Category: Abortion Counseling

Drug user has abortion after doctor lies to her about preborn baby

Shawna Arnold had an abusive, drug-addicted mother, and became a drug user at a young age.

When she got pregnant at 19, her mother urged her to have an abortion. She wrote:

“I was so messed up at the time that I believed the people who said there was no way I could take care of a baby.

The doctor told me the baby was the size of a pen dot, had no heartbeat and wasn’t even recognizable as a person. With my appointment to have the abortion in Saskatoon, I left the clinic. I kept drinking and I even did some drugs, despite knowing I was pregnant…

I had nowhere to turn. I was completely lost and frightened.

I had no strength inside me to quit my addictions, and I chose them over my baby’s life. I was on mushrooms when I was pregnant and had thoughts that I had Satan in my stomach – that my baby was evil. I was a serious mess and needed help, some kind of treatment. I didn’t even know who was the father of the baby I was carrying.”

Shawna Arnold A New Heart: My Story of Abortion, Addiction & Conversion (Galston, New South Wales, Australia: Parousia Media Pty Ltd, 2021) 31, 32

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Abortion workers lied about development of the baby and didn’t warn of abortion’s risks

From one post-abortive woman:

“I had an abortion when I was just 18, and a college freshman. My boyfriend of two years and I were faced with an unintended pregnancy. When we went to the women’s center near our university campus, we received no options counseling. We were told only of abortion.

I was not empowered as a person to explore my options. It was “assumed” I should take care of my “problem pregnancy” quickly, and that abortion was my easy “out.” The Women’s Center personnel discussed the abortion procedure as if it was as minor as getting a tooth pulled!

When I had the abortion, a non-medical “counselor” told me it was just a “glob of pregnancy tissue.” Later, I learned that my baby’s heartbeat began beating just three weeks after conception!

I was not told about the possibility of “post-abortion stress,” which I suffered. There was no discussion about the potential for lasting sadness, depression, regret, guilt, shame, flashbacks, nightmares, regret, heightened statistics of substance abuse, and breast cancer (which I later developed in my 40’s, with subsequent double mastectomies).

The first time I actually met the physician who would perform the abortion was when I was in a gown with my legs in the stirrups, already lying flat on the abortion procedure table. The abortionist did not go through any informed consent with me. That was handled in general by non-medical staff.”

Susan Justice “Retired nurse: Abortion promised an answer, but created trauma in my life” Live Action News April 30, 2021

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Abortion clinic worker: women say they are killing their babies

Peg Johnston, who was working in an abortion facility, said the following in a 2006 article:

“I would go out there and scream at them [pro-life protesters]. Then I would come back in and listen to a woman talk.

Frequently the words were almost the same. The protesters would be saying, ‘You’re murdering your baby,’ and the women inside would be saying, ‘I feel like I’m killing my baby.’ I used to think, well, they’re just echoing what they are hearing. There was a time when I would correct them if they used those words.

The word killing was hard. It was so difficult to see women that guilty or distressed. But eventually we got into conversations about the difference between murder and killing.

Now our reaction is more: well, does it feel like killing to you and how are you going to make peace with that?”

Monika Bauerlein “In Search of New Words: Redefining the Abortion Debate” MORE magazine, October 2006

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Abortion clinic worker admits her workers lied to women

Carol Everett, who owned two abortion clinics and ran four, said:

“Every woman has these same two questions: First, ‘Is it a baby?’ ‘No’ the counselor assures her. ‘It is a product of conception (or a blood clot, or a piece of tissue)’ Even though these counselors see six-week babies daily, with arms, legs and eyes that are closed like newborn puppies, they lie to the women. How many women would have an abortion, if they told them the truth?”

Carol Everett “A Walk Through an Abortion Clinic” ALL About Issues magazine Aug-Sept 1991, pg. 117

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Woman describes biased advice she received as a college student at women’s center

Betsy, who became pregnant in college, wrote:

“I went to the Women’s Center at the college where I took a pregnancy test. Even then it seemed so unreal. I was in complete shock when I received the results: positive.

I remember sitting in the small, stuffy third-floor office and numbly trying to listen as a volunteer counselor explained my options. In great detail, she outlined the procedure for ending the pregnancy – the nearest clinic, the cost, how to get an appointment, how much time it would take (about a half-day), and what would be involved in the procedure (she never called it an abortion, but a procedure).

Or, she said, I could have the baby. Period. No recommendations for agencies that might help with that decision or where I might go for further counseling if I decided to keep the baby. I would definitely be on my own if that was the course that I wanted to follow.”

She had an abortion and later regretted it deeply.

Yvonne Florczak–Seeman A Time to Speak: A Healing Journal for Post-Abortive Women (Clarendon Hills, Illinois: Love from above, Inc., 2015) 46

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Post-Abortive Woman: “I was not empowered as a woman but diminished”

A post-abortive woman named Susan Justice wrote:

“In 1980, just seven years after Roe V. Wade became the law of the land, I became one of abortion’s statistics. I was a vulnerable 18-year-old college freshman when I found myself faced with an unplanned pregnancy. After my high school sweetheart and I found ourselves in crisis, we visited a Women’s Center just blocks from our college campus. It was there the deception began. “It is just a glob of pregnancy tissue… it will be a short outpatient procedure and you can be sent on your way… problem solved.”

