ClinicQuotes

Woman experiences great sadness after abortions

From a pro-choice author who interviewed post-abortion women:

“Linda’s initial reaction to both abortions was a deep physical sensation of sadness; she recalled a period of time after each procedure when she felt an overwhelming sense of loss. Reporting on her response to the first abortion, Linda said, “I felt astonished at how sad my body felt. I was really amazed. It’s like feeling sad in your chest, but it wasn’t emanating from my chest—it was emanating from my womb. It was an ache that was more than just the ache of the D and C [dilation and curettage]. It was a terrible feeling of loss. And it was physically based. It wasn’t just all the stuff in my mind about, ‘I should have had a baby, or I shouldn’t have had a baby.’ It was just the fact of this rich environment being robbed. And so it made me feel a kind of fragile feeling, like, ‘Take everything very slowly because you’re so sad. You have to be careful with your feelings.’ And it was even harder three days later. I went back to work teaching, and I was with all these little kids.”

Linda experienced a similar kind of sadness after her second abortion.”

Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 127

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Post-Abortion woman: there is more abortion stigma now

From a woman who had abortions in the 1970s and early 1980s:

“There was much less stigma related to abortion than there is now. In fact, it was almost an act of liberation.”

Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 53

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Abortion and sex trafficking

Studies and quotes on abortion and sex trafficking:

“Of 67 trafficked women who responded to a question concerning abortion experience, 29.9% reported having multiple abortions.”

L Lederer & C Wetzel “The health consequences of sex trafficking and their implications for identifying victims in health care facilities” Annals of Health Law 23 (1) 2014

…..

“While only 34 respondents [among a survey of sex trafficked women] answered the question whether their abortions were of their own volition, more than half (18) of the group indicated that one or more of their abortions was at least partly forced upon them. Some women are forced to abort during late pregnancy and to resume sex work only days later.”

M Getu “Human trafficking and development: The role of microfinance” Transformation 23(3) 2006 p 73

…

In a study of sex trafficking victims:

“Despite their abusive situations …87.8% had contact with a healthcare provider while they were being trafficked….Survivors had significant contact with clinical treatment facilities, most commonly Planned Parenthood clinics, which more than a quarter of survivors (29.6%) visited. More than half (57.1%) of respondents had received treatment at some type of clinic (urgent care, women’s health, neighborhood or Planned Parenthood.)”

L Lederer & C Wetzel “The health consequences of sex trafficking and their implications for identifying victims in health care facilities” Annals of Health Law 23(1) 2014

….

Direct quote from the book:

“According to a sex trafficking expert in Wichita, Kansas in the United States, pregnant women are in demand due to consumer fetishes. As a result, they carry their pregnancies nearly to term and are then forced to abort….Another expert in human trafficking confirmed this claim that forced abortion is directly related to pregnancy fetishes.”

(38)

….

Stephen Wagner, former director of the Human Trafficking Program at the Department of Health and Human Services:

“The mortality rate for someone in commercial sexual exploitation is 40 times higher than for a non-exploited person of the same age. Helping a victim return to exploitation more quickly by terminating a pregnancy increases the odds of death.”

S Wagner “Kathleen Sebelius’ Gruesome Moral Calculus” National Catholic Register 2011

All quotes and citations from on abortion and sex trafficking come from:

Catherine Coyle “Sex Trafficking” Rachel M. MacNair, editor Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion (Kansas City, MO: Feminism & Nonviolence Studies Association, 2016)

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Post-abortion woman: I didn’t expect the pain

From a woman named Beth, who had an abortion:

“My first recollection is I’m out on the gurney before going in the room, and the anesthesiologist has put an IV in, and I’m concerned about what kind of drugs he’s given me. It feels like he’s just patronizing me: ‘This is just some Valium. Don’t worry.’ And I can feel the burn when it would go into my veins. So then, once I went in to start the procedure, as I recall, it started hurting immediately. I could keep feeling the burn of the Valium going through, and so they just kept giving me more and more. And that’s when I felt delirious, when I just shouted for Jesus to forgive me. I had no control, and I thought that it was gonna kill me. I didn’t expect that pain. … I’ve thought since that maybe I was further along than they thought, and maybe that’s why it ended up being so difficult.”

