ClinicQuotes

“Your grandmother convinced me not to have you”

Postabortion woman Marlena Moore wrote the following tragic letter to her aborted baby, who she named Joshua:

“No one talked with me about you. I remember you in the silence of my heart. There, in my heart, was your funeral and grave, the only place I could find to remember you until now. Yes, I wanted you, son, but your grandmother convinced me not to have you.”

Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005) 66

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Woman had abortion, feels she never had a choice

This woman’s story shows how some women who have abortions do not make their own choices but are coerced by others.

“When I was 16, I became pregnant by my boyfriend. I decided to keep my baby from the start. For weeks, I followed her development with medical books and pictures.… My hand was never far from my stomach…

When I finally told my parents of my pregnancy, they were devastated. They pleaded with me to have an abortion, but I felt I’d rather die than hurt my baby. When I didn’t change my mind, they asked me to leave..…

Well-meaning people told me that God understood my need for an abortion. It was the responsible thing to do. Having a baby at my age would be unfair to so many people, they said.

My parents said my baby wasn’t a person yet, and the obstetrician agreed. How could abortion be wrong when so many people accepted it? I let my feelings cloud my judgment, and I closed my heart completely.…

I remember wishing that abortion wasn’t legal. People say it gives women a choice, but I felt I didn’t have one. Since abortion was available, it was my duty to choose it.…

[After the abortion] There was a pit inside me that I dared not go near.

Then one day at the movies, I saw it on the big screen: “Hurting after an Abortion?”… I memorized the phone number and called that night… I argued that I didn’t regret my decision, and I did not have feelings to deal with. But I couldn’t say the word baby or look at pregnant women or hold a teddy bear or buy a goldfish or touch my stomach or be reminded that I had a heartbeat.”

She described the way she felt after the abortion as “indescribable emptiness”. She eventually found healing through counseling.

Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005) 79-80

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Wife reflects on feminism when husband tries to coerce her into an abortion

From a woman whose husband tried to force her to get an abortion

“… It has also made me rethink the whole business of abortion.… Because I found that when I became pregnant with Sam that abortion was used against me as a real weapon… He was able to say, “I want you to have an abortion and if you don’t, I don’t want to have a child with you” – to say appalling and dreadful things to me to try and force me to have an abortion.

And I felt, then – all the years of struggling uphill to try and attain some sort of equality and pull my own weight and be an equal with men! It was as though I had landed on a snake and gone right down to the bottom of the board, with a man saying to me, exercising a supreme male prerogative, “If you don’t do this thing, you will be punished and you will always realize that you are being punished.…

He was going on at me up until I was seven months pregnant. When I was nearly 7 months, he phoned me up and said he had found someplace that would do abortions at this stage. He was all the time going on about it. Seven months pregnant!…

In this, Andrew – who was involved with a left-wing political scene – was aided and abetted by feminist friends….

When I was pregnant with Sam, he spoke to a lot of women about it. Mostly a lot of women in their early 30s with no children.… I felt: these young women who certainly say they believe in equality, yet somehow they fail to understand what equality means …there was an acceptance by them that abortion was the only thing.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 278-280

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Abortion numbers have been dropping, even in states without restrictions

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions in America is dropping as more women choose life.

“Between 2010 and the most recent data available from 2013 and 2014, abortions have dropped another twelve percent nationally. Interestingly, some of the biggest declines occurred in states with few restrictions, such as Hawaii with a 30 percent decrease, New Mexico with a 24 percent decrease, and Nevada with a 22 percent decrease … Texas’ decline exactly matched the national average of 12 percent…This is consistent with the longer-term trends in Texas with a 42.3 percent reduction in the abortion rate since 1980 in comparison with Oregon and New Mexico, both states with few abortion restrictions, experiencing a 50.2 percent and 51.9 percent abortion rate decline respectively during the same period…

These trends are consistent with the fact that a smaller percentage of women facing unintended pregnancies have obtained an abortion. This number fell from 54 percent nationally in 1994 to 40 percent in 2008.”

