One woman who became pregnant in difficult circumstances had her baby but describes how hard saying no to abortion can be:
“When I was 21 I became pregnant. I was unmarried, a university student and I supported myself by working at night… I fit your description of a woman who should qualify for an abortion exactly. Very busy and very poor. However, I did not want to have an abortion on moral and dare I say it… religious grounds. I believe abortion is murder… My belief is heartfelt and therefore when I became pregnant, although I was completely ambivalent about my condition. I could not seek abortion as an escape route.
The first doctor I went to assumed I wanted an abortion before I said anything to him, and I had to tell him very firmly that I did not need his “help.”
The Planned Parenthood worker who first diagnosed my condition was incredulous at my decision, and in a manner bordering on hostility said to me, “Didn’t you always secretly want to have a child so that you could have someone to love?” Sitting there, literally shaking with terror at the disastrous news, I was subjected to the amateur psychology of a proabortion advocate who simply could not believe that my reluctance to have an abortion was based on private scruples. And that was the beginning of a very long and painful trial by fire. I lost my friends because they could not “tolerate my stupidity.”…
At one point I was offered a large sum of money so I could go to New York and get it done “quietly”. I had pictures of the vacuum machine used for abortion shoved in my face, and a detailed account of the whole procedure outlined for me, until I cried. Every time I sat down in the student pub someone would start: “Why don’t you have an abortion?” And later, “Why did you?”… I caused anger, too, I believe, because my refusal to have an abortion was based on moral and religious grounds. My answer was not an excuse, it was a judgment, and it was probably seen as a judgment on all those who disagreed with me…”
Now older and married… I often sit and wonder about the future of women like me who say no. I think about the fact that I was 21, and telling everyone to go to hell was infinitely easier for me than it must be for a very young teenager, who, although she feels the truth of her unwanted fetus’s humanity in her soul before she ever feels the first life movement in her belly, must face outraged parents, social workers, with seen too many tragedies to care anymore, and terrified boyfriends. Authority figures can be overwhelming when you’re only 15. I wonder, and my heart reaches out with all compassion to every woman who has had an abortion against her wishes. True, nobody can legally drag you on the operating table, but they can certainly use social and financial cattle prods to get you there.”
“One Woman’s Story” Pro-Life News/Canada, April 1978, reprinted from a letter in the Lakehead University (Thunder Bay, Ontario) paper Argus, February 3, 1978
This is an old quote, but it shows that Planned Parenthood was ALWAYS giving biased and coercive pregnancy “counseling.” Read more stories of abortion clinics and/or Planned Parenthood putting pressure on women to abort here.
Read quotes from former abortion workers on this.
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