In an article about men and abortion, “Dan” tells his story:
“I really fucked this one up. At 51, I was having an affair with a 25-year-old and got her pregnant. When she told me at a coffee shop, I felt like the floor gave way.
I asked her what she wanted to do, and she was adamant that she wanted to get an abortion. She’d just graduated from college and was focused on her career. She also knew I had two children and a wife I wasn’t going to divorce….
I drove her to the clinic, paid for the appointment and booked a nice hotel suite with flowers for her to recover in. But she ended up in the hospital because they’d made a couple of mistakes during the procedure…. The doctors thought she was going to die. She had a really bad fever. Her parents, who are younger than me, didn’t want me at the hospital. But she did, so I took time off work to visit.
In the end, the doctors were able to fight off the infection, but I’m pretty sure she got a hysterectomy.”
Pro-choice writer Cara J. Marianna interviewed women who had abortions. She found that the way a woman initially felt right after her abortion did not always reflect how she would feel about her abortion months or years later.
She says:
“A woman’s immediate response to the abortion did not necessarily have a direct correlation with her later interpretation of the experience. Mary described her abortion as ‘amazingly unintrusive.’ Later in the day she had a negative emotional reaction and called her best friend for support.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 110
Some pro-lifers have noted that women who initially felt satisfied with their decision to abort can suffer from severe emotional trauma many years later. Sometimes, something acts as a trigger. This could be a subsequent pregnancy, a close friend or relative having a baby, or a religious conversion.
From pro-choice author Cara J. Marianna, who interviewed post-abortion women and listened to their stories:
“There is an unspoken social agreement that abortion, however necessary, is an abomination, and pregnant women must be protected from it. Part of the grief that can surround abortion is a physiological response to the loss of the pregnancy. Yet women who abort do not have a socially sanctioned way to recognize what they have been through. It is as if, in the eyes of society, we never were pregnant.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 88
One woman tells her abortion story, and writes about how mainstream mental health professionals failed to help her:
“After the abortion I woke up and was staring at a brick wall. I had never felt so dirty and disgusted with myself…
My life from that moment changed for the worse. I would drink myself to a point of hospitalization and each time I was admitted I would talk about the abortion. The doctors and nurses would tell me I needed to see someone about my issues. They couldn’t even say the word “abortion” to me. In one admission I wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital as they had fears for my safety. They had me speak with a psychiatrist before I left and he said I was fine and I seemed to be overreacting to the abortion and my work was the real issue. I looked blank at him and thought I’m just going to tell you what you want to hear so I can leave.
I spoke with many counselors, nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists and none of them understood me. In my mind no one could help me get through the anguish of having had an abortion.
I drank to excess at every opportunity… I knew the reason behind all the self-destructive behavior was the abortion, and I thought that’s all my life was going to amount to. I was so angry at my now ex-partner, abortion clinic and most of all myself for allowing this abortion to affect me so badly that I would deliberately put myself into positions to danger…
She went to a counselor who specialized in post-abortion healing and finally found peace:
I now have a plaque on a beautiful memorial at a church in Melbourne. This finally gave me some closure.
It’s only since I have acknowledged her and giving her a name that I’ve been able to move on. The memory will always remain.”
Anne R Lastman Redeeming Grief: Abortion and Its Pain (Balwyn, Vic: Australia: Gracewing, 2013) 210 – 211
A therapist told a woman suffering from abortion regret that her abortion was the right decision, but this failed to resolve the woman’s grief.
The post-abortion woman said:
“I saw for a short time a therapist who tried to tell me to get on with it and that it was the best decision that was possible for that timeframe in my life but I realized that this therapist did not know a thing about grief and mourning. The therapist did not acknowledge that aborted children are important and therefore worth mourning over. This is the mistake being made. If someone doesn’t believe that my aborted baby was a “baby” or “important” that simply says that they are not prepared to acknowledge my grief and pain and that means that they can cause more hurt than healing. Thank God that by “accident” I heard about Anne and her manner of counseling abortive women and since going to her I have started on my way back home again and it feels so good.”
Anne R Lastman Redeeming Grief: Abortion and Its Pain (Balwyn, Vic: Australia: Gracewing, 2013) 246
Pro-life author Troy Clark tells the following story:
“Dorothy”, age 23, had an abortion at Family Planning Medical Clinic on October 30, 1987. The gestational age was misdiagnosed before the abortion was started. When trouble arose, she was transported to a hospital, where the gestational age was estimated to be 21 weeks. The abortion was completed.
