“One woman I interviewed tried to communicate with her foetus… But her foetus would not talk back. And the fact that the foetus was so unresponsive helped her decide not to continue the pregnancy. If the foetus had “spoken” to her, she would have continued.”
Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 59
An 18-year-old woman was interviewed right before her abortion:
Legs of preborn baby at 11 weeks
Q: When do you think it becomes a human life?
A: Well, it’s at the moment of conception, and it really – it’s hard for me now, because I started thinking of him as being a human now, because I know he’s probably almost developed and stuff, and its’s really sad for me to think of it. I guess I’m being really selfish about it. I just don’t want anybody to know. It is [just] the social pressure….So- I don’t know, it just seems the easy way out, the only way to do it without anybody knowing, you know, just to get rid of it before it gets big. …It really upsets me, because it’s kind of against my morals, I mean – I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think I really had a good reason to, because it does seem like it’s a human life…It would just look really bad, I think. Well, not just that, but it’s just not right for right now…because it would be a deterrent right now to both our careers…it’s too bad it happened, and it won’t happen again.”
Judith G. Smetana Concepts of Self and Morality: Women’s Reasoning about Abortion (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1982) 67-68
A 21-year-old woman became pregnant, and her husband’s health problems made her arrange an abortion.
“Three years ago, my boyfriend, Darren, was diagnosed with testicular cancer. While radiation treatment saved his life, he was told it might cause serious problems in his reproductive future. He was warned that his future children might be born with deformities and the mother of his children might be harmed by the pregnancy.
It was heartbreaking to be so paralyzed by fear over something my boyfriend and I would otherwise be excited for. Everyone around me was saying abortion was my only option, so I scheduled an appointment.
When we arrived at the clinic, Darren and I couldn’t help but notice a large bus parked in the parking lot. It advertised free ultrasounds and pregnancy tests. I was curious and knew I would need an ultrasound before I had an abortion, so we poked our heads in.
The Stork Bus was parked outside the clinic. It was staffed by pro-lifers hoping to save children whose mothers had scheduled them for abortion.
We explained our situation to the nurse in the bus. She listened to our fears and concerns with deep sympathy.
I laid back on a reclining leather chair, where the nurse gave me my ultrasound. We had no idea that I was already 18 weeks along. It was moving around and waving its hands! The nurse said the baby looked totally healthy. Darren and I both started to cry.
We are so thankful that we chose to get an ultrasound in the Stork Bus. If we hadn’t, we might have never learned that our baby was actually completely healthy. We realized that we could not let the difficulties in our pasts define our future. We can’t wait to be a healthy family of three in a little over a month!”
Author Mary Kenny describes going to an abortion clinic and witnessing a late term abortion.
First, she went to the clinic. In the OR, the doctors were casually starting their day.
The atmosphere in the operating theatre was clean, busy and professional. Several young male doctors, gowned for the [operating room], were standing around when I entered, talking cheerfully about the cricket score. There was no hint, here, of life-and-death drama – it was just another day, another hospital [operating] session.
Then she describes actually witnessing a late term abortion:
The procedure began. About half a litre of amniotic fluid flowed from the woman’s body as the dilators were inserted. The cord was extracted – the last lifeline of the foetus. Dr. Paintin did this abortion. The forceps went into the uterus, quite roughly this time. Fluid and blood continued to fall into the bowl underneath the table. After some vigorous action he started to extract the foetus. First came an arm, perfectly formed, a tiny, baby’s hand, fingers curled. A limb was extracted. Then two limbs lay in the bowl. Dr. Paintin worked away and pieces of the trunk emerged. The intestines, brain tissue, liver, lung, came away. Last of all – the most difficult part – was the cranium. The skin was torn, and there was not much more than a skull. After all the parts had come away, the suction was inserted, and the uterus cleanly evacuated.
20 weeks. She describes witnessing a late term abortion of a baby older than this one.
Yet the abortion workers had no reaction to the horror they were committing:
The men did not seem to mind doing the abortions and showed no signs of distress. … Overall, there was a very perceptible atmosphere of relief that the day’s work was done. The sense of relief was so strong that Dr. Paintin and I talked light-heartedly, gossiped a little, made a joke.
Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 154, 156, 158-159
“Recently the Centers for Disease Control conducted a study of maternal deaths and discovered that abortion is now the 6th most common cause. The results of the study, released to the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, admitted that those abortion related deaths may be underreported by as much as 50%.”
George Grant Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood (Franklin, Tennessee: Adroit Press, 1988, 1992) 33
“John [the baby’s father] suggested we get married and keep the baby. I wanted to wait and do it right. I counseled with a woman at a Planned Parenthood clinic and told her that I wanted an abortion. She gave me a list of abortion clinics… I did ask about the development of the fetus, and she told me it was just tissue at this point.…
The abortion wasn’t physically painful, but I was surprised by my emotions – I could not stop crying. Tears rolled down my face the whole morning and I didn’t know why. I wanted this abortion; I was glad I didn’t have to have a baby when I wasn’t ready.
I met John in the waiting room when it was over, and he asked, “Why the tears?” I laughed it off… We never discussed the abortion. It was over.”
