They said it.
In an article published today in The Daily Mail, women speak out about their lack of guilt for the abortions they had. These images appeared on Whisper, a “secret” app where women share their stories of being proud to have had abortions. The original article is here.
Here are some of the graphics, interspersed with pictures of what they don’t feel guilty for.
Christina Dunigan writes about a 2009 article entitled Why I Decided Against a Late-Term Abortion, by Alice Eve Cohen. Unfortunately, the article does not appear to still be up.
However, I think Dunigan’s post is valuable and I’m going to reproduce it with her permission.
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Eve Cohen didn’t think she could get pregnant. Doctors had told her not to even try because they were sure that she’d not be able to carry past six months. So when she discovered, at six months, that she was pregnant, she freaked out, to the point of considering suicide.
Instead of sending her for psychiatric care, “an abortion specialist” made an appointment for her to get the unexpected baby snuffed at Tiller’s Wichita abortion mill as a “life of the mother” case.
The baby’s father didn’t think he could stay with her if he did that. When asked about the upcoming abortion, he said:
“Me? Oh, Jesus … a lot of different things,” Michael answered. “I’ve seen Alice in the throes of this terrible unhappiness, and I don’t recognize her.
I’ve been politically in favor of choice, but uncommitted on the personal side — it’s been an abstraction. But now that this is suddenly so real, all I can think is that there’s a baby. Our baby. My baby. And I can’t stand the thought of this baby being aborted.
So If Alice has an abortion, I won’t go to Wichita with her. And I might not be here when she gets back. I’ll have my own unbearable sorrow about losing this baby, about endorsing this decision. But I don’t want Alice to kill herself. So she should do what she needs to do.”
Cohen doesn’t really get it:
For the past ten years, this turning point moment in our relationship — Michael acknowledging my right to choose, but telling me he might leave me if I had the abortion — has remained a largely unspoken but crucial shared memory, equal parts rift and bridge between us.
Somehow it seems to diminish him in her eyes that it would have devastated him to have his child put to death. That he loved the child unconditionally is, in her eyes, a big problem. What redeemed him was that he “acknowledg[ed]” her “right to choose” whether the baby would live or die.
As if he had any way of stopping her.
When Cohen wrote a book about, among other things, contemplating abortion, she let her 9-year-old daughter read it. The daughter was okay with it, “Because I know how it turns out.” As if a child would say anything else! What’s she going to say?
It took the wisdom of our child, confident in her parents’ love, to clarify this truth — that exercising freedom of choice is nothing to be ashamed of.
Maybe she wasn’t so much confident of her parents’ love as she was aware of the fact that to even tacitly question mom’s “right to choose” would destroy whatever fragile, conditional love her mother had for her.
And note the author’s tone about the whole thing. No hint of a chill running up and down her spine over how close she came to killing this child. Just a smug satisfaction that in having the baby, rather than killing her, she “exercis[ed] freedom of choice”.
At least the child has one parent who values her inherently and unconditionally, and not merely as the product of a “choice”.
And the fact that the child’s value to her is only in having been “chosen”, and not in merely being, really is something Ms. Cohen should be ashamed of.
The ad below shows a Chinese abortion clinic offering students 50% off on their abortions.
Translated, the ad says:
Students are our future, but when something happens to them, who will help and protect them? Chongqing Huaxi Women’s Hospital has started Students Care Month, where those students who come to get an abortion can get 50% off if they show their student ids. Abortion surgeries are the most advanced in the world, won’t stretch (your womb), won’t hurt, it’s quick, and you can do what you want afterward, it won’t affect your studies or your work.
Apparently, the babies in the womb are not part of China’s future. Thanks for JivenJehoshaphat for providing this quote.
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Episcopal Bishop George Leslie Cadigan:
“It is at once the glory and the burden of each of us that we are called upon to make such difficult personal decisions according to our conscience. When we deny that liberty to any one of our number, we give away a part of our own birthright. When, more specifically, we condemn a woman for making an independent judgment according to her own conscience, relating to her reproductive life, we denigrate her personhood.
The “rightness” or “wrongness” of abortion as the solution of a problem pregnancy is not the critical issue here. The issue is the larger ethical one: can any one of us stand in the role of judge for the personal decisions of others? What robes shall we wear? Greater than the debatable immorality of terminating an undesired pregnancy is the immorality of refusing a woman access to medical help when she has determined that she needs it.”
John M Swomley Compulsory Pregnancy: the War against American Women (Amherst, New York: Humanist Press, 1999) 21
So the rightness or wrongness of abortion is not the issue? One would think that if abortion was wrong, it would be wrong because it’s killing of the child. Like the one above, at 9 to 10 weeks. See what a 9 week old baby would look like after an abortion. Killing a child is wrong – wrong in every way – and it should be condemned.
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Testimony of Mr. Andrea Kischkel, Physician at the Hospital of Gällivare, Sweden, 2014:
“He reported on an abortion, authorized by the Socialstyrelsen, ended at 22 weeks + 3 days at the hospital of Gällivare. Informed shortly before, Dr Kischkel tried to have the mother transferred to the 3rd level Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Umeå where neonatologists try to save premature born babies ́ lives from gestational age 22 + 0 weeks. That was refused because it was an abortion. A little girl was born alive on 1st March 2014 at 7:55 pm. The midwives were not allowed to contact the paediatrician on call. Therefore, the child was given no medication, no pain relief although she had been pulled out by vacuum extraction. A midwife swept the baby into warm towels and waited until she had died, nearly half-an-hour later.”
Grégor Puppinck PhD (Dir.), Claire de La Hougue PhD, Andreea Popescu, Christophe Foltzenlogel “Late Term Abortion & Neonatal Infanticide in Europe” Petition for the Rights of Newborns Surviving Their Abortion ECLJ (European Centre for Law and Justice) June 2015
Share on Facebook“A woman would have the right to abortion just as she has a right to remove any parasitic growth from her body.”