Supreme Court of the United States brief WHOLE WOMAN’S HEALTH, ET AL., PETITIONERS v.JOHN HELLERSTEDT, M.D., COMMISSIONER OF THE TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF STATE HEALTH SERVICES, ETAL., RESPONDENTS ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

BRIEF OF CITIZENLINK, CHARLOTTE LOZIER INSTITUTE AND STUDENTS FOR LIFE OF AMERICA, AMICI CURIAE SUPPORTING RESPONDENTS

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Raped at 11, woman regrets aborting twins

A woman who had an abortion after rape at the age of 11 deeply regretted it. She had an abortion in which the baby was killed by poison and then labor induced. She did not go into labor at the clinic, so they sent her home to deliver her dead child.

“My name is Brenda Darnell, and I am an abortionist! You may think that I have overreacted to make such a statement about an event that happened only once in my life, but for 33 years, I have lived and relived this offense in my heart, mind, and soul.”

When I was 5 months pregnant, my doctor and mother decided I should have an abortion… The abortion was done, but because of a mental block, I did not go into labor for 2 weeks. When I did go into labor, I gave birth to a son. He was black because he’d been dead for 2 weeks. Then, 1 ½ hours later while taking a shower, I delivered my second son – twins! 11, raped, pregnant, sick, abortion, twins, death! Nothing in life has brought me more pain, and no eraser is big enough to make my hurt and pain go away.”

Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005) 47 – 48

Baby aborted at 20 weeks in the same way as Brenda's. This is what her twins would have looked like — Baby aborted at 20 weeks in the same way as Brenda’s. This is what her twins would have looked like

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Woman calls her abortion “pleasant”

From a woman who had an abortion:

“It was reasonably pleasant..…It only took three minutes. You come around virtually immediately. Just feeling a bit woozy. And then, there we were in the next room, in a row, like factory farming, everybody sort of groaning because the one thing they don’t tell you is that there is a degree of pain afterwards.…. It cost $125 at the time – fantastically reasonable. Abortion is a competitive business in America and that keeps the prices sharp….. There was no question of counseling or anything like that: it was purely physical.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 275 – 276

What this child would look like after an abortion:

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After abortion, women drink champagne

Liz Deaves, abortion clinic director at Marie Stopes, describes what it’s like in the recovery room, at the end of the day after the women have all had abortions:

“You can feel the tension disappearing as they sit up in bed and chat with one another. Sometimes boyfriends bring champagne and there is an atmosphere of celebration.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 148-149

A former clinic worker, however, paints a very different picture of what women were like after their abortions.

Clinic worker said “It’s just tissue” to woman 20 weeks pregnant

Linda Keener Thomas remembers what she was told by the abortion clinic she called. She was pregnant and in college:

“Abortion seemed to be my only choice. It would solve everything. So I called a clinic for information and asked the lady, “Is it a baby?”

“No, honey, it’s just tissue. After all, you want to finish school, don’t you?”

I clung to that statement like a drowning person clutching a life preserver, repeating it over and over until I almost believed it. But deep in my heart I knew the truth that it was a baby, my baby.

Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005) 143

Her baby was 20 weeks along and looked like this.

Hardly “just tissue.”

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Woman “cheerful” about her abortion regrets it years later

Post-Abortion woman Debbie Niehaus had no bad feelings about her abortion when it first happened. But years later, she regretted it.

“Believe it or not, I was cheerful before, during, and after the abortion and was naïve enough to tell several people about it. I considered children a nuisance and wondered why everyone didn’t have abortions to get rid of the noisy things. I was very pro-choice…

But about 8 years later, I watched a massive pro-life demonstration in Wichita, Kansas, on TV when I suddenly realized I agreed with what they said. My heart broke when I realized what I had done… I killed my baby out of ignorance, and I will not live a lie any longer.”

Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005) 33 – 34

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Child with down syndrome learns about abortion: will they kill me?

Rex Brinkworth, the founder of the Down’s Children Association, has a Down syndrome daughter named Francoise. When she found out about the test for Down syndrome and the fact that some women aborted babies like her, she said:

“Does this mean they kill Down’s babies? They would have killed me, though. Will they try to kill me now?”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 145 – 146

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