When her 3rd child was born, after she married John. But:
“One afternoon while I sat rocking Daniel, the realization of what I had done hit ne. I cried, wiped my tears, and went on with my duties as wife and mother.”
When she told a friend about the abortion 3 yrs later:
“She accepted me, cried with me, and loved me. Later, as grief rolled over me, I couldn’t stop the flow of tears. I cried every day, all day, even in the night. I finally sought professional counseling to deal with the fact that I had killed one of my babies.…
My husband and I still cannot discuss it; it is too painful for us.”
Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005) 30-31
“In another case, a forthright and confident Italian woman – an active member of the Communist Party, utterly without hang-ups of an emotional or religious nature, and rather dismissive of “sentimentality” in general – used abortion fairly regularly as a form of birth control. She had a daughter from a first marriage and was married again. She simply didn’t like any form of contraception – the Pill made her ill, the IUD made her bleed, the diaphragm was uncomfortable – so she decided that the “rational” thing to do was to have an abortion whenever she needed one. By her middle 30s she had had “three or four” abortions…
The woman then consulted her daughter on what to do in a subsequent pregnancy:
But at 37 she became pregnant once again and, as usual, she decided to have the abortion. She arranged it and was talking to her husband about collecting her daughter – now aged 13 – from school that day, when something suddenly occurred to her: perhaps her daughter was now old enough to be consulted? So she asked the young girl if she would like to have a baby sister or brother. The girl’s eyes lit up. “Oh, Mama,” she said, “I’ve been secretly hoping and hoping and hoping I might someday have a baby brother or sister. Oh, it would be so wonderful!” The mother canceled her appointment for the abortion.”
Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 87 – 88
How would the daughter react if she knew that “three or four” of her siblings have been killed by abortion?
8 weeks – most abortions are done around this time or laterShare on Facebook
Jessica Stanton writes about a study on how postabortion women were coerced into abortions:
“In a study conducted by Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, Dr. Ian Gentles, and Dr. Elizabeth Ring–Cassidy published in 2013 in Complications: Abortion’s Impact on Women, the authors asked 101 women to share their abortion stories. When they were asked whether they were “coerced or pressured into having the abortion,” 48% of the women answered, “Yes,” and said that the pressure or coercion was in the form of violence or threat. Concerning adolescent abortion, 8% of minors whose parents learned about their pregnancies from a third-party felt forced to abort; 6% of that group stated they were subjected to physical violence.”
Jessica Stanton “Protecting Women and Girls from Coerced Abortions” The American Feminist Fall/Winter 2016
A woman who was characterized as “brilliant” and a college professor had an abortion because her astrologer. She aborted because of a horoscope. Mary Kenny recounts:
“Another curious case was that of a brilliant woman academic head of a department at a provincial university who was in her 30s and having an affair with an artist – a moody, melancholic yet pleasing man, married, though not very happily. She… became pregnant. She was at the same time very pleased and very sad. She would have greatly liked to have had the child, but she thought the relationship impossible. So she took herself off to an astrologist and had her horoscope cast. The astrologist was disturbed at what he saw in her future, and warned her to try and avoid an event which might happen “about eight or nine months from now.” That clinched it: she knew it was a sign that she must have an abortion. So she did. Some eight months later her lover committed suicide. So it may not have been the birth of the child, but the suicide of the man, that the astrologist had presumably foreseen. The woman was, naturally, very distressed, though she stood by her decision, and felt the suicide of her lover would have been a bad omen for the child anyway. Later, she became obsessively keen to have a child and even considered artificial insemination by donor (AID), though, up to the time of writing (some five years after the original abortion) without success.
What is significant about this case is that it shows how a highly intellectual and rational person can use what some would consider a quirky and superstitious method to help her make a decision about abortion.”
Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 56 – 57
It is sad that this woman chose to kill her baby because of a horoscope. This anecdote shows that even a woman who is well-educated and presumably intelligent can make a decision to abort her child based on faulty reasoning. She seems to regret her abortion and desires another child, possibly to replace the one she has lost.
Most abortions are done on babies that look like this, and are over seven weeks of ageShare on Facebook
The Irish Pregnancy Counseling Center in Belfast refers women to England for abortions. (Abortion was then illegal in Northern Ireland under most circumstances.) These are the reasons Irish women have abortions, broken down by percentages.The statistics were based on interviews with 500 women.
The quality of life for self and family was threatened: 22%
There was parental disapproval: 18%
Woman is too young to care for a child: 18%
Woman is too old to care for a child: 3%
The circumstances were strongly unfavorable: 13%
There was no relationship with putative father: 11%
Others: 7%
8% of the women had had at least one abortion before.
Cited in Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 54
Most of these reasons Irish women have abortions are due to social factors- abortions out of convenience. the woman just does not want the baby. Only a small fraction of abortions were done for reasons of rape, incest, or a health problem in the mother or child.
This preborn baby is 9 – 10 weeks old. This is within the time that most abortions are currently done.
Seven weeks
Statistically few abortions take place before the seventh week. Are the reasons Irish women have abortions good ones, considering that most abortions dismember a growing preborn child?
