“I had an abortion in Anaheim without my parents’ knowledge. The doctor performing the operation molested me, knowing I would not tell. I will vote yes on parental notification.”
Here are some studies about abortion’s dangers from the book “Women’s Health after Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence”
Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles. Women’s Health after Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence Second Edition (Toronto, Canada: The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, 2003)
(43)
A study found that “most dramatic uterine perforations during first trimester abortions are unreported or even unsuspected.”
Kaali SG, Szigetvari, IA, and Bartfai GS. The Frequency and Management of Uterine Perforations During First Trimester Abortions. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 1989 August; 161 (2): 406 – 8 P407
A perforation is a cut on the uterine wall. These injuries can cause bleeding and infection.
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(18)
“The observed association between induced abortion and an increased risk of the later development of breast cancer is congruent with our understanding of the hormonal effects of pregnancy on a woman’s breast tissue. Prior to her first pregnancy, a woman’s breast is composed largely of connective tissue linking ducts which contain few milk producing cells. Upon conception, a surge of oestradiol reaches twentyfold in the first trimester, triggering an explosive growth of breast tissue, a period when breast cells are most likely to be affected by carcinogens. When a woman completes her first full pregnancy, further hormonal changes propel these newly produced breast cells through a state of differentiation, a natural maturing process which greatly reduces the risk of future breast cancer.
An abrupt, premature termination of the first pregnancy by abortion arrests this process before the cancer reducing evolution of hormone release later in pregnancy can occur, leaving a large population of dangerously stimulated breast tissue cells in place, greatly raising future cancer risk.”
Kelsey, JL, “A Review of the Epidemiology Of Human Breast Cancer” Epidemiologic Reviews, 1979, 1: 74 – 109
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18 to 19
“Animal studies support this model. Russo and Russo exposed two groups of rats to a chemical carcinogen. One group, who mated and carried a first pregnancy to term, developed mammary tumors at a rate of 6%. The other group, who mated, became pregnant, then were aborted (via hysterectomy) developed mammary tumors at an incidence of 78%; virgin rats also developed tumors at a high rate, but not as high as those that were aborted.”
Russo J, Russo IH. Susceptibility of the Mammary Gland to Carcinogenesis. Pregnancy Interruption As a Risk Factor in Tumor Incidence. American Journal of Pathology 1980 August; 100 (2); 497 – 512
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44
“dilation and evacuation between 12 and 16 weeks… have the potential to cause significant morbidity and mortality.” Because of possible uterine complications, the researchers conclude that such procedures should only be used where intensive emergency treatment can be initiated immediately.”
Trott E., Ziegler W, Levey J. Major Complications Associated with Termination of a Second Trimester Pregnancy; a Case Report. Delaware Medical Journal 1995 May; 67 (5): 294 – 296
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53
“The greatest consequence of induced abortion for future pregnancy is a rise in the rate of premature births ranging from 30 to 700% Preterm babies weighing less than 1500 grams suffer an incidence of cerebral palsy over 38 times greater than full-term babies. Thus induced abortion tremendously increases a woman’s risk of later bearing a child with cerebral palsy.”
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66
“The abortion procedure can trigger an episode of PID [pelvic inflammatory disorder] in any woman, but those postabortion women who already have chlamydia are at far higher risk of PID than women who do not carry the organism. Women can be asymptomatic and still harbor chlamydia trachomatis in the lower genital tract. If the abortion clinic does not test for this and prescribe the appropriate antibiotic regime, the woman may only discover the chlamydia while being treated for postabortion PID. By then it may be too late to avoid later fertility problems.”
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“Delay in the onset of symptoms is a critical factor when considering PID caused by chlamydia following abortion. Blackwell and colleagues found from their patient records that women continued to develop symptoms at 11 weeks, 24 weeks, and 36 weeks post abortion. Osser and Persson found it to be variable: if the woman was positive for chlamydia before the abortion, the time of onset for salpingitis (infection of the fallopian tubes) was 14.1 days and for endometritis (infection of the uterus) 8.2 days.… Such complications would not be identified by abortion clinics as immediate sequelae or coded as being related to abortion at all.”
Blackwell AL, Thomas PD,Wareham K, Emery SJ. Health Gains from Screening for Infection of the Lower Genital Tract in Women Attending for Termination of Pregnancy. The Lancet 1993 July 24; 342 (8865): 206 – 10, P209
Osser S., Persson K. Post-Abortive Pelvic Infection Associated with Chlamydia Trachomatis and the Influence of Humoral Immunity. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 1984 (November 15; 150 (6): 699 – 703
A cofounder of the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, an organization that referred women to illegal abortionists before Roe versus Wade and which helped thousands of women get abortions said the following:
“In my religious tradition, birth was never seen as anything but a gift… To speak of being born as a right is to jar the sensibilities and strain the moral syntax of existence.”
The Rev. Howard Moody in Anna Bonavoglia The Choices We Made: 25 Women and Men Speak out about Abortion (New York: Random House, 1991) 192
Moody has also said that he believes abortion destroys a life, but is pro-choice anyway.
From an article that discussed a new policy among medical schools in New York to force medical students to have training in performing abortions:
“Of the roughly 2,000 doctors who now perform abortions, more than half are over 50.”
Dr. Allan Rosenfield, dean of Columbia University’s School of Public Health, estimated that 15 percent of OB-GYN residents might refuse abortion instruction for reasons of conscience
The policy would allow students who opposed abortion to opt out of the training.
DAVID CRARY “ABORTION-TRAINING DEBATE RAGES” The Columbian (Vancouver, WA) May 28, 2002
There is hope that many abortion doctors will retire in the coming years and there may not be new doctors to replace them. One of the reasons why many medical students don’t want to become abortionists is the stigma that comes with the job. Read more about that here.
