Post-Abortive Woman: “I was not empowered as a woman but diminished”

A post-abortive woman named Susan Justice wrote:

“In 1980, just seven years after Roe V. Wade became the law of the land, I became one of abortion’s statistics. I was a vulnerable 18-year-old college freshman when I found myself faced with an unplanned pregnancy. After my high school sweetheart and I found ourselves in crisis, we visited a Women’s Center just blocks from our college campus. It was there the deception began. “It is just a glob of pregnancy tissue… it will be a short outpatient procedure and you can be sent on your way… problem solved.”

My “problem” was NOT solved. Instead, figuratively speaking, the abortion ushered me down a staircase, finding myself spiraling into deep depression. The abortion became my prison cell of post-abortion grief, substance abuse, shame, and heartbreak. Abortion did not solve my “problem”… but only served to magnify it.

At the abortion clinic (a.k.a. campus “women’s center”) I was not empowered as a woman but diminished. I was told, “It will be easier for you to get an abortion and get on with your life.”

Tragically, no one at that women’s center told me the truth of the development of my baby, my option for adoption, or the devastating fallout from post-abortion grief and regret….

The abortion tore through my life like a hurricane, leaving destruction in its wake. The post-abortion fallout with my boyfriend left only devastation. Our previous deeply nurturing relationship shattered into a mass of scattered, broken, irreparable pieces.

I changed from a young woman entering nursing school, hard-working, eager to help people, having dated the same high school sweetheart for two years, sharing our dream of marriage after college… to a broken, promiscuous, alcohol indulging, partying girl, looking for any way to numb the emotional pain from the gnawing reality of the loss of my child and what I had done.”

Susan Justice “Abortion did not solve my ‘problem.’ It sent me into a deep depression” Live Action News March 22, 2021

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Scientist describes conception, the beginning of life

Scientist Jerome Lejeune, discoverer of down syndrome:

“… Each of us has a unique beginning, the moment of conception… As soon as the 23 chromosomes carried by the sperm encounter the 23 chromosomes carried by the ovum, the whole information necessary and sufficient to spell out all the characteristics of the new being is gathered…

A new human being is defined which has never occurred before and will never occur again… [It] is not just simply a nondescript cell, or a “population” or loose “collection” of cells, but a very specialized individual…”

Jerome Lejeune A Symphony of the Preborn Child, part 2 (Hagerstown, Maryland, 1989)

Quoted in Rick DeMichele Abortion: Come Now, and Let Us Reason Together (Meridian, Idaho: DayStar Publishing, 2010) 15

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Pro-Choice author felt abortion was “settled” after Roe

In one of her books, pro-choice author Rickie Solinger wrote about how she thought abortion was “settled” after Roe was decided. She didn’t anticipate the rise of the pro-life movement:

“I was 26 when the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973, and like others of my generation assumed that it had settled the matter.

Perhaps because I was relatively young then, perhaps because the political culture was less divided and divisive, perhaps because the claims of the women’s rights movement seemed so persuasive, I didn’t doubt that Roe v. Wade had established a new order, one that would change women’s lives forever…

[M]any women’s rights activists and others did not foresee the long decades of backlash against women’s new sexual and reproductive freedoms that lay ahead.”

Rickie Solinger Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) xv–xvi

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Post-Abortive woman calls her abortion a “horrible mistake”

One post-abortive woman wrote:

“I’m 23 and I have three beautiful daughters. About a year ago, I found out I was pregnant again. My youngest child was only nine months old. We live in a small two-bedroom house with little income. I was scared to death. I didn’t want another kid and neither did my boyfriend. So we decided to have an abortion…

now I wish I wouldn’t have. I could have given the baby to someone, who would never get to experience motherhood, but I didn’t. I killed it, and I hate myself for that. It hurts every time I think about it, which is every day…

I am a good person, I just made a horrible mistake. I will spend the rest of my life regretting this. So if anyone out there thinks about getting an abortion, think long and hard about it. It will stick with you for the rest of your life, and it will hurt every time you think about it.”

Martha Jensen Abortion: Information and One’s Own Journey (2020)

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Woman calls pregnancy center seeking abortion- chooses life for twins

In a book about a pregnancy center, the authors told the following story:

“One day I had a call from a woman who lived in one of the outlying counties. She told me right up front that she wanted to have an abortion.

After explaining that we didn’t perform abortions or refer women for abortions, I asked her if she would tell me a little about her situation. She seemed to want to talk, so I let her talk for quite a while about many of the reasons she didn’t think she could go through with her pregnancy. This was years before we had ultrasound. She then asked if we had a counselor she could speak with…

We set up an appointment. Verla and Ellen talked for two hours… Several months later we received a call from her telling us she had just given birth to twins.”

Mary Ann Gustin and Peggy R Hembree Let the Miracles Begin (2016) 43 – 44

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Israeli OBGYN describes conflict between doing abortions and helping women have babies

Prof. JG Schenker of Hadassah University Hospital in Israel, who does some abortions, writes:

“I try to do as few abortions as possible… Most of my research and that of my clinic is focused on how to solve the problem of infertile women. On the one hand, we spend so many hours trying to help couples create life and on the other we help women destroy it in five minutes.

