One study that revealed parents of babies aborted due to disability of “fetal anomaly” suffer depression and loss said this:
“Despite the shock and grief they may experience upon hearing the news of a fetal anomaly, the pregnant woman and her partner are usually urged to make the decision to terminate quickly. Behind the urgency is the physician’s desire to avoid complications of “late” terminations of pregnancy. Because of the delays involved in amniocentesis, abortions may occur in the second and even third trimesters of pregnancy. In health care settings, the issue of such late abortions has raised ethical and legal questions. In one early study, most of the terminations occurred within 72 hours of the woman receiving the news of the abnormality. This hardly allows time for the couple to become informed about parenting children born with that anomaly and thus consider carrying through with the pregnancy.”
Donnai P, Charles N, Harris R. Attitudes of Patients after “Genetic” Termination of Pregnancy British Medical Journal 1981; 282: 621 – 622, P622 in Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles. Women’s Health after Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence Second Edition (Toronto, Canada: The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, 2003) 159
Here is a story from a victim of incest who opposes abortion in cases of rape and incest:
She was abused by her brother and also by an older friend of the family. Here is her story in her own words:
“About three or four months after the abuse began, I was late for a period. I told my brother this, and he informed me that I “should’ve made guy wear a rubber, you idiot.” [Referring to the family friend’s abuse] I did not know what a “rubber” was, or where it was worn, or why. All I knew was that if you did not have periods, you were pregnant. And if you are pregnant, you’re in trouble.
….
[She describes going to her Sunday school teacher for help, who directed her to Planned Parenthood]
So my older brother took me to Planned Parenthood.
I had never been to a doctor without my mother, and I had never had a gynecological exam. The whole visit was terrifying. No one explained anything. I was examined, gave urine and blood samples, and was shown a chart of an egg going around a big circle marked by days of the month. I was asked questions like “frequency of intercourse?” And “method of birth control preferred?” I did not know what intercourse meant, so I just said “a lot,” and I had no idea what birth control methods existed. No one asked who my “partner” was, nor expressed any dismay, concern, or even interest that a 12-year-old girl needed a pregnancy test.
I heard a lot about “being responsible” and “taking control of my body.” Someone gave me a handful of condoms on the way out, and made a joke about being an assortment – red, blue, and yellow. The yellow ones were called Tinglers. I stuffed them in my purse, and threw them away later.
My older brother maintained a strong silence throughout the entire time – no one asked him a single question.
Two days later I received a phone call telling me the test was positive, and to come in the following Saturday morning with a sanitary napkin and a friend who could drive. The caller never used the word “pregnant” or “abortion.” I did not keep that appointment; my period started that evening.
The sexual abuse ended a couple of months later, as the family friend moved away my older brother began to abuse two younger neighborhood children instead.
It was not until three years later that I discovered, in a high school biology class, that you cannot get pregnant from oral sexual contact. I also found out what intercourse was, and that I’d never had it.
I remember the feeling of horror that came over me as I realized that I’d been scheduled for abortion.…
Over the years, I found that my story is very common in two aspects… The first is the fact that my experience with Planned Parenthood was not an aberration. The sexual attitude often championed by Planned Parenthood is a serious factor in preventing the discovery of sexual abuse of young people. Had anyone shown even the least bit of disapproval or concern, I would have divulged the truth and begged for help. Everyone around me seemed to accept as normal that a 12-year-old girl could and should be sexually active (so long as she is responsible – remember the “rainbow”!)” And remember to who took me to Planned Parenthood – an older brother with an urgent interest in my being aborted! Abortion on demand, no questions asked, makes it easier for incest and child abuse to continue. Abortion for incest victims sounds compassionate, but in practice it is simply another violent, deceptive tool in the hand of the abuser.
The other unhappy aspect of this situation is that incest, rape, and child abuse are far more common than most pro-lifers want to admit….
Abortion defenders need to realize that while abortion may keep one of the results of incest and sexual abuse from seeing the light of day it does absolutely nothing to protect a young girl from continued abuse, and, in fact aids the abuser and his crime. Furthermore, birth control counseling and abortion often indirectly contribute to the victim’s sense of shame, guilt, and blame for what is happening, since she is told to “take control” and “be responsible” for her “sexual activity,” implying that this situation is, indeed, within her power to control.”
