Category: Women and Abortion Regret

A woman named Kae who worked in a mental hospital says:

“During the years that I worked in a psych unit of the hospital, I encountered many depressed women who had abortions and kept their emotions about it buried. The emotional pain that is hidden so deeply will eventually resurface if left unresolved. Many of these women suffered from eating disorders. Most eating disorders manifest from the patient’s desire to gain control over certain issues in her life. Most young girls I saw who had been pushed into abortions by their parents or boyfriends would either overeat, not eat, or purge… Emotional pain surfaces. Psychiatric episodes are also very real to some of these women whose pain from abortion had been ignored and therefore untreated.”

Jennifer O’Neill Healing through God’s Grace after Abortion (Deerfield Beach, Florida: Faith Communications, 2005) 74 – 75

A pro-choice woman wrote the following after having an abortion:

“I’ll never forget being with three women, or six women actually. When three of them woke up, they had a general anesthesia, three of them said such things as, “Where’s my baby? Is my baby dead? Will I ever have any other babies?”… I don’t think we should minimize… [that] abortion does produce some concern on the part of women and we need to recognize it and say it “Yes, abortion kills a living human fetus.”… And I think you have to call it for what it is and there’s a sense of loss.”

Quoted by Kristin Luker, Interview 118, Archived at the Murray Research Center, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p 21

Eileen L McDonagh Breaking Abortion Deadlock: from Choice to Consent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) 186

A woman who speaks publicly about abortion’s painful aftereffects on women wrote:

“I learned to take the aggression of the pro-choice women until their pain comes through. During the talks I gave, it was the women who did the screaming who contacted me later, very quietly.”

Melanie Symonds, Phyllis Bowman And Still They Weep: Personal Stories of Abortion (The SPUC Educational Research Trust, 1996) 9

Counselors Dennis and Matthew Linn, SJ and Sheila Fabricant M. Div write:

“Our experience in our healing prayer confirms that women who choose to abort a child grieve for their babies. We have often prayed with women who, many years after an abortion, still struggle with unresolved grief.”

Dennis and Matthew Linn, SJ and Sheila Fabricant, M. Div. “Healing Relationships with Miscarried, Aborted, and Stillborn Babies” Journal of Christian Healing (vol. 7, no. 2) 35

Pro-life activists Melanie Symonds and Phyllis Bowman from British Victims of Abortions (BVA),  write:

“The plan has always been ultimately to provide a national telephone helpline along with one-to-one counseling with group backup. Another area which opened up was the opportunity to participate in media chat shows and contribute to magazine articles. Each time we had any coverage and described abortion damage, we were inundated with either telephone calls or letters requesting more information and help. This again reinforced our belief in the extent of damage women were suffering…

If the condition is not understood or even acknowledged, how on earth can the problem be addressed and women helped to come to terms with their loss and pain?”

Melanie Symonds, Phyllis Bowman And Still They Weep: Personal Stories of Abortion (The SPUC Educational Research Trust, 1996) xvi

if women weren’t sometimes traumatized by their abortions, there would be no need for groups like this.

Theresa Burke, who has worked with hundreds of postabortion women:

“The psychological and spiritual agony of abortion is silenced by society, ignored by the media, rebuffed by mental health professionals, and scorned by the women’s movement. Postabortion trauma is a serious and devastating illness which has no celebrity spokeswoman, no made–for– television movie, and no platform for the talk show confessional.”

“Abortion and Depression Part One” Interview with Theresa Burke of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries, A Zensit Daily Dispatch, March 4, 2006

Antonia Clissa, abortion counselor:

“If they choose to terminate the pregnancy, there is the loss of parenting the potential life… Some women may not have any associated grief at the time and may experience it many years later or not at all, but the women I see all seem to share some element of grief.”

Antonia Clissa “Unplanned Pregnancy” On the Level 4 no. 2 (1996): 32