For me, this creates a definite conflict. But there are two circumstances in which I am always prepared to carry out an abortion in spite of that conflict.

One is when the pregnancy endangers the health, both physical and mental, of the woman. The second is when the fetus is malformed. In those two circumstances, it is easy for me to perform an abortion.

What is difficult is when a woman comes who is ambivalent in her attitude to her love of her boyfriend and hence her pregnancy. It is very hard to accept any kind of casual attitude to abortion when you spend so much of your time trying to help couples achieve pregnancy.”

Miriam Claire The Abortion Dilemma: Personal Views on a Public Issue (Xlibris Corporation, 2013) 104

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African woman says that abortion is common

From an African Basankusu woman:

“Abortion is a common event indeed, and it is almost always devised and carried out without the husband’s knowledge. The woman often manages to keep it a secret, aided by the solidarity of the neighborhood. The motives for aborting may be as various as family quarreling, the failure to pay part of the dowry, or a serious offense. Also, a woman may be induced to abort by a desire for revenge against her husband.”

Quoted by A Romaniuk in Maria Rosa Cutrufelli Women of Africa: Roots of Oppression (London: Zed Press, 1983) 140

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Politician was pro-abortion because he didn’t want more handicapped children born

A British pro-choice politician said in 1979:

“I believe very much in the sanctity of life. I think that is one of the central issues for all of us, whichever side we take on this Bill. I do not want to see a situation in which we have more physically and mentally handicapped children…more unwanted children, with all the social problems that will involve… That is my view of the sanctity of human life.”

Fran Amery Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: The Changing Politics of Abortion in Britain (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020) 73

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Woman attempts suicide due to grief after her abortions

“Maria” told her story:

“I was 16 when I got pregnant the first time. I was on the pill—actually, I was on the pill both times I got pregnant. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t get pregnant if you’re on the pill, because it’s a lie.

I knew I was pregnant at the moment of conception. I know it sounds crazy, but I felt the presence of another life like an epiphany. I know she was a girl the same way I knew I was pregnant. I can’t explain it. I just know. It seemed to be a foregone conclusion that I would have an abortion.

Everyone in whom I confided my situation presumed that’s what I would do. Not a single person asked me if I wanted my baby, or suggested adoption as an alternative.

In that echo chamber of voices telling me to kill my baby, my own voice was drowned out.

And so, my way of “not hurting” my daughter was to sentence her to death. A culture that had been obsessed with sexual pleasure longer than I’d been alive had brought me up to believe this was the lesser evil.

It bombarded me with stories of women going on to great successes after their abortions, without ever shedding a tear over the dead babies they left in their wakes. It whispered to me that nobody else regretted their abortions, so there must be something wrong with me for regretting mine.

And I believed it. I believed it so sincerely that I did the whole thing over again three years later. I felt the same heartbreak, shame, guilt, and lamenting regret afterward; yet if you’d asked me about it any time over the following 13 years, I would’ve given you 1,001 reasons why what I’d done had been the “right thing.”

I would never have admitted my secret sorrow, because I believed to do so would be to admit my defectiveness. And yet, I had a nagging feeling of empty despair, which ultimately led to an (failed) attempt to take my own life.

Every day since the deaths of my children, I have felt the two holes in my life where my son and daughter should be. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that your life will be more complete after an abortion, because it’s a lie. It will feel like something is missing for the rest of your life.

I’m telling my story with the hope that I might save even just one woman or girl from the suffocating sorrow I have felt all these years—and that I will continue to feel until the day I die.”

Jun 22, 2021 email from Live Action

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Founder of Project Rachel describes friend’s pain after abortion

Vicki Thorne, the founder of Project Rachel, describes what made her aware of post-abortion trauma:

“Almost 40 years ago I first encountered the wounds that abortion leaves on the souls of women.

A friend of mine had placed her first baby for adoption. My friend later endured sexual abuse by a family member, which led to her second pregnancy. Her mother arranged for a safe but illegal abortion. Little did her mother know that she had bought her daughter a one-way ticket to hell.

Later in life, she struggled with suicide attempts, an abusive marriage, chemical dependency, and became abusive to her other children.

She always said, “I can live with the adoption. I can’t live with the abortion.”

My search for answers to her pain led me to obtain a degree in psychology to become certified as a prenatal loss facilitator and a grief counselor and to obtain certification in trauma counseling and spiritual direction.

My friend’s pain was a life-changing event for me, which eventually led me in 1984 to develop Project Rachel, the post-abortion healing ministry of the Catholic Church.…

Project Rachel is a network of caregivers, including priests, mental health professionals, and others, who provide one-on-one care to those struggling after having an abortion.”

In Yvonne Florczak–Seeman A Time to Speak: A Healing Journal for Post-Abortive Women (Clarendon Hills, Illinois: Love from above, Inc., 2015)
viii

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