I have a friend who was assisting with abortions at Bronx Pediatric Hospital in around 1970 --- before Roe, but when aborton was legal in NY State--- working with a professor of hers who liked to publish, bt didn't like to write. It was she --- we'll call her Connie -- who wrote up this guy's "studies" which "proved" that abortikon provided a crucial therapeutic benefit to girls in this situation.
Except it didn't.
What she found was that the sequelae of abortion were much worse than the sequelae of childbearing in these same circumstances.
She was intensely interested in finding out why. Why did the young girls who aborted end up wih higher rates of psychological distress as indicated by substance abuse, depression, suicidal ideation and behavior, self-harming of other kinds (cutting, neglect of ongoing medical problems), remaining with abusers who punched, choked, slashed them, and voicing sadness and pain over their abortion experiences?
Here's what she observed:, in no particular order of importance:
- girls who had their babies tended to stay in contact with the helping professions --- schools, clinics, follow-up appointments--- where they often got extra help and were accountable to someone. There was continuity of care. By contrast, girls who had abortions pretty much got the message, "There, we solved your little problem. NOw we hope we never see you again."
- SImilarly, girls who had their babies could often gather (or be directed to) a little community of care, including their extended families--- aunts, very often grandmothers, the boyfriend's mother or grandmother, etc. --- as well as churches and charitable groups like Pregnancy Aid centers. They would take a more well-rounded interest in her continuing well-being, rather than just get rid of pregnancy and then say "Done!" Young mothers with little babies attract help. Young post-abortion girls don't get any help, and often don't particularly think they need or deserve it.
Bottom line: an aborted girl is an abandoned girl.
- Young girls don't think abstractly or successfully euphemize their experience. They experience it raw. They don't say "I terminated my pregnancy," they say "I killed my baby." (Or: "THEY killed my baby.")
- Girls who were aborted, didn't identify with the other adults in the situation (e.g. social worker, nurse, counselor, doctor). They identified with the child. They thought, "If it's better for that baby to be dead than to live in such a mess (her situation), it's probably better for ME to be dead than to live in that situation."
"If it's better to be dead than to be a child of mine, I must be useless, worthless, basically no good."
- The girls who aborted usually did it at a later stage of pregnancy than the "national average." This is because young girls often aren't even aware that they're pregnant until their can't fit into their jeans any more, or they feel movement. That could be 4-6 months along. Abortions at that stage are highly emotionally as well as physically traumatic.
- Many girls got to late pregnancy because they knew they were pregnant but concealed it. They actually didn't want abortions.
They were being pushed into it by every powerful adult in their lives. They were the most powerless ones in the situation --- except for the their babies who would inevitably end up in a bloody heap in a clinic bucket. Now that's powerlesss.
And there were other considerations as well. This was, as I said, 45 years ago.
But the professor --- the one who liked to publish --- did he publish this? No, he did not. He told Connie this did not prove the therapeutic value of abortion and therefore did not constitute useful research. He said she should go out and find other "findings." She did. And they publsished what was useful --- to them.