They said it.
Clare Murphy, a spokesperson for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, a chain of abortion clinics in England, says there is “not a jot of evidence” that women suffer post-abortion trauma.
But she says:
“There will of course be women who, even if they do not regret their decision, feel devastated that this was a decision they had to take in the first place.”
Radhika Sanghani “The harsh truth about how women feel after an abortion” The Telegraph 14 July 2015
Share on FacebookDr. Ron Paul, Republican politician, told the following story in a campaign commercial:
“I happened to have walked into an operating room where they were doing an abortion on a late pregnancy. They lifted out a small baby that was able to cry and breathe and they put it in a bucket and put it in the corner of the room and pretended it wasn’t there.
I walked down the hallway and a baby was born early — slightly bigger than the baby they put in the bucket and they wanted to save this baby. So they might have had 10 doctors in there doing everything conceivable [to save that baby’s life].
Who are we to decide that we pick and throw one away and pick up and struggle to save the other ones[?] … Unless we resolve this and understand that life is precious and we must protect life, we can’t protect liberty.”
Quoted in Sarah Terzo “Workers share how babies who survive abortions are killed or left to die” Live Action News April 11, 2013
Share on FacebookIndian researcher Ashish Bose wrote about the situation in India:
“We find that many women themselves are interested in knowing the sex of the unborn child and they do not see any moral problem in undergoing these tests conducted by doctors: it is like getting blood tests for malarial parasites.
And second, most women have an inherent son complex. They know for certain that their status – in the eyes of their family, extended family, community and the village as a whole – will go up with the arrival of a son.
Gifts will flow in, there will be celebrations and relatives from far and near will call on them. On the other hand, if they give birth to a daughter, there is general gloom, no celebration, no gifts and the image of the woman suffers badly.”
Ashish Bose “Female Foeticide: A Civilizational Collapse” in Tulsi Patel Sex-Selective Abortion in India: Gender, Society and New Reproductive Technologies (New Delhi, India: Sage Publications, 2007) 82
Share on FacebookFrom 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
Share on FacebookPro-choice author Rickie Solinger, referring to the fact that the National Right to Life Committee was founded in 1974:
“… By this time, fetal imaging was a routine practice. Being able to “see” and ascribe personhood to the fetus stimulated antiabortion activism.”
Rickie Solinger Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 16
A report on abortion from The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Reproductive Health Services said the following:
“In the immediate years after national legalization, both the number and rate of legal abortion steadily increased. The abortion rate peaked in the 1980s, and the trend then reversed, a decline that has continued for more than three decades. Between 1980 and 2014, the abortion rate among US women fell by more than half, from 29.3 to 14.6 per 1000 women.
In 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, the aggregate number of abortions reached a low of 926,190 after peaking at nearly 1.6 million in 1990.
The reason for the decline is not fully understood but has been attributed to several factors, including…increasing numbers of state regulations resulting in limited access to abortion services.”
The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Reproductive Health Services The Safety and Quality of Abortion Care in the United States (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2018) 26 – 28
Share on FacebookResearcher Keven Sherlock found:
“Christella Forte, a 16-year-old black girl who was a student at Detroit’s Cooley High School, died January 14, 1986, a day after evidently undergoing a saline abortion at New Center Hospital in Detroit. The medical examiner who performed her autopsy determined she died of an amniotic fluid embolism.
Christella’s mother sued Raul Rivera for performing the abortion on her that led to her death. She said Christella suffered convulsions and had gone into cardiac arrest three times at New Center Hospital after Rivera injected her with saline solution.
She accused Rivera of failing to dilate Christella’s cervix properly before the saline abortion, failing to ensure no saline solution went outside of Christella’s amniotic sac, rushing the saline abortion, and making several major errors in the process which greatly increased Christella’s chances of suffering an amniotic fluid embolism.
All of these failures of Rivera’s, and the failures of other staffers at New Center Hospital, she charged, helped cause Christella to die.”
Sources: Wayne County Circuit Court Case No. 86 – 621838 and Christella’s Death Certificate
Kevin Sherlock The Scarlet Survey (Akron, Ohio, Brennyman Books, 1997) 52 – 53
Share on FacebookPeg 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
Share on FacebookCarol 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
Share on FacebookAbortionist Jane E Hodgson challenged the anti-abortion law in Minnesota and became a practicing abortionist after Roe vs. Wade. She committed an illegal abortion so that she could go to court and challenge the laws. Her case was pending when Roe was decided.
Here, Hodgson describes the woman whose illegal abortion she performed to instigate her arrest. Her quote reveals that the woman could have had an abortion despite the law.
“So when Mrs. John Doe, already a mother of three, appeared in my office on April 14, 1970, having contracted German measles during her fourth week of pregnancy, I did not send her to England or Mexico or Montréal. She could have afforded it – but what about future patients who could not?
She could have been aborted here in a local hospital with proper consultations (nothing would have been said) – but what about the next case? And what about respect for law? We both knew we could not dodge the issue.”
Jane E Hodgson “Abortion: The Law and the Reality in 1970” Mayo Alumnus October 1970
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