Many of the women we hear about on the news who kill their children have had abortions in their lives. Susan Smith is an example of that. She had at least one abortion prior to giving birth to her two boys. Although I don’t know this for a fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the woman in Texas who drowned her children in the bathtub had had an abortion sometime in her life. What happens is that once a woman has an abortion, in order to alleviate the tremendous guilt they feel, they do not bond with future children, because if they did, they would then have to bond with the child they killed.
Also, the mindset sets in that if it’s OK to kill the child in the womb, then it must be OK to kill the children outside of the womb.
Many women who have unexplained mental illnesses may also be experiencing tremendous guilt over the killing of their unborn children. Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane in the Superman movies, was found wandering incoherent in some field several years ago. She had suffered some sort of mental collapse. She was one of the women highlighted in a book in 1989 about movie stars who had abortions.
Again, I have no proof of this, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that Britney Spears had had one. She fits all the signs. The timing of her mental collapse seems to coincide with the birth of her children. Also, her actions are all centered around the children in some way.
I am not a psychologist, but my husband and I have done counselling of pregnant women contemplating abortions. Sometimes we were successful and sometimes we weren’t. One woman in particular working with us who had an abortion herself 19 years earlier one day had a complete emotional collapse and completely abandoned her 2 children she had years later. There is more of this that goes on than we will ever know. As soon as I hear of a woman going berserck and killing her children for no apparent reason, the first though that goes through my mind is I wonder if she ever had an abortion.
I’m not sure the mental illness in this case is as unexplained as it may seem. Not present in your post is some of the judgment that has flowed rather easily in this thread. The condemnation of abortion is valid and necessary, but sometimes there are circumstances beneath the surface that help to piece together a more accurate read of the entire picture. So after awhile the condemnation of abortion becomes an obvious exercise, and the judgments can seem just a bit harsh.
Not mentioned in the Telegraph piece linked here or a lead on Fox News was something nearly buried in a story in the Evening Standard at
This woman suffered from ME, which is considered a psychiatric condition in the UK, but a physical condition according to the CDC. Here we would call it Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or perhaps Fibromyalgia. Controversy surrounds it, but the way it is handled in the UK causes a lot of problems for people with a physical condition who are treated as psychiatric patients.
Outside of the—again—obvious condemnation of abortion, I won’t make judgments here. This is a misunderstood condition that often leads to anxiety and depression...which are often pointed to as the causes, rather than the effects. In some cases this may be valid. In many, it is probably not. None of which excuses abortion. But there is more here than meets the eye, and it’s worth pointing out, especially when so many are so quick to judge.