Gloria Steinem, author and feminist leader, on CNN, September 9, 1981
Quoted in “Abortion: the Hidden Holocaust” Heritage House ’76, Inc. February 2, 2011
Is the picture above of a growth or of a baby?
(see what a seven week old embryo looks like after an abortion here)
Above: from a “growth” at 14 weeks. (see what he or she would look like after an abortion) Thousands of babies are aborted at this age every year in the US
Share on FacebookMrs. M.J., a midwife from France, tells the following story of infanticide following abortion:
“It was in 1973, I was beginning my second year at the nursing school and it was my first day of my internship in the maternity department. At 4:30 p.m. a nurse hastily came in the treatment room with a white sheets rolled like a ball, holding it to us and said “check that there are no instruments in it, take the compresses and put the drape in the laundry.” I was with a classmate I did not know because he was not from my school. He seemed older than me. Delicately we opened the sheet, removed all the compresses and discovered a lot of clotted blood: we discovered within the blood, a mass, that was a fetus, and he was still breathing. We were shocked. Another nurse arrived at that moment and we told her that the fetus was breathing. As a response she said: “Well, put it in a basin, and wait!” It all felt so frigid! The nursing student and I talked and agreed to say that he was alive and that we had to do something immediately. So, we wiped and washed the little body and wrapped him in a “cloth diaper.” We delicately placed him on the tray and covered him. I do not know what his gestational age was, but he was a boy and his members were well formed. Another nurse arrived, and she saw us near the fetus. She said we did well and we took this opportunity to question her: – “What happened to the mother? – She did what she had to do to abort and lost a lot of blood by expelling the fetus. She is now in the operating room and it is unclear if she will make it!” My colleague and I stayed near the fetus who was breathing heavily with increasing spaces between each breathe. It felt like time had stopped. We were there to look at him, this little living being, talking to him and stroking his little body through the drape for 45 minutes at least. […] He finally stopped breathing and we left him on his tray. It was the end of the first day of the internship. I must say that the 15 days of internship were difficult. The nurses were running around like “a chicken with its head cut off,” and it was not possible to talk about this event with them,”
Grégor Puppinck PhD (Dir.), Claire de La Hougue PhD, Andreea Popescu, Christophe Foltzenlogel “Late Term Abortion & Neonatal Infanticide in Europe” Petition for the Rights of Newborns Surviving Their Abortion ECLJ (European Centre for Law and Justice) June 2015
Share on FacebookA book in which the author interviewed post-abortion women had the following story:
“Wanda’s first abortion experience was not easy, and she holds not only Stuart [her partner] responsible, but also the clinic. Wanda’s abortion occurred at 15 weeks. The procedure lasted 2 days. The clinic staff inserted laminaria in her cervix so that it would dilate overnight, and sent her home without preparing her for the terrible cramps she would feel. That evening, in great pain, Wanda called a hospital; the staff said she was having contractions. Wanda cannot believe the clinic didn’t warn her of this. The clinic’s staff members were impersonal. Their attitude was almost, “Here’s another one. Get her over with.” Wanda says, “It was like a cattle haul. They brought us in all at the same time.” Those in the waiting room could hear noises from the operating room. Wanda observes, “They didn’t have the room soundproofed. You could hear the machine. So was like waiting to be branded.” Once Wanda arrived in the operating room, the clinic staff did an ultrasound and told her, “The baby’s perfectly healthy.” Wanda thought sarcastically, “Thank you. That’s just what I needed to know.” Wanda saw the ultrasound picture of her 15 week fetus, which disturbed her. After the procedure, as Wanda awoke from the anesthesia, she anxiously asked a nurse, “Am I all right?” The nurse responded, “You’re fine,” and pouted, “You pulled my hair.” Wanda recalls thinking, “I’ve got bigger fish to fry at the moment.” She adds, “Even in my state I was like, “a little sympathy would be nice.”
Eve Kushner Experiencing Abortion: a Weaving of Women’s Words (Binghamton, New York: The Haworth Press, 1997) 42
Share on FacebookThis is from an article about abortion clinic manager turned pro-lifer Abby Johnson. She relates a story of conversion.
She described one encounter with a man named Tom outside a different abortion clinic after Johnson had begun pro-life activism. Although Tom regularly showed up alongside the pro-life protesters, he was not with them: in fact, he held up a piece of posterboard with the word “pro-choice” on it. Johnson spoke to Tom and learned that he was the grandfather of an aborted child.
“And I thought, okay, this is a man that’s hurting, and we need to reach out and minister to him,” she said. She took the opportunity to share several news articles on abortion, saying, “I want you to do the research on this yourself.”
“He read them over,” said Johnson. “He came back the next day. And he walked up to me without his sign, and said, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll never be coming out here again as someone who’s pro-choice.”
“What we write, what we say, our actions, are bringing about conversion, and it’s happening almost every day.”
Kathleen Gilbert “Pro-life TV ad cut abortions at clinic by almost half: former Planned Parenthood director” LifeSiteNews May 10, 2012
Share on FacebookTop reasons women gave for having abortions (women could pick more than one) according to the most recent info:
74% said that the baby would change their life too much
73% said that babies were too expensive
48% didn’t want to raise the child alone
32% did not want another child
Less than 1% for rape or incest
Finer LP et al., “Reasons US Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2005 37 (3): 10 – 118
I will leave it to the reader to decide whether these are sufficient reasons or not.
Below: 1st trimester (9-10 week) preborn baby (see what this baby would look like after the most common type of abortion, a suction curettage)
