In the early 1960’s in America change was brewing and would explode onto the culture scene shortly. Amid all this chaos there were certain groups of people who saw a need for abortion to be legal in the US. What did they see?
Bernard Nathanson recounts in his book, The Hand of God, how as a young doctor he saw poor women coming into the hospital from botched home abortions. The plight of these desperate women moved him so that he began a campaign to get abortion legalized in the state of New York. He co-founded the group NARAL to achieve this goal.
Feminists groups were fueled by Betty Friedan’s book”The Feminine Mystique in which the author details how women, desperately unhappy because of the roles thrust upon them by society, saw abortion as a way out of this unhappiness. These groups proclaimed that women needed abortion because they were suffering unnecessarily from unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. Women’s lives and career goals were in turmoil because of the disruption caused by pregnancy. There were numerous heart-breaking stories of women whose lives were ruined because of pregnancy paraded in front of the public. They came up with the slogan “Pro-Choice” because a woman (they believed) had the right to control her reproductive life and it shouldn’t be left to oppressive, controlling men to decide. Through the political process these groups demanded that abortion be made legal.
Sarah Weddington arguing before the Supreme Court in the infamous Roe v Wade case stated, “I think it’s without question that pregnancy to a woman can completely disrupt her life.” After giving numerous examples of how pregnancy disrupts a woman’s life, she want on to say: “It [pregnancy] disrupts her body. It disrupts her education. It disrupts her employment. And it often disrupts her entire family life.” And because of this disruption, Weddington concluded that a woman should be given the choice as to whether to continue or to terminate her pregnancy. The majority of the court agreed with her.
Planned Parenthood, which started out as a birth control organization, added abortion to their line of services. They believed abortion fit nicely into their philosophy of population control. They were very concerned with poor, uneducated women having too many children. They wanted to help these women who they saw as suffering terribly with too many mouths to feed. If the birth control didn’t work they wanted women to have the option to terminate a pregnancy so life wouldn’t be so burdensome.
The concern for all of these groups was the poor, disenfranchised, unhappy, suffering woman.
For the most part, the American public believed these groups. In the 70’s and 80’s the American public was largely “pro-choice”. The rhetoric of these organizations resonated with Americans, especially women. Many people thought it was exceedingly unfair to force a woman to endure a pregnancy when she didn’t want to.
It is now 2008, and we’ve had 35 years of legalized abortion in this country. Let us look at what unrestricted access to abortion has done to women. Did it make their lives better like these groups claimed it would?
There have been studies done that show thousands of women suffer from the choice to abort. Many women are finding that abortion is not the quick, easy solution that was promised. These studies show a collection of symptoms such as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), guilt, shame, depression, alcohol or drug abuse, promiscuity, anger, and numbing, just to name a few. This is called Post-Abortion Syndrome. Post-Abortion Syndrome is a term used to describe the emotional and psychological consequences of abortion. In 2007, the APA set up a task force to study this syndrome.
An article by Doctor Salvatore Mancuso from the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics of the Catholic University of Rome details new research which shows that pregnant women inherit traits from their children.
Reviewer Loretta Oakes explains: “It means that the mother receives cells from her unborn child. Those cells end up in parts of the nervous system including parts of the brain and remain there for the remainder of the mother’s life.” She goes on to ask “What might be the implications for the mother of such a transformation?
“First, it explains the incredible bond between a woman and her child. Blood is literally mingled. It also explains why a mother so desperately protects her child but there is more…” Then she goes on to say, “Such a discovery explains why there are so many women who struggle with a past miscarriage or abortion. They mourn for that loss more personal than any other person could understand — mothers have literally been touched by another human being. They struggle with the loss of another human as though they’ve lost a piece of themselves.”
We have discovered that there are also physical consequences to abortion. Some women have committed suicide after having an abortion and other women have become infertile or even died from abortion as is the case with Laura Hope Smith, a 23 year old woman who died from an abortion in Massachusettes.
Carol Everett (a former abortion clinic operator) also talks about this in her books Blood Money: Getting Rich Off a Woman’s Right to Choose and The Scarlet Lady: Confessions of a Successful Abortionist. Recent findings show a link to breast cancer from abortion. Karen Malec, founder of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast reports on this link and how women are being affected by this deadly disease.
In response to the effects on women from abortion the Catholic Church has two programs for post-abortion healing. Project Rachel and Rachel’s Vineyards Retreats. They can attest to the thousands of broken women coming through their doors who are suffering horribly from their right to choose. Protestants also have programs for PAS one of which is a Bible study by Linda Cochran called “Forgiven and Set Free” and they can also attest to the thousands of women who have undergone this program. Groups like The Silent No More Awareness campaign and Operation Outcry gather the testimonies of women who have been hurt by abortion.
CareNet and Heartbeat International are two networks that help and support pregnancy care centers around the country. They can also attest to the thousands of women who have gone through abortion recovery programs and how they have found healing from past abortions.
We can conclude from all this data that women are suffering physically, psychologically and emotionally from abortion. They are hurt, scarred, committing suicide and even dying from the right to choose.
I wonder what would have happened if Dr. Nathanson (who has since repented and is a Catholic) would have responded to seeing all those poor women who underwent botched abortions by setting up programs to educate them on abstinence and Natural Family Planning? If groups like NOW and NARAL would have kept the same ideals as the original feminists who were adamantly against abortion and would have worked to help women in unintended pregnancies with programs and support that would allow women to keep their babies?
In their misguided compassion they have caused women more suffering and pain. It is time we start asking these groups and anyone who is pro-abortion: Why do women need abortion?
Hopefully we all will soon come to the conclusion: They don’t.
