenly, all her stress and problems magically disappeared.

“There’s nothing dramatic about my abortion story,” she said. “They were really nice people trying to help me out, and they did and I was fine.” Couri moved on with her life and began helping others in her situation.

“I was pro-choice because it was the most compassionate thing in my mind,” she said.  “I so much believed in a woman’s right to choose that I even volunteered and worked at Planned Parenthood.”

Ten years after her abortion, however, the 16-year-old’s question provoked Couri to reconsider her long-term beliefs. Her position is now anti-abortion.

Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination and confirmation thrust abortion into the national spotlight, once again, as it has for every similar nomination since the 1970s. During congressional hearings, legislators pressed the issue, but she refused to speculate about how she would rule in hypothetical cases.

While Sotomayor is widely regarded as a liberal, she is also a Catholic. She has never ruled directly on the issue, although she has judged three cases that dealt with it indirectly. In all three cases, she tended to lean toward the anti-abortion side of the argument. 

With abortion rights upheld by only a 5-4 margin in the most recent cases, Sotomayor could be the swing vote.

In the landmark 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, the court ruled 7-2 that a woman’s right to an abortion falls within the protection of privacy under the 14th Amendment.

About one in three American women have an abortion by age 45, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York based non-profit research and policy organization dedicated to studying global sexual and reproductive health.

Basic questions about humanity and the legal protection of humanity underscore the crux of the abortion controversy. Ever since Roe, the nation continues to explode over core philosophical debates involving:

•    Biology and beliefs – What makes a person?
•    Religion – What role does and should religion play in setting national policy?
•    Legal rights - How do we prioritize the rights of women and the unborn in laws regarding abortion?
•    Education – How can sex education and birth control reduce abortions since 90 percent of them result from unplanned pregnancies?
 
Biology and beliefs

“Most people would say they are against murder,” said Sean Vera, president of the College Republicans at Loyola University, who takes an anti-abortion stance. But, in debates on abortion, “the issue for most people is ‘when is the thing inside a woman’s uterus human?’ For pro-life, it’s at conception. For some, they say second or third trimester. Some even say up to birth.”

When discussing abortion, basic terms get confusing or politicized and, in many cases, people rely on intuition and faith rather than hard facts and evidence.

“I think there’s definitely been a movement in this country towards the fetus kind of being an innocent person,” said Dr. Emily Godfrey, an abortion provider and family physician at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago. “But the conflict is that, without the woman and without her uterus, there is no life for that fetus,” she said. “People are sort of saying that the woman should be an incubator and carry that pregnancy no matter what she thinks and what she feels.”

Even many abortion rights supporters consider viability, or the ability to survive outside the womb, as the point where a fetus gains full legal rights and protection. This is currently possible at 24 weeks of gestation, though not in all cases.   

Musician and Chicago native Abraham Feder, 23, served as a frequent babysitter after his best friend’s girlfriend got unexpectedly pregnant and decided to have the child. Although the couple was opposed to abortion, Feder said the subject came up in discussions. Feder said he believes viability should determine when life begins. 

Current court precedent allows a woman to obtain an abortion during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy. Many clinics, however, operate under stricter guidelines.

A May Gallup poll showed for the first time that more American adults identify themselves as "pro-life" (51 percent) as compared to "pro-choice" (42 percent). Gallup called this a "significant shift" from last year when 44 percent of those polled were "pro-life" and 50 percent "pro-choice."

“Abortion is just one of those big circles,” said Loyola sophomore Rachel Scheid, 18, who said she is anti-abortion. “No one’s going to see each other’s side to the extent to come to some kind of compromise.”

Science hasn't resolved the issue either. “If scientific advances are made with a clearer understanding of human conception and fertilization, then perhaps consensus will be achieved, but only with a change in public opinion,” Vera said.

Religion
    
Brian Williams, 20, a classmate of Vera’s and Scheid’s, considers himself agnostic. He is anti-abortion and credits his birth mother’s religious values with his very existence.

Williams was adopted at birth and raised by a single mother. “I could easily have been one of the ones who is murdered every year,” he said. “One of the kids who was aborted may have been able to cure cancer, who knows?”

Conservative Christians strongly drive the religious movement to end abortion.

“The Catholic faith says that the act of sexual intercourse is to bring about new human life,” said Monsignor Robert Dempsey, chair of the Priests Advisory Board for the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Respect Life Office. “Whenever we put ourselves in the way of God’s plan, we’re sinning.”

Dempsey said that focusing on only biology minimizes the true meaning of sexuality. “Human life is a wonderful gift and we need to appreciate it as a gift from God and cherish it,” he said.

In many cases, however, people think ethics and legalities of abortion should be independent from religious doctrine.

Feder said the issue should fall under the separation of church and state. “This is one of those moral issues that has mainly to do with religion,” he said. “It seems to me that most people who are pro-life are very religious.” The government needs to be practical and not cave in to pressure from religious institutions, he said.

Couri, now a married mother of two and a volunteer at Project Rachel, a support organization for post-abortive women, said abortion is a moral issue for everyone, however, not just the religious right or the anti-abortion faction.

All of her friends support abortion rights, she said, and they consider that position “the lesser of two evils.”

