Posted on 01/14/2003 7:23:58 PM PST by Remedy
The abortion industry wants Americans to think there is no harm in killing unborn children. We'll all soon discover just how hurtful it is.
"Janet" slumped into a chair and raised a gun to her temple. She couldn’t even hate anymore. For a time after her abortion, that was all she could do — feel a seething, bottomless hatred for her boyfriend, Mike. She hadn’t spoken a word to him since the abortion. A suburban police officer, she fantasized about "annihilating him . . . making him beg for mercy, just as I had in the clinic." Her rage eventually withered, but nothing replaced it — nothing but black emptiness. Janet pulled the trigger.
"To this day, I cannot think why the gun did not fire. I had always kept it in perfect working order," she recalled.
Still numb, Janet telephoned her friend Susan and told her what she had tried to do. Susan was there in a flash and rocked Janet on her lap like a child. But Janet didn’t tell her about the abortion, the cause of her despair. Susan took the gun home and later it went off in her apartment, blowing a hole in the wall and scaring her silly.
Life went on. But Janet wrote later:
Gone was even a semblance of joy. There was no sunshine to my days. Oh, how I envied the dead. I used to pray for death, begging a nonexistent God to give me an end to my pain. I find it amazing, in retrospect, how we can function so well in front of others, while suffering like that.
Thirty years and more than 42 million abortions after the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling declared that women have a constitutional right to "terminate their pregnancies," America is still riven by the daily killing of unborn children. Year after year, in poll after poll, a majority of Americans have acknowledged that abortion is the equivalent of "murdering a child," but a sizable portion of the same people also say they view abortion as a sort of "necessary evil" — sometimes the best way out of a bad situation.
But is abortion really a solution? That’s what the pro-abortionists have tried to convince us is the case. But the evidence — testimony from women, children and fathers that there’s a hidden, and painful, and permanent cost to killing children — is working against them. ‘Inherently Dangerous’
Janet’s post-abortion ordeal is one of dozens recounted Forbidden Grief by Theresa Burke, a psychotherapist and founder of the international ministry Rachel’s Vineyard, which trains counselors and helps women deal with post-abortion emotions.
"Once a woman is pregnant, the choice is not simply between (1) having a baby and (2) not having a baby," wrote Burke. "The choice is between (1) having a baby and (2) having the experience of an abortion." But what a convenience-oriented society has failed to recognize, Burke points out, is that abortion is just as life-changing as childbirth.
And it’s not surprising that most women think of abortion as having few, if any, lasting consequences: Most pre-abortion counseling is deliberately thin on information about the procedure, fetal development or abortion’s physical risks, let alone about the likelihood of long-term emotional turmoil.
"Everyone assured me not to worry, that there was nothing to be afraid of," recalled one of Burke’s patients, Nadine. "The counseling I received was like, ‘Yes, you can do this; yes, it’s safe; and don’t worry, you won’t have any problems.’ . . . I have been emotionally tortured by this experience for the past 24 years. It’s made my life a pit of depression and anxiety."
Some women, such as Sandy, are simply overwhelmed by the unexpected pain that arises after an abortion:
When a year passed and I still thought about my abortion every day, I thought I must be really crazy. It seemed like my life should be going on like normal, but in reality it was quickly falling into a million pieces. . . . I tried so hard to put on a front for everyone that I knew because I thought if they saw what was really going on inside of me that they would have me committed to a mental institution. I thought I was the only person who had this kind of reaction to their abortion.
But women like Sandy are hardly alone. Forbidden Grief co-author David Reardon conducted a study comparing women who had abortions to women who carried babies to term. Those who aborted their babies were 63 percent more likely to receive mental health outpatient care in the 90 days after their abortion. And the distress wasn’t fleeting, either. Reardon found that the post-abortive women he studied were significantly more likely over the next four years to be treated for psychiatric illnesses like bipolar disorder, neurotic depression and schizophrenia.
The findings fit with other studies, including a Finnish one published in 1996 in the British Medical Journal that found women who had abortions in the previous year were three times more likely to die by suicide than the general population of women — and seven times more likely than women who gave birth in the previous year.
Reardon said the elevated stress levels of post-abortive women may elevate their risk of disease, too; they have been linked to lowered immunity and poor health. Forbidden Grief includes the story of one post-abortive woman who ignored a cancerous lesion for more than a year before seeking treatment and now questions whether her delay was a form of self-punishment.
