I'm too scared to post for the first time, but I had to respond to this. I counsel women who suffer from post abortion stress at my local crisis pregnancy center. (Actually, it's a Biblically based on going study of forgiveness and trusting in God to guide you through the grief process. I am not a licensed therapist). I can verify what Father Frank Pavone says to be true. The statistics show that probably around 80% (or higher depending on who you ask) of women who receive an abortion suffer greatly, different levels of post trauma. Many times it develops into psychosis. But mostly it's just severe self-hatred and on going self-destructive behavior.
I could go on for days about this. Oddly enough, to my understanding, Planned Parenthood does not even acknowledge post abortion stress. Imagine that!
From my limited exposure, in dealing with women who have had abortions, I would say that 80% is wrong. My experience has shown me that number to be higher. I talk openly about abortion with pro life and pro choice women and know many, many women who have had an abortion. I have only talked to ONE woman who didn't regret it and suffer afterwards (and that's up for debate). So if I was doing my own statistic based on my conversations, that number would be 99%. How's that for a scientific statistical analysis? LOL
I'm a former post abortion counselor for CPC and can affirm your views to be correct.
So glad you registered and posted on this thread. Welcome!
I'd like to hear more about what you have learned concerning post-abortion. Have you found that mothers struggle with their parenting? What could I tell my sister counseling would be like if she decided to go to one? How long does counseling go on for? Any help you can give will be helpful. ~Boxsford
I could go on for days about this. Oddly enough, to my understanding, Planned Parenthood does not even acknowledge post abortion stress. Imagine that!
Are you kidding me?!!! I thought we were past that?!!!
For some reason, I knew they were denying the fact that post-abortion stress existed, in academic areas for example, because they lie in college while they try to brainwash your children. This goes along with liberals teaching that there are no consequences, when in fact we all know there are. However, I thought Planned Parenthood would promote "all of the facts", but it looks like I have been duped.
I have alot of friends who have had abortions and all of them, and I MEAN EVERY SINGLE ONE, is f***ed up about their decision. I was pretty liberal about this issue before, but I could not get passed the fact that my friends were so emotionally scarred because of their abortions. I doubt that any were told that they would have the emotional nightmares if they followed through.
Think about this - if they acknowledge post-abortion stress, they would have to acknowledge that on some level it affects people negatively. Pretty soon people would be asking them why it affects people negatively if it is such an ok thing to do. What a slippery slope for them. Seems much more cost conducive for them to just ignore any possible psychological effects the way they ignore the physical ones, such as the problems with RU486 and the possible connections between breast cancer and abortion.
---a reference to the Holocaust by Franz Stangl, Nazi commandant of extermination camps in Sobibor (March, 1942 -September, 1942) and Treblinka (September, 1942 - August, 1943).
Interviewed by Gitta Sereny in 1970, Stangl's comments later appeared in the book Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (1983).
I'm in favor of a post-Roe Human Life Amendment. En route to that, there will need to be incremental measures put into place by law. A ban on partial-birth abortion, parental consent for minors, defunding Planned Parenthood, keeping the proposed "clinics" out of public schools...and V4F.
V4F is, in tandem with science and sympathy in favor of the prenatal baby. V4F offers a visible protagonist (the father), who is closely connected to the situation at hand.
It obliterates the "every child a wanted child" argument. Under V4F, every child is wanted, and supported, by the father.
It blows the myth of abortion being a "woman's issue". So long as pro-lifers are silent on V4F, abortion will be considered by the public-at-large a "woman's issue". As such, on some level, people will say, "Well, so long as abortions aren't forced..."
Many, many women subscribe to the NIMBY principle, saying that they would not personally have an abortion, but wouldn't stop others...V4F exposes the gyncentricity of this position.
I would pose to pro-lifers the following: the pro-life movement has failed in the courts and legislatures for 30 years. They have failed to endorse or even acknowledge the V4F position for 30 years. Society has paid the price for this twinned set of failures, and they are twinned. Abortion will never end, and a Human Life Amendment will never come about, until V4F is endorsed by the pro-life movement. It takes two to make a baby, but so long as pro-lifers are silent about one of those two, the father, it will appear that only one person was involved in conception, and that therefor the product of conception is the province of one person only. Keeping fathers/V4F out of the picture undermines the personhood of the prenatal baby for these reasons. It is not baby's rights vs. father's rights. It is that after 30 years of colossal failure by the pro-life movement's no-father approach, the baby's personhood needs to be endorsed by a visible, immediately involved protagonist: the father.
Pro-lifers refuse to engage this issue. All manner of red herrings are thrown out: well, the father was probably some irresponsible jerk, or somehow V4F would lead to C4M (when actually they are opposites), etc. etc.
Pro-lifers refuse to wake-up and endorse this issue.
And this is why we fail.