But lots of people have a foot in both camps. Northwestern University sophomore Nicole Hong, 18, said she believes that life begins at conception, but she also supports a woman’s right to choose.

“I’m pro-choice, but I’m still anti-abortion” from a personal standpoint, she said. “I feel that way because I don’t think the government should be imposing what they think is morality on a woman’s body.”  

Hong’s family is from China, where urban population control mandates a controversial one-child policy. Demanding that women carry babies to term would be the opposite extreme, she said.

Legal rights 
    
Abortion rattles at the foundation of our country, forcing citizens to choose between fundamental legal rights.

When do the unborn’s legal rights begin? How do we prioritize the rights of the fetus and its mother?

Polarized answers, protests and even violence mark the rigid divisiveness of abortion. Twisted anti-abortion activism sometimes destroys life in the name of saving it.

Kansas native Scott Roeder gunned down Dr. George Tiller, a rare late-term abortion provider, in the doctor's Kansas church in May. Late-term abortions are those performed late in the second trimester or in the third trimester of pregnancy. Third trimester abortions are legal in extreme health-related circumstances and Tiller ran one of only three clinics in the country providing them.

While Tiller wore a bulletproof vest to work, the threat of violence has led other abortion providers to restrict their phone numbers and to work in discreet locations. Planned Parenthood’s two Chicago abortion clinics, for instance, have offices in high-rise buildings and the clinics don't post outdoor signage. While these offices offer abortion services, others provide only information and referrals.

Personal views on legalities often include inconsistencies and nuance, especially in cases of rape, incest and risk of death to the fetus or mother.

While an anti-abortion legal victory would inevitably reduce abortions, people on both sides of the issue say a dramatic legal change may increase “back-alley” abortions and false claims of rape. They express concerns that doctors who want to help will be forced to go against the law.

“If abortion today were eradicated everywhere,” said Scheid, “the number of illegal abortions would exponentially increase and we’d have a lot more problems. I acknowledge that you can’t cold turkey this situation.”

Education

Perhaps the only thing people can agree on is that there are too many unplanned pregnancies. In the U.S., about half of all pregnancies each year are unplanned, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Additionally, nearly half of women who get pregnant and choose abortion use no birth control. Method failure accounts for only a small fraction of unintended pregnancies, and the others are due to incorrect or inconsistent use of birth control, such as in Couri’s case.

This means that birth control could prevent about 90 percent of abortions.

Godfrey said it’s very hard for her when a woman is really upset about her unplanned pregnancy but was using no birth control in a consensual, adult relationship. “Of course I would never say this to a patient,” she said, “but part of me wants to say to them, ‘(Then) why aren’t you using birth control?!’”

Health experts agree that misinformation is a huge part of the problem. “It’s so important that comprehensive sex education be available in the schools,” said Julie Rabinovitz, vice president of clinical operations for Planned Parenthood of Illinois. “It needs to be age appropriate and start at an early age. So much of it is about education and self esteem.”

Rabinovitz said she is flabbergasted how many people don’t know sex can result in pregnancy. “If you grow up in a family where people are not talking to you about this, and then you got to a school where they are not talking about this, you just don’t know,” she said. 

While 90 percent of abortions happen in the first trimester, abortions sometimes occur later because women don’t realize they’re pregnant.  

How can a woman not realize she is pregnant? Experts say this is especially common with young girls who haven’t had sex education. “If you’re familiar with your body,” said Rabinovitz, “you know that you’re pregnant. If you’re a teenager and you’re not familiar with your body, then you may not know that you’re pregnant.”

Affordability of birth control is another huge factor. “The pill” can cost up to $75 per month, and generic forms typically range in price between $30 and $60. “A lot of women don’t realize that they can get low cost or free contraception,” Rabinovitz said.  

Godfrey said she has seen the recession take a toll. “I have had patients who are struggling to pay for birth control,” she said. “And without birth control, these women are putting themselves at risk of unwanted pregnancy.”

Economic strain also exists for pregnant women who would like to keep their babies but think they cannot afford to do so.  

Family planning experts say women don’t know how many resources there are to help with prenatal healthcare and delivery costs, as well as with the traditional costs of raising a child.

“No woman should ever feel that she can’t have a baby because she can’t afford it,” said Dempsey. “I would tell them to go to one of these (women’s) centers because there are other women there, many of them in the same situations. They need to know that they are not alone.”

While pressure to have an abortion may leave women feeling alone, pressure not to have one does too.

Couples usually come in together for initial counseling sessions, Godfrey said, but different opinions about how to proceed tear relationships apart. “He’s saying, ‘I’ll support your decision,’” she said, “but sometimes he won’t agree with it, and then when she comes back, they’re not together.” Godfrey said indecisiveness usually signals serious tension in a relationship.

Couri, who now lives in the western suburbs, eventually left Planned Parenthood but she remains on the mailing list and still supports aspects of the organization's work.

Once her views began to change, however, she went through a psychologically excruciating time. “I have felt absolute and complete mind-ripping guilt. And that will never go away,” she said. 

“Nobody knows how completely scary it is to be pregnant until you’re pregnant,” Couri said. “And then it’s too late.”