Rachel McNair, Mary Krane Derr, and Linda Naranjo-Hubbl. Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today (New York: Sulzburger & Graham Publishing, Ltd.) 262-263
“I think in many ways I’ve been lucky to have been a part of this. I mean life is dull if you can’t get involved in something worthwhile. If I hadn’t gotten involved, I would have gone through life probably being perfectly satisfied to go to the medical society parties and it would’ve been very, very dull. I would have been bored silly.”
Carole E. Joffe Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe v Wade (Beacon Press 1996) 26
From the chief of gynecological and obstetrical services at an abortion clinic:
“I practice medicine not to make a living and yet I like to make money at it. We made a lot of money in abortions. I don’t really know why I did it. I sort of fell into it. I was the director of the service here, so when the abortion program came in I looked at it is sort of a challenge. We did set up a very good program. But then I could see from the point of view of management that they were less interested in the best program than in the best paying program. For the first two or three months I didn’t do any of the abortions… Then I suddenly realized I had all the headaches because whenever they ran into trouble I got involved. I took over gradually and work two days a week and I found that I work very hard, but it made an awful lot of money.”
Magda Denes, PhD. In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital (New York: Basic Books inc) 1976
While most pro-choice activists deny that pictures of aborted babies are real, one pro-choice feminist admits that they are and speaks out against the hypocrisy of pro-choicers who want to hide them:
she is referring to pictures like this one
“So what will it be: Wanted fetuses are charming, complex, REM-dreaming little beings whose profile on the sonogram looks just like Daddy, but unwanted ones are mere ‘uterine material’? How can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real? To insist that the truth is in poor taste is the very height of hypocrisy. Besides, if these images are often the facts of the matter, and if we then claim that it is offensive for pro-choice women to be confronted by them, then we are making the judgment that women are too inherently weak to face a truth about which they have to make a grave decision. This view of women is unworthy of feminism.”
Naomi Wolf, feminist author and advocate of legal abortion, in “Our Bodies, Our Souls”, The New Republic, 10/15/1995
Dr. Suzanne T. Poppema, abortionist, start selling women on the next abortion as soon as she finishes performing one. She says to the women:
“Women will say: ‘Oh, I’ll never do this again. I’ll never get pregnant again.’ And I say: ‘I’m sure you’re going to try, and it’s a good approach. But if anything untoward occurs we’ll be here to help you.’
Suzanne T. Poppema, and Mike Henderson, Why I Am an Abortion Doctor (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996) p 35
Two abortion clinic workers recount the following story:
They describe how they counseled a woman who comes in for an abortion and is ambivalent.
The woman in described how her boyfriend was mean to her oldest child, who was not his biological child. She discussed the difficulty of wanting to break up with him but not being sure. Of abortion, she said:
“I am against this sort of thing: abortion and adoption. Last time, my mother said, “You will have it. We don’t do things like abortion.” This time, her mother said the same thing but apparently without as much conviction. Her sister supports her, but is worried about how she will do afterwards. “You’re different from me,” she said. “You’re more sensitive and it would be hard on you.” She too was worried about how she would cope. “Do women have a hard time after?” She asked.”
So – obviously, this woman is very ambivalent, and things with her are not going to be easy if she has abortion. In fact, she’s likely to suffer grief and regret. Now, if she was at a crisis pregnancy center, at this point, the counselor would be talking about ways to have the baby. The counselor would be giving her support, describing all the resources that could be utilized, as well as giving her the facts about postabortion syndrome. She would be genuinely helping this woman. Instead, the counselor says
“We talked about how her first responsibility is to her children, especially to her oldest, who was suffering. Could her boyfriend change his heart or his behavior? She thought not, she had tried to talk to him, begged him to change. How would she feel about adoption? It turns out her sister could not conceive; could she give the pregnancy to her sister? Not without his legal permission, I pointed out. Could you sacrifice this pregnancy – this beginning of life, for her other two children and for herself and feels she was doing “the least bad” thing? She would think about it.”