My “problem” was NOT solved. Instead, figuratively speaking, the abortion ushered me down a staircase, finding myself spiraling into deep depression. The abortion became my prison cell of post-abortion grief, substance abuse, shame, and heartbreak. Abortion did not solve my “problem”… but only served to magnify it.

At the abortion clinic (a.k.a. campus “women’s center”) I was not empowered as a woman but diminished. I was told, “It will be easier for you to get an abortion and get on with your life.”

Tragically, no one at that women’s center told me the truth of the development of my baby, my option for adoption, or the devastating fallout from post-abortion grief and regret….

The abortion tore through my life like a hurricane, leaving destruction in its wake. The post-abortion fallout with my boyfriend left only devastation. Our previous deeply nurturing relationship shattered into a mass of scattered, broken, irreparable pieces.

I changed from a young woman entering nursing school, hard-working, eager to help people, having dated the same high school sweetheart for two years, sharing our dream of marriage after college… to a broken, promiscuous, alcohol indulging, partying girl, looking for any way to numb the emotional pain from the gnawing reality of the loss of my child and what I had done.”

Susan Justice “Abortion did not solve my ‘problem.’ It sent me into a deep depression” Live Action News March 22, 2021

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Abortionist undermines informed consent law

According to many women’s testimonies, abortion facilities don’t give women accurate and truthful information about abortion’s risks or the development of their babies. Because of this, pro-lifers have passed laws requiring abortionists to read scripts to women with information about abortion and preborn babies. This is to ensure that women can make an informed choice.

Abortionist Curtis Boyd reads the state-mandated informed consent script to women- then interjects his own observation that all the information is false. In this way, he undermines the informed consent law.

According to pro-choice authors Robin Marty, Jessica Mason, and Pieklo Crow:

“… [Dr. Curtis Boyd, abortionist] provides the state script, then adds his own thoughts to the end of it.”

Boyd says:

“Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the state wanted to make an issue of it. You know: “We’ve already told you what you must say; now you can’t say…”

I don’t know. They can’t rule that I can’t have an opinion. They have sort of ruled what my opinion must be to the patient, but it doesn’t say clearly you can’t tell the patient you think something differently. So I do it. I think, “Well, they’ll just have to take me to court.”

There’s just a limit to how far they can go. I have to salvage my integrity, somehow. So I say, “this is what the state wants me to tell you, and my own belief is that abortion does not cause breast cancer,” and so forth - and that you are quite ethically competent to make this decision.

I respect your decision-making process. I’ve given you the decision-making process the state wants you to follow.”

Robin Marty, Jessica Mason Pieklo Crow After Roe (Brooklyn, New York: ig Publishing, 2013) 102–103

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Just 1 in 10 women “counseled” at British abortion clinics choose life

An article in The Telegraph found that only one in 10 women who went to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and Marie Stopes (The two biggest chains of abortion clinics in England, sometimes called charities, even though they make a profit) decided against abortion. It implies that women are getting biased “counseling” and steered into abortion.

“Just one in 10 women who book consultations with Maries Stopes and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) decide against having an abortion, according to figures from a sample of clinics.

This is half the proportion regularly cited by the charities, who have claimed that one in five women who have consultations decide to keep their baby.

The disparity in the figures, if replicated across the country, indicates that the charities have exaggerated the number of women who continue with their pregnancies after receiving counselling by 14,000 a year…

In Hammersmith and Fulham 1,051 consultations resulted in 968 abortions while 83 decided against the procedure, meaning about 7.9 per cent of women kept their babies.

In Milton Keynes 1,029 women were referred to the clinics and of these 937 had abortions, with just 92, or 8.9 per cent, going ahead with the pregnancy.

In South East Essex 695 consultations produced 624 abortions while 71 women – 10.2 per cent of the total – opted to continue with the pregnancy.

Marie Stopes and BPAS are paid about £60 million a year to carry out abortions, with BPAS specialising in the more costly late-term procedures.”

Simon Caldwell and Nick Collins “Abortion charities could be misleading public” The Telegraph 05 September 2011

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Pregnancy center worker tells of teen’s reaction to seeing her baby

A pregnancy center worker wrote:

“I’ll never forget the 15-year-old girl who, upon seeing her child’s ultrasound image, started crying. When asked why she was crying she said, ‘Everyone lied to me. They told me that I just had a blob of tissue and so it was no big deal. You are the ones telling the truth!’”

Cindi Adair of LifeLine Pregnancy Center in Wilmington, N.C.

Kirk Walden “They told me I just had a blob of tissue. You are the ones telling the truth!” Pregnancy Help News 10 March, 2015

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Woman describes being “emotionally tortured” by her abortion

A woman named Nadine said:

“I was so naïve. I had no idea what an abortion actually was. They made it all sounds so safe, so easy, so simple. They promised an abortion would take care of my problem and I’d be back to my old self and I could continue with whatever I wanted in my life. The counselor even said, “If you were my daughter, I’d tell you the same thing. It’s the right thing to do.”

Everyone assured me not to worry, that there was nothing to be afraid of. The counseling I received was like, yes, you can do this; yes, it’s safe; and don’t worry, you won’t have any problems.

I have been emotionally tortured by this experience for the past 24 years. It’s made my life a pit of depression and anxiety.”

Teresa Burke, David C Reardon Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion (Springfield, IL: Acorn Books, 2002) 37

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