Before the procedure began, Beth recalled “wishing I could die so I wouldn’t have to do this. I felt very guilty.”

Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) 114-115

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Abused women are more likely to have abortions

“Following their analysis of 31 studies, Garcia-Moreno, & Pallitto (2013) found “strong evidence that women with a history of intimate partner violence are more likely to report having had an induced abortion.”

C Garcia-Moreno & C. Pallitto “Global and regional estimates of intimate partner violence against women; prevalence and health effects of intimate partner and non-partner sexual violence” Geneva, Switzerland World Health Organization, 2013

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Woman having abortion concedes there is “a baby”

From one woman who had an abortion:

“Once I was committed to having an abortion, I almost couldn’t stand knowing a baby was growing inside me. My mother-in-law gave us the $500 cash we needed (she is an unequivocal pro-choice advocate).

I went through the time between making the appointment and the appointment itself like an automaton, doing everything exactly, thoughtlessly, numbed. I don’t believe I allowed myself to consider my own feelings about abortion until it was over.”

Helen Susan Edelman, “Safe to Talk: Abortion Narratives as a Rite of Return,” Journal of American Culture 19, no. 4 (1996)

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27.3% of women have abortions due to abuse

In one study 27.3% of women stated their experience of abuse influenced their decision to abort.

TW Leung, et al. “A comparison of the prevalence of domestic violence between patients seeking termination of pregnancy and other general gynecology patients” International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 77(1) 2002

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Researcher suggest abusive men have rage at babies

Catherine Coyle, PhD says:

“Some clinicians have observed that batterers often beat their pregnant partners’ bellies and display regressions that seem to indicate rage at the fetus they believe competes for their partners’ love. Such observations appear to be supported by women who were queried about their beliefs as to why their partners beat them.”

Cambell, JC, Garcia-Moreno C., & Sharps, P. “Abuse during pregnancy in industrialized and developing countries” Violence Against Women 10 (7) 2004

Quoted in Catherine Coyle, PhD “Intimate Partner Violence” Rachel M. MacNair, editor Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion (Kansas City, MO: Feminism & Nonviolence Studies Association, 2016)

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Woman has abortion because of her husband

From a woman who had an abortion:

“I can’t remember now if I did a home pregnancy test, but I did have an ‘official’ one at university health services. My marriage was faltering badly at the time and my husband was furious and depressed when I told him I was pregnant. He told me he didn’t want anything to do with raising another child. When I realized he was serious and how at-risk I was as an unemployed mother of two young children, I agreed to have an abortion, though it was not a choice I would have made if the marriage had been stable.”

Helen Susan Edelman, “Safe to Talk: Abortion Narratives as a Rite of Return,” Journal of American Culture 19, no. 4 (1996)

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Those who commit infanticide get lenient sentences

An article in The American Feminist says:

Nearly five infants under the age of 1 are killed in the United States each week, according to a 1997 CNN review of FBI statistic.

The article goes on to say:

“However, if criminal penalties assigned to perpetrators of infanticide are any indication of how society views the crime,the “slippery slope” concern is quite valid. After Louise Woodward was convicted of the murder of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen, Judge Hiller Zobel reduced her sentence to time served on the grounds that “she was ‘a little rough with him,’ under circumstances where another, perhaps wiser, person would have sought to restrain the physical impulse.” Most recently, Marie Noe was given 20 years’ probation for killing eight infants. Would she have been given the same penalty for killing eight adults? Not likely.”

Laura Ciampa “INFANTICIDE: Children as Chattel” The American Feminist Volume 6, Number 4 Winter 1999-2000

Does the ready availability of abortion contribute to a climate where the lives of babies are not respected as much as the lives of adults?

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