The counselor does not reveal whether or not the woman eventually decided to abort her eight-week-old baby. But it is clear that whatever the woman decides to do, she will be cut loose after her abortion with no counseling, no follow-up, and no help. Whereas the crisis pregnancy center would be offering continuous support for up to a year after the baby was born or even longer.
Krista Jacob. Abortion under Attack: Women on the Challenges Facing Choice (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2006) 146- 147
Read more about biased abortion counseling (and sometimes outright deception in abortion counseling) here.
In an article in The Boston Globe, the author tells the story of a former abortion clinic nurse.
12 week unborn baby
She is now employed as a school nurse. She is mother of three.A woman of memory, conscience and deep regret that, combined with an eyewitness’s logic, cause her to wonder what wounds a culture suffers when it allows abortion to be obtained as easily as a flu shot. “I worked in the autoclave room. That is where they sterilize the trays and the instruments after the procedure,” she recalled the other day.
“When the doctors finished, they would bring in a small metal tray. There would be a plastic container as well as the instruments used to perform the abortion on the tray. “The instruments are called dilators. They are long metal sticks that are wider toward the end. Obviously, they are used to dilate the women.
“My job was to sterilize the instruments.
hands at 20 weeks
Then I would take the plastic container, which was filled with formaldehyde along with what they refer to as ‘the product of conception,’ and label it before sending it out to some lab. “After each abortion, the doctor would bring the tray to me, wrapped in sterilization paper, to be washed and labeled. I would clean the trays and utensils for the next procedure.
“We were not supposed to perform abortions past 12 weeks. But it would, and did, happen that some women were aborted at 16 to 20 weeks. “When that would happen, I would find that the tray contained blood, tissue and bone. That happened quite a lot and anyone who says it doesn’t is lying.
16 weeks
“What would you do?” she was asked. “With the tissue, bone and blood?” she wanted to know. “Right,” she was told.
She responded with a sigh
“I’d dump it in the sink, Just like it was a disposal.”
“The first time I saw it, I said, ‘Oh my God!’ And then I washed it away down the sink.
“Tissue, bone and blood,” she repeated. “That’s not life?”
Norma McCorvey, the “Roe” in the court case Roe Vs Wade, was instrumental in making abortion legal. She spent time working in abortion clinics in subsequent years. She later wrote a book about her experience.
Norma McCorvey Won By Love (Thomas Nelson, Inc: Nashville, TN) 1997 p 13
“I worked in several abortion facilities over the years. In fact, I even worked at two clinics at the same time, and they were all the same with respect to the condition of the facilities and that “counseling” the women receive. One clinic where I worked in 1995 was typical: light fixtures and plaster falling from the ceiling; rat droppings over the sinks; backed up sinks; and blood splattered on the walls. But the most distressing room in the facility was the “parts room.” Aborted babies were stored here. There were dead babies and baby parts stacked like cord wood. Some of the babies made it into buckets and others did not,….. The stench was horrible. Plastic bags full of baby parts, little tiny hands and feet visible through the jars, frozen in blood. The abortion clinic’s personnel always referred to these dismembered babies as “tissue.”
On page 58
unborn baby’s foot at 14 weeks
“When a later abortion was performed, workers had to piece the baby back together, and every major part–head, torso, two legs, and two arms –had to be accounted for. One of our little jokes at the clinic was, “If you ever want to humble a doctor, hide a leg so he thinks he has to go back in.” Please understand, these were not abnormal, uncaring women working with me at the clinic. We were just involved in a bloody, dehumanizing business, all of us for our own reasons. Whether we were justifying our past advocacy (as I was), justifying a previous abortion (as many were) or whatever, we were just trying to cope–and if we couldn’t laugh at what was going on, I think our minds would have snapped. It’s not an easy thing trying to confuse a conscience that will not stay dead.”
Also, in her sworn deposition (Norma McCorvey A.k.a. Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade) Sworn to on 15 day of March, 2000:
While all the facilities [I worked in] were much the same, the abortion doctors in the various clinics where I worked were very representative of abortionists in general. The abortionists I knew were usually of foreign descent with the perception that the lax abortion laws in the United States present a fertile money-making opportunity. One abortionist, in particular, would sometimes operate bare-chested, and sometimes shoe less with his shirt off, and earned a six-figure income. He did not have to worry about his bedside manner, learning to speak English, or building a clientele.
