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This is what happens when an abortion counsellor gets pregnant.

 

Trigger warning: This post includes a video depicting an abortion. It may be distressing for some viewers.

A 25-year-old abortion counsellor has had her own termination filmed to demonstrate “that there is such thing as a positive abortion story.”

“I found out that I’m pregnant… I’m not ready to have children,” Emily Letts, who works at the Cherry Hill Women’s Center in New Jersey and was formerly a professional actress, explained in the controversial video.

“I feel completely comfortable with the decision… I’m supported by everyone. I just want to share my story to show women that there is such a thing as a positive abortion story,” she said.

The video, which was uploaded to YouTube in mid-March, includes a segment in which Letts reflects on her decision six weeks after the procedure.

She says: “I feel like I talk to women all the time (in my job) and they’re like, ‘of course everyone feels bad about this, of course everyone’s going to feel guilty.'”

“I don’t feel like a bad person. I don’t feel sad,” she says.

“I feel in awe of the fact that I can make a baby. I can make a life.”

The video has divided the Mamamia office. While we can all get behind Letts’ goal of destigmatising and demystifying abortion, some of us found Lett’s assertion that her experience was not just the right choice for her, but an actually “positive” experience, odd –particularly because one of the most positive factors she seems to have taken from the experience was her realisation that she could “make a baby”.

Take a look and judge for yourself:

Speaking to Cosmopolitan in the US for an article called “Why I filmed my abortion”, Letts said she decided to film her procedure as a way to help other women:

I searched the Internet, and I couldn’t find a video of an actual surgical procedure in the clinic that focused on the woman’s experience. We talk about abortion so much and yet no one really knows what it actually looks like. A first trimester abortion takes three to five minutes. It is safer than giving birth. There is no cutting, and risk of infertility is less than 1 percent. Yet women come into the clinic all the time terrified that they are going to be cut open, convinced that they won’t be able to have kids after the abortion. The misinformation is amazing, but think about it: They are still willing to sacrifice these things because they know that they can’t carry the child at this moment.

What do you think of the video? Does it fulfil its aim of depicting a “positive abortion story”?