Even women who feel immediate relief after an abortion can find themselves suddenly overwhelmed by horrific bouts of guilt, rage, numbness or depression, triggered by the anniversary of the abortion, the baby’s due date, a new pregnancy or baby to care for, the loss of a loved one or seeing pictures of fetuses.
Psychological reactions manifest in a range of self-punishing behaviors from what Burke described in therapy terms as "symbolically re-enacting the loss." In a classic re-enactment case, one of Burke’s post-abortive patients often stuffed a towel into her pantyhose and took frequent maternity shopping sprees. Each time, she would return to her car, yank the towel out of her belly and cry. Others reported using drugs and alcohol to "drown the pain," having repeat abortions (in one survey of women who sought post-abortion counseling, 26 percent had had at least two abortions), eating disorders, shoplifting and nightmares (a full 17 percent reported having "waking or sleeping visitations" from their aborted babies).
"The preponderance of evidence is clear now that abortion has a higher mortality and morbidity than having a baby," said Reardon. "There is no such thing as ‘safe’ abortion. It is inherently dangerous." ‘Safer Than Motherhood’
There are undeniable medical costs too. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta stopped counting deaths from abortion in 1987 because of unreliable reporting and, many argue, an unwillingness to have that data available to the public. But women still die of legal abortion. They bleed to death, they suffer perforated uteruses, get infections and are rendered infertile. A 2001 Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists study of women needing medical care after abortion put the complication rate at 11 percent. In America, that translates into about 140,000 physical complications each year.
The documented effect of psychological and physical suffering among post-abortive women is only the tip of the iceberg, said Reardon: "If anything, our findings would underestimate the full risk," he said, noting that women who have babies also may be troubled by past abortions (thus diluting the findings), and some women’s psychological reactions to abortion take more than a decade — longer than the studies’ time frames — to manifest.
Abortion advocates continue to use outdated and inflated statistics about maternal mortality to portray abortion as "safer than motherhood," however.
"Abortion is 10 times safer than having a baby," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation. Saporta dismissed the recent studies based on massive American data as "biased" with "just too many flaws to get into," though no one has refuted the evidence scientifically.
Asked by this reporter about the psychological effects of abortion, Saporta gave the standard response of the abortion industry: "There is no such thing as post-abortion syndrome. . . . All of the evidence suggests the best indicator for a woman’s reaction after an abortion was her frame of mind before it."
Some "pro-choice" Web sites direct women who are feeling "blue" after an abortion to remind themselves how carefree their lives are minus their babies — a tack Burke finds especially offensive: "Would you tell someone grieving at a funeral to try to picture how awful his life would be if his loved one had survived?" ‘A Gaping Wound’
If women seem to have difficulty letting go of their grief over an abortion, some also have trouble embracing children they later bear.
British Columbia family and child psychiatrist Philip Ney has done exhaustive research into the effects of abortion on women’s relationships with their children. He’s found that women who have aborted "unwanted" children are statistically less likely to bond with, and statistically more likely to abuse or neglect, subsequent "wanted" children — an effect he said is the result of deadened maternal instincts that promote nurturing and curb aggression.
Burke had one patient, for example, who came for counseling after being plagued by images of poisoning her children’s dinner and watching them die. She loved her children and was horrified by these evil fantasies that would pop into her head uninvited. Describing her abortion, she told Burke how the doctors had "poisoned" her unborn child.
Some abortive women are quite open about their abortion history in front of their children (saying things like "I could have aborted you, too"). Others, in their depression or rage and guilt, send out myriad subtle messages to children about what’s wrong, said Ney.
"It’s a sobering thing from the perspective of a child, to realize that your mother killed another child," he said. "To a little person it’s like living with a sleeping giant, always fearful that giant is going to awake again soon." Such children, he said, exhibit classic "survivor syndrome" symptoms. Like the survivors of the death camps in World War II Germany, they are anxious and deeply distrustful.
"They see their life as having no intrinsic value — you are only valuable because you are wanted," said Ney. "And that wantedness is subjective." That cheapened self-worth gets translated onto the worth of others, added Ney, and is manifest in acts of violence from road rage to random beatings.
"Whatever the true numbers of psychologically affected post-abortive people, there is huge gaping wound out there," said Reardon. But many people have had enough of their pain. Since Burke launched Rachel’s Vineyard in 1994 with little money and no advertising, offshoots have sprung up in 180 cities from Alaska to Florida. Thousands of women changing their hearts could change the heart of the nation, rendering Roe powerless. Said Reardon: "The floodgates haven’t opened yet, but when they do. . ." ‘I Never Got to Kiss Him’
None of this testimony begins to address the wider effect of abortion on fathers.