While the manners of the abortionists and the uncleanliness of the facilities greatly shocked me, the lack of counseling provided the women was perhaps the greatest tragedy. Early in my abortion career, it became evident that the “counselors” and the abortionists were there for only one reason – to sell abortions. The extent of the abortionists’ counseling was, “Do you want an abortion? Ok, you sign here and we give you abortion.” [sic]. Then he would direct me, “You go get me another one.” There was nothing more. There was never an explanation of the procedure. No one even explained to the mother that the child already existed and the life of a human was being terminated. No one ever explained that there were options to abortion, that financial help was available, or that the child was a unique and irreplaceable. No one ever explained that there were psychological and physical risks of harm to the mother. There was never time for the mother to reflect or to consult with anyone who could offer her help or an alternative. There was no informed consent. In my opinion, the only thing the abortion doctors and clinics cared about was making money. No abortion clinic cared about the women involved. As far as I could tell, every woman had the name of Jane Roe.
Typically, most of the women would cry as soon as the suction machine was shut off, or, at some point. Sometimes I thought that they realized what had been done to their babies. Once, I heard a woman call her mother and say, “I just killed my baby. I’m so glad you never killed me!”
The doctors always hid the truth from the mothers. I would say about eighty-percent of the women would try to look down during the abortion and try to see what was happening. This is the reason the doctors would start with the scalpel: to make sure there was just blood and torn up “tissue” for the women to see. Specifically, I remember one woman who came in for an abortion, a pretty, sweet young woman about eighteen years old, with a teddy bear. During the procedure she looked down and saw the baby’s hand fall into the doctor’s hand. She gasped and passed out. When she awoke and asked about what she saw, I lied to her and told her it didn’t happen. But she insisted that she had seen part of her baby. A few weeks later, when she returned for her follow-up exam, she was a changed person: her sweetness had died and had been replaced with an indescribable hardness. I . could not look her in the eye. It took quite a few beers that night to make that particular day go away.
feet of unborn baby at 8 weeks
In all of the clinics I worked in the employees were forbidden to say anything that could talk the mother out of an abortion. The experience of abortion began to take its toll on me. While the abortionists’ counseling was non- existent, my counseling technique gradually became different depending on my mood and the stage of my career. In later years, I would sometimes take all the instruments that were used in an abortion procedure and purposely leave a little of the blood on some the instruments. Laying the instruments out on the little table in front of the woman, I would tell her that, “This is the first instrument that is going to be inserted into your vaginal area.” It would have just had a little smudge of blood, and I thought it was very dramatic. In retrospect, I don’t even know why I was doing these things. It was as if I was trying to talk these women out of the abortion– something we were forbidden to do. In other counseling sessions, I would demonstrate the position and warn her that the instruments were sharp, and that if she moved the doctor might slip, and puncture her uterus, and she would bleed to death. In other situations, when a woman asked me how much it cost, I asked her in response how much she wanted to pay to kill her baby. She replied, “They told me it wasn’t a baby.” I responded, “What do you think it is inside you, a fish?” Other times I would comfort them after the abortion by saying, “It wasn’t a baby. It was only a missed period.” Sometimes when I managed to make the women unsure, I would offer to refund their money except for the ultrasound.
……
After I saw all the deception going on in the abortion facilities, and after all the things that my supervisors told me to tell the women, I became very angry. I saw women being lied to, openly, and I was part of it. There’s no telling how many children I helped kill while their mothers dug their nails into me and listened to my warning, “Whatever you do, don’t move!” I can assure the court that the interest of these mothers is not a concern of abortion providers.
Because I was drunk or stoned much of the time, I was able to continue this work for a long time, probably much longer than most clinic workers. It is a high turnover job, because of the true nature of the business. The abortion business is an inherently dehumanizing one. A person has to let her heart and soul die or go numb to stay in practice. The clinic workers suffer, the women suffer, and the babies die.