Abortion is hard even for women who feel they made the right decision. This testimony from a book by a pro-choice author illustrates the feelings some women have:
“I had an abortion when I was 17. It was illegal then, so my parents took me to Mexico. The memories were painful. But I never talked about them.
When I was 22 I had an abortion, part of the ending of a marriage. It was still illegal in Arizona, so I went to California…
At 26, a second marriage ended with my third abortion. It was now legal in Arizona, so I didn’t have to run away. It was neat, clean, and fast. I woke from the anesthetic sobbing. The nurse, trying to comfort me, repeated, “It’s all right, dear. It’s over. It’s over.” I knew – that’s why I cried. But I didn’t talk about it.
The American psychological Association announced recently that “most women who have abortions experience a sense of relief,” rather than “any lasting psychological trauma.” I felt that relief – every time.
I got on with my life, as everyone around me advised…
For so many years – I resisted – thinking about the abortions. It always hurt too much. After the first one, I would count years by their ages. I’d imagine how old each child would’ve been that year. After the second, after the third, it became too difficult to carry their ages. I knew it was hurting thing to do. I accepted the abortions as done, as choices, awful choices, between fire and ice, between rocks and hard places… No one told me that a woman, a girl, who chooses to enter pregnancy has the right to mourn. I thought that since I have chosen abortion, I had given up that right.”
Ruth Colker Abortion and Dialogue: Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, and American Law (Bloomington: Indiana University press, 1992) X IV
A POST ABORTIVE MOTHER’S RESPONSE TO THE “I HAD AN ABORTION T-SHIRT” Stand true pro-life outreach
“Today I came across a pro-abortion image that made my skin crawl. There was no blood, no little aborted baby parts, no image of death. Instead it was a photo of Gloria Steinem, smiling, arms raised in a celebratory pose, wearing a t-shirt that read, “I had an abortion.” Beneath her it asked, “Do you really need to inconvenience yourself for the next 18 years?”….
10 weeks
As a post-abortive mother of four, this infuriated and disgusted me on many different levels…..
There was a time in my early 20s when all I wanted was to get pregnant and have a child. Desperately. I would practically DARE my boyfriend, and alternately BEG him to begin our little family. Why then, when I finally conceived my first child, was I so easily convinced to “take care of it”? I don’t have an answer. I can say with certainty that if he had reacted with “That’s great news! We’re going to have a family!” that I would have kept the child. Never did I feel like this was my body and my decision. It was us and our decision and he decided that abortion was the answer and I didn’t argue. The very night of the procedure I drank all of the whiskey I could find and I did that for most of the nights following for several months. I wanted to leave the country. I wanted therapy. I wanted to die. I wanted, more than anything in the world, to be INCONVENIENCED FOR THE NEXT 18 YEARS. But I chose not to be inconvenienced, to have my uterine contents removed, to spend the next several years suffering from my decision. Now as I stand on the sidewalk in front of Charlotte’s abortion mills, I am joined by friends who are unable to conceive. How must they feel, longing for a child, watching a woman who chooses convenience over a lifetime of love?”
After years of fertility treatments and the adoption of two babies, Nancy unexpectedly found herself pregnant at the age of 42. Noting that she and her husband would be in their 60s when the baby entered high school, Nancy says:
“What kind of sick joke is God playing on me? I’m a weary mother of two with a high-pressure job and a house that’s falling apart! I can’t raise another child.”
She decides to have an abortion.
“if I’m going to have an abortion, I have to learn something from the experience. I can’t just look at this pregnancy as a mistake. I’m going to change my life in positive ways because of it. I write a list of all the things that having this child will keep me from doing — traveling, making career changes, fixing up our house, and especially spending quality time with my first two children — and I vow to make good on them. I can be a class parent, take the girls on day trips, be more present in their lives. A life that recently seemed overbooked suddenly appears wide open.
I reach out to friends who I think will support my decision. It’s amazing how many of them have had abortions that I didn’t know about. Although I can see hesitation in their faces — in one case real strain — I manage to block it out. Feeling bolstered, I make an appointment for a “termination consultation.” The appointment is a week away, so I can always back out. I stop taking the prenatal vitamins. They only make the nausea worse.”
…..
Two days later, I go to my termination consultation. Two minutes into the conversation, I know I don’t have the heart to go through with an abortion. Maybe I never did. I look at the sonogram screen and am shocked to see the baby has arms and a head. Four weeks ago, in my doctor’s office, it looked like a grain of rice. I walk out into the sunshine and realize I’m having another child.
A week later I’m sorting through summer clothes and packing some up for charity. Roma keeps taking things out of the giveaway bag, and I get annoyed. “But Mom,” she says, “We need to save these for the baby.” John and I haven’t said a word to her, but she already knows.”
Her daughter has sense that her mother is pregnant without a word being said. If the mother had had an abortion, how would this have affected her daughter, who was aware of the baby? Many times, the siblings of aborted babies suffer depression. Read the testimony of one sibling.
Nicholas von Hoffman on how abortions reduce crime:
“Free, cheap abortion is a policy of social defense. To save ourselves from being murdered in our beds and raped on the streets, we should do everything possible to encourage pregnant women who don’t want the baby and will not take care of it to get rid of the thing before it turns into a monster… “
Nicholas von Hoffman, “Understand That Pro-Abortion Is Pro-Life and Vice Versa” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 10, 1992
From Slate:
“Just snuff the little buggers and let’s get on with it… The bumper sticker on the back of my car reads “Caution! The fetus you save will grow up to mug you!”
Ramesh Ponnauru The Party of Death (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006) 65 – 66