On Sept. 10, 2002, Brad Draper shot himself in the head in the parking lot of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Overland Park, Kan. Local news reports claimed there was "no apparent relationship between the man’s death and Planned Parenthood."
However, according to CNSNews, on June 5, after he learned of the abortion of his son, Draper placed the following obituary in The Kansas City Star: ZACHARY DUNCAN DRAPER December 2001 - May 17, 2002 Memorial services were held June 1, 2002, at D.W. Newcomer’s Oaklawn Memorial Gardens, Olathe, KS. Zachary Duncan Draper was [as] beautiful as his mother, loved by God and others. My little baby boy didn’t make it to his Daddy’s arms. I never got to hold and kiss him, tell him stories or read him rhymes. I love you Zachary and look forward to seeing you in heaven.
Draper’s family told CNSNews the suicide was on what had been the baby’s due date.
And the circle of pain widens.
Celeste McGovern is a freelance writer in Oregon.
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The 5-minute pro-lifer Suppose you have just five minutes to defend your pro-life convictions. What should you say? How can you simplify the abortion issue for those who think it’s complex? You can make your case in three steps. 1. Clarify the issue. Abortion unjustly takes the life of a defenseless human being. This simplifies the abortion controversy by focusing public attention on just one question: Is the unborn a member of the human family? If so, killing him or her to benefit others is a serious moral wrong. Arguments based on choice and who decides miss the point entirely. Would anyone you know support a mother killing her toddler in the name of "choice" and "who decides?" Clearly, if the unborn are human, like toddlers, we shouldn’t kill them in the name of choice any more than we would a toddler. Again, this debate is about just one question: Who or what is the unborn? At this point, some may object that your comparisons are not fair — that killing a fetus is not the same as killing a toddler. Ah, but that’s the issue, isn’t it? Are they the same? That is the one question that matters. Remind your critics that you are vigorously "pro-choice" when it comes to women choosing a number of moral goods. You support a woman’s right to choose her own doctor, to choose her own husband, to choose her own job and to choose her own religion, to name a few. These are among the many choices you fully support for women. But some choices are wrong, like killing innocent human beings simply because they are in the way and cannot defend themselves.1 2. Defend your pro-life position with science and philosophy. Few people dispute that human life begins at conception. Prior to his abortion advocacy, even former Planned Parenthood President Alan Guttmacher was perplexed that anyone, much less a medical doctor, would question this.2 Embryos are less developed than newborns (or, for that matter, toddlers) but this difference is not morally significant in the way abortion advocates need it to be. Also consider the abortion advocate’s philosophical claim that higher brain function determines the value of human beings. If self-consciousness makes one human, newborns do not qualify as valuable human beings. Remember: The reversibly comatose, the sleeping and Alzheimer’s patients lack self-consciousness. It’s far more reasonable to argue that although humans differ immensely in their degrees of development, they are nonetheless equal because they all have the same human nature. 3. Challenge your listeners to be intellectually honest. Ask the tough questions. When people say that birth makes the unborn human, you can ask, "How does a simple change of location — from inside the womb to outside the womb — change the nature of the unborn?" If they say that brain development or higher consciousness makes us human, ask if they would agree that those with an IQ below 20 or perhaps 40 should be declared nonpersons? If not, why not? True, some people will ignore the scientific and philosophic case you present for the pro-life view and argue for abortion based on self-interest. That is the lazy way out. Remind your critics that if we care about truth, we will courageously follow the facts wherever they lead, no matter what the cost to our own self-interests. Scott Klusendorf is director of bioethics at Stand to Reason and author of the book Pro-Life 101: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively. For more information, visit www.str.org Footnotes 1. Gregory Koukl, Precious Unborn Human Persons (Lomita: STR Press, 1999), p. 11. 2. A. Guttmacher, Life in the Making: The Story of Human Procreation (New York: Viking Press, 1933), p. 3. |
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I'm still left with the question when does a soul come into the picture, and the fate of a soul at any given stage in development. |
Actually, they CAN "just go off" after, as in this case, an attempted firing - clearly this is a textbook case of a faulty primer. I have seen delays of several minutes on firing ranges, and heard of longer delays from others. This time delay is a bit longer than I have experienced, but it is not unheard of!
Don't let this "red herring" deflect from the FACT of the personal and national tragedy of murdering an unborn child!
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