They said it.
“In a retrospective study of 260 women, an average of nearly 11 years after their abortions, 51% reported having undergone a “dramatic personality change” following their abortions, of which 79% said the change was a negative one.”
David C Reardon, “Psychological Reactions Reported after Abortion” The Postabortion Review 2 no. 3 (Fall 1994): 4 – 8
Share on FacebookFrom one couple who decided to abort when they found out their baby would be developmentally disabled:
“If he can’t grow up to have a shot at becoming the president, we don’t want him.”
Rayna Rapp Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America (New York: Routledge, 1999) 92
Share on FacebookRayna Rapp wrote a book about amniocentesis and couples who choose whether or not to abort if their baby turns out to be handicapped. She quotes Avram Terguvnick, a medical geneticist:
“We are in a fast-moving train, and we manage to learn how to eat in the train, even sleep in the train. But I don’t think we think very much about where the train is going. Or, at the least, we are very simplistic… Of course, geneticists are the ones creating the technology. But it is being created without too much thought. Of course, if you really want to get to the social issue, you’d better get to whoever is driving the train… When I began, this work belonged in academic medicine; now it is rapidly commercializing. Pretty soon, it will just be profit-making labs offering kits. They’ll have a roving genetic counselor to pay lip service to malpractice insurance. This is not what geneticists wanted when we insisted on genetic counseling.”
Rayna Rapp Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America (New York: Routledge, 1999) 23
Share on FacebookOne woman talks about her emotional pain after her abortion:
”It’s been over 10 months after my abortion and it still seems like it was yesterday. It wasn’t because I had a bad life and “I don’t want my child to go through the same thing I went through” and it wasn’t because my parents are rich and “I didn’t want to let them down”. I did it because…. well I don’t know why I did it. I’m not good at making quick decisions and it was thrown in my face so quickly…The abortion to me was like death. It’s like when someone close to you dies your sad, sad, sad when it happens then it kinda goes away after a week or two. But then it blows up in your face HUGE when u least expect it. Like when your having a bad day, or your lonely, or when your really drunk. The difference is death you know is a part of life and has to be accepted because everyone dies but ABORTION… that’s a different story. That blows up in your face, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN and you don’t just cry hysterically and weep for a little while I went into a zombie depression for 4 months straight. … I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much before. It hurts, it hurts real deep because there’s nobody to blame but yourself. And it never stops and I wonder if it will ever stop. I was 6 weeks and 6 days pregnant.”
“I’m to Blame” Kaleidoscope Dec 20, 2006
Share on FacebookFeminist Carole Joffe wrote a book where she interviewed clinic workers and discussed the way abortion clinics were run. At one point, in the book, she said:
“Besides ongoing frustration over salaries, the [abortion] counselors felt that there was no real understanding of the pressures and demands of their work. They believed, for example, that the agency director and board were always devising ways to increase the patient load (and hence generate more revenues) without considering that more patients applied a need for additional staff.”
Carole Joffe The Regulation of Sexuality: Experiences of Family-Planning Workers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) 57
Share on FacebookLike most of the early feminists, Matilda Gage was against abortion. She said of it:
“[This] subject lies deeper down in women’s wrongs than any other… I hesitate not to assert that most of [the responsibility for] this crime lies at the door of the male sex.”
The Revolution 1 (14): 215 – 6, April 9, 1868
She was aware that men often exploited women and that abortion freed them from the consequences of their actions.
Share on FacebookNurse Marlene Costa worked in New York abortion clinic for short time before leaving in 1989. This is what she has to say:
“The women did receive counseling, if you could call it that..I was one of the so-called counselors. There was absolutely no factual information given on fetal development, not a word spoken about the risks, & the counseling was completely biased..They were told that the fetus was a ‘blob of tissue,’ not to feel guilty about it, not to beat themselves up about it and [were] comforted if they had apprehension about it.”
There was definite pressure to sell abortions…I was told ‘get the cash & get them out.’ in fact, my coworkers made fun of me for staying ‘too long’ with the patients, giving comfort..They prided themselves on how much money they raked in each Saturday morning.
Costa never witnessed abortion procedures or saw the remains of aborted babies. She worked strictly with the women. However, despite the fact that she was insulated from the worst aspects of the clinic’s work, she quickly became disillusioned with the clinic’s focus on making money at the expense of vulnerable women:
“I still believed in the right to abort at that time..I just began to get sick at the heartlessness & callous atmosphere. It was all about the money.”
Also:
“I assisted him during exams of women and was repulsed b/c I actually witnessed him ‘coming on’ to the attractive patients while examining them..it was disgusting.”
Like many clinic workers, Costa had an abortion before working at the clinic. There were protesters outside the clinic when Costa had her abortion. However, they did not reach out to her with compassion. Rather, in her own words, one woman “slammed me with a Bible while I tried to enter the clinic.” This behavior from pro-life protesters did not cause her to reconsider her decision. She says:
“I think non-biased education, with videos, pictures, etc. on human development, in addition to ultrasounds would be the most effective in preventing abortions.”
Share on Facebook“… The 1996 HBO movie If These Walls Could Talk, in which Cher (Cher!) plays an abortion provider who is extremely matter-of-fact about her work right up-to-the-minute that she is shot by an anti-choice protester, does not have to work hard to highlight the strength and bravery of those who risk their lives to provide women with this essential choice.”
Sarah Erdreich Generation Roe: inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2013) 51
Below: picture of a baby aborted at 10 weeks. 42% of all abortions are done at this time or later
How much “strength and bravery” does it take to do this to a baby 10 or 20 times a day?
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From pro-choice writer Sarah Erdreich:
“Groups like Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and NAF generally stick to messages about how common and safe abortion is, but they don’t offer a great deal of in-depth discussion about the range of emotions women may experience. Instead, they offer first-person stories, which overwhelmingly talk about abortion in positive terms. While studies have shown that this is how most women do indeed feel after their abortions, those women that have more ambivalent feelings following their abortions may not find much comfort or support in these messages.”
Sarah Erdreich Generation Roe: inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2013) 17
This writer is aware that pro-choice movement has little to offer women who do have problems after their abortions. Read more about psychological issues after abortion and abortion regret
Share on FacebookWhat one abortion clinic worker says to women who are ambivalent about having an abortion:
For the few women who arrive ambivalent or beset by guilt, Harrison’s nurse has posted statistics on the exam-room mirror: One out of every four pregnant women in the US chooses abortion. A third of all women in this country will have at least one abortion by the time they’re 45.
“You think there’s room in hell for all those women?” the nurse will ask.
Stephanie Simon “Offering Abortion, Rebirth” The Los Angeles Times 29 November 2005
These statistics have been debunked. This is the only counsel ambivalent women get. No information, no detailed discussion. This is it.