An autopsy on the baby revealed a well-developed human being with no abnormalities other than injuries caused by abortion, including traumatic amputation of left arm at shoulder. The baby bled to death from the wound, with a lacerated area extending over 3 inches long and 2 inches wide. He had been 30 to 31 weeks of gestational age.”
Source: LA County Autopsy Report No. 87 – 10358
Troy Clark, Ph.D. Abortion Every 90 Seconds: The Whole Story (Kindle, 2015)
Pro-choice author Linda Bird Francke reflects on how her abortion has affected her marriage:
“The effect has indeed been profound. Though my husband was very supportive of me… our relationship slowly faltered.…. I hope we can get back on a loving track again.”
Linda Bird Francke The Ambivalence of Abortion (New York: Penguin Books, 1978) 9
From a therapist who works with postabortion women:
“I have encountered young women (as young as 14 and 16 years of age) who are drinking and drug taking in order to sleep without nightmares, and without hearing the baby’s voice crying out, or because “I keep dreaming about dead babies” (Melissa). Alcohol and substance abuse are used as anesthesia to block out the memory.”
Anne R Lastman Redeeming Grief: Abortion and Its Pain (Balwyn, Vic: Australia: Gracewing, 2013) 116
Exhale is a pro-choice group that helps women who suffer from post-abortion trauma. Unlike pro-life organizations, Exhale validates women’s choices to have abortions and takes the view that abortion is moral. Exhale was founded because pro-choice people could no longer ignore the fact that women were emotionally struggling after their abortions. Before Exhale, there was no real pro-choice support for post-abortion women: The founder of Exhale, Aspen Baker, says:
“Before Exhale started, the most prominent people who were talking about post-abortion feelings were pro-life.” There has been a few pro-choice projects here and there that considered this perspective…but these were “few and far between and did not have wide pro-choice support.”
The authors of the book The Doulas: Radical Care for Pregnant People, in which this quote appears, commented:
“The common pro-choice refrain was “most women feel relief” – and nothing else – and pro-choice advocates rejected the idea of a “post-abortion syndrome.”…
It was assumed that anyone who talked about abortion feelings, especially difficult ones like sadness or grief, had been bamboozled by pro-life extremists…
When someone truly cares about women they are open to hearing what women want to say (whether they are pro-choice or pro-life or neither), but when the care is primarily about securing or ending the legal right to abortion then there is great concern about what women say about their own abortions.”
Mary Mahoney and Lauren Mitchell The Doulas: Radical Care for Pregnant People (New York: Feminist Press, 2016) 21-22
An article from The New York Times described abortion mills in New York City:
“It is a shadowy business, the unregulated world of abortion mills, shabby clinics operating behind the facades of doctors’ offices, often in poor neighborhoods. Its victims are women who know little about legal rights or medical options, who have seen an ad or heard a tip and come to this … to risk butchery on a table….No one knows how many such fly-by-night surgeries there are in New York City or how many abortions they produce. But law-enforcement officials and medical experts say dozens of these clinics are believed to be tucked away behind storefronts and in more ordinary-looking doctors’ offices and they are believed responsible for scores or even hundreds of illegal or incompetent abortions annually.”
The article refers to:
“chilling secrets of sleazy abortion mills — most of them run by licensed doctors who use their offices as abortion “clinics,” but are not licensed as full-fledged abortion clinics and are thus not subject to rigorous state standards and periodic inspections.”
After giving several examples of abortion malpractice, the Times points out that despite multiple botched abortions causing injuries, only one New York doctor lost his licence.
“Only one doctor in 1989 had a license summarily suspended for gross misconduct in an abortion….there have been only four other summary suspensions — emergency actions invoked before hearings on charges — related to abortions in the last six years — one in 1985, one in 1990 and two this year.
While the state regulates and inspects the legitimate clinics, it lacks the authority and staff to regulate and inspect doctors’ offices, and can only challenge a doctor’s license after a complaint and an investigation. And many clients, even if dissatisfied, are reluctant to file a complaint.”
This is a rare candid article from a newspaper that usually stays firmly pro-choice and, in future years, would argue against any kind of health regulations on abortion facilities.
