TESTIMONY

Hong Kong Woman Warns Others of Post-Abortion Problems

Hong Kong -- Ah Yee thought she'd made the easy decision when she discovered she was pregnant after graduating from college in 1996.

By the time she had her abortion she was four months into her pregnancy.

``I didn't know where to turn or what resources I had. You always hear about abortion being the easy option so that's what I chose to do, but I didn't realize there were a lot of physical and emotional consequences,'' the 26-year old says.

``I was pretty much a wreck.

``I found out later my chances of miscarriage in the future are higher, I have a 30 percent higher chance of getting breast cancer and I'll have a problem bonding, whether it's with a baby or in another relationship.

``Because I felt the guy I dated didn't protect or help me, I even had trouble maintaining relationships with my male friends after that.

``I also found out that eight out of 10 relationships break up after an abortion. No one ever told me this.''

That's the reason the Californian has come to Hong Kong after spending four years in the United States counselling women affected by unplanned pregnancies.

Ah Yee, not her real name, has joined a team working with charity group Mother's Choice and will be part of a post-abortion counselling service.

``I know within Chinese culture people don't talk about it,'' she said. ``When I share my own experience with them, people are really shocked.

``But I see in my counselling sessions that these issues are all cross-cultural and across all age groups.''

Most girls she sees in the 14- to 18-year-old category come to her because they're thinking about having an abortion, and they also return for post-abortion counselling.

There is a second group she deals with: Women who are ``dealing with the memories'' of a teenage abortion.

Gary Stephens, the charity's managing director, has come across women who choose to adopt later in life in honor of the baby they never had as a teenager.

The service run by Mr Stephens and his wife Helen, who are Christians, allows girls to make educated choices about the options available to them.

However, more than 60 per cent of girls counselled by Mother's Choice choose adoption, with 30 to 40 per cent opting to keep their babies, often with the support of their extended families.

The couple founded the charity in 1987 after reading an article about three clinics in Shenzhen that were accepting 100 Hong Kong girls a day for abortions, up to 45 percent of whom were in their final three months of pregnancy.

Unfortunately, desperate girls crossing the border for cheaper and more dangerous late-term abortions is still a big problem.

Mother's Choice pregnant girls' service social worker Mimi Tam Kam-sau says under Hong Kong law abortions are illegal. But doctors can make the ``very subjective'' decision to do an abortion under the age of 24 weeks if not doing so would supposedly result in physical or emotional damage to the mother. Even so, most usually refuse to do abortions over five months' or 20 weeks.

``Then they [the girls] will think about going into China to the many hospitals which do abortions there, because they are usually very young and their parents put pressure on them,'' Ms Tam says.

Ms Tam believes easy access to credit cards in the past five years has increased the abortion rate with young girls raising the up-front money themselves, often without telling their parents. It costs about $10,000 to have a 17- to 20-week abortion in Hong Kong, but is ``much cheaper'' on the mainland.

``Sometimes they don't know the meaning of abortion, they just simplify the issue. Many of them say `I want a pill to solve the problem,' they don't realize it's surgery,'' Ms Tam says.

Ah Yee maintains the only way she emerged from her post-abortion crisis was by having counselling.

``I had to go through the different stages of grieving and accept what had happened and move forward in my life,'' she says. ``I still struggle with the day I had the abortion, the baby's due date and Mothers' Day. They're the three worst times in the year for me.''

Mother's Choice offers individual and family counselling and a counselling hotline in Hong Kong at 2868 2022.