Women who've had abortions don't owe loyalty to the abortion industry

Since Roe v. Wade, there have been over 60 million abortions committed in the United States. Even if 40% of those were repeat abortions (statistics vary by year), about 36 million women have had at least one legal abortion in the past 40 years.

Some current and former abortion workers have wondered where all these women are. Why aren’t more of them active in the pro-choice movement? Certainly, there are many who are. But there has been no massive uprising of post-abortive women fighting for abortion rights. Despite high profile campaigns like Shout your Abortion, most post-abortive women keep their abortions to themselves. The fact that the pro-life movement is so powerful, even when such a large number of women have had abortions and would seem to have every reason to support that right, is telling.

Jeannie Jones counseled women and helped them get abortions both before and after Roe. She says:

I became convinced within a year or two of doing abortion counseling to great numbers at Amherst Medical that the whole thing – society's condemnatory attitude toward abortion – was going to change so dramatically because there were all these women of all ages who had abortions and members of their families who knew about it. They had this experience of making this tough decision. I thought that was going to change the political landscape and I can't believe [that opposition to legal abortion] is still going on. There's this enormous number of women having abortions still, but it's like you had one and you don't have any sympathy or concern for anyone else. Where is this enormous population of people who personally had this experience? Where are their families?

[Source: David P Cline Creating Choice: A Community Responds to the Need for Abortion and Birth Control, 1961 – 1973 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006) 206]

Abortion is highly stigmatized despite many women having abortions. Former abortion worker Robin Dizard is so frustrated that more post-abortive women haven’t been fighting for abortion rights that she contemplated “outing” her former patients. The fact that many post-abortive women just want to go on with their lives, and others join the pro-life movement, angers her. She writes about exposing women’s secret abortions in order to shame them into being pro-choice, or to discredit their pro-life activism:

[I]t’s something that has been used very effectively in outing [of gay people], for example. I'm not in favor of it but look what it does. And look what happens when the hypocrites who are holding elected office get found out: "Oh, Senator whoever you are, your office is full of pornography, that's very interesting," and then the guy pipes down a little bit.

[Source: Ibid. 207]

Ironically and perhaps unintentionally, Dizard compares having an abortion to looking at pornography. This comparison acknowledges the stigma surrounding abortion.

Many pro-life post-abortive women are in fact open about their abortions; they see them as tragic events in their lives. Often, it is the abortion experience that motivates post-abortive pro-life women, whether they feel comfortable talking about their abortions or not.

Abortion worker Steph Herold also expresses her frustration:

We need our patients, who we do everything for, to stand up for us. We don’t need them to tell their abortion stories to everyone they know, although of course that would be great. We need them to fight for abortion access in whatever way makes sense to them. If one in three US women has an abortion by age 45, where are these women? Why don’t they stand up for us?

[Source: Sarah Erdreich Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2013) 175]

Herold's fake "one in three" statistic has been debunked.

Herold isn’t seeing the women who had abortions at her facility on the pro-choice picket line.

Abortion facility owner Maggie Cage ran a full-page newspaper ad during Operation Rescue’s campaign. While pro-lifers staged sit ins in front of the facility door, Cage called for her former patients to come and “defend” the facility:

Where are you? Where are all the people we’ve helped over the years? We need you now. When you needed us, we were there. We held your hand and supported you. We see you in restaurants and at the grocery store, at PTA meetings and softball games. You are the businesspeople, the school officials, the politicians, the voters. We kept you safe. We held your secrets. But now we need help. Where are you?

[Source: Susan Wicklund This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor (New York: Public Affairs Perseus Books Group, 2007) 160]

All the current and former abortion workers quoted here avoid coming to an obvious conclusion: many women don’t consider their abortion experience empowering. At "best," they want to forget about it. At "worst," they actively work against abortion.

What about the numbers? How many women who have had abortions are active in the pro-life movement vs. the pro-choice movement?

Unfortunately, current statistics aren’t available. But there is an older study, done in 1981, which found that more post-abortive women were involved in National Right to Life than in NARAL (one of the most prominent pro-abortion groups, then and now).

[Source: Donald Granberg, “The Abortion Activists” Family Planning Perspectives July – August 1981]

The study was done by pro-choice researcher Donald Granberg and published in the journal of the Alan Guttmacher Institute. It found that 3% of women in National Right to Life and 36% of women in NARAL had had abortions. At first glance, it seems like women who have abortions are far more likely to join NARAL and be pro-choice. But when you actually count the numbers up, you find that more post-abortive women were members of National Right to Life.

At the time of the study, there were 12 million women in National Right to Life and 156,000 in NARAL. This means that 39,000 women in NARAL had abortions. In National Right to Life, the number was 245,000.

What this translates to, if you do the math, is that there were six times more post-abortive women in National Right to Life than in NARAL.

Of course, there is only so much we can determine from the study. It only includes two organizations (though at the time, they were the largest), and it is from decades ago. So, we don’t know how much it can be applied to today. But it is seems clear that the majority of the 36 million American women who have had abortions are not pro-abortion activists.

[Today's guest post by Sarah Terzo is part of our paid blogging program.]

Pro-choice ethicists: OK to use aborted baby's ovaries to create new children

[Today's blog post by Sarah Terzo is part of our paid blogging program. Sarah is a pro-life atheist, a frequent contributor to Live Action News, a board member of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, and the force behind ClinicQuotes.com.]

Fetal tissue harvesting and experimentation on aborted babies are logical outgrowths of the pro-choice position. After all, if unborn babies are mere “tissue,” then there is no need to respect their remains.

But some proposals of what to do with those remains are truly bizarre – and deeply disturbing.

In an article titled "Transplantation of Aborted Fetal Ova: a Short Analysis" that was published in The Wanderer on August 4, 1994, author Lawrence Roberges described grisly experiments done by Dr. Robert Gosden of Edinburgh University. Dr. Gosden proposed harvesting the egg cells from the bodies of female aborted babies and using them for in vitro fertilization, as well as implanting ovarian tissue from aborted babies into the ovaries infertile women. He has had success with this process in mice. What the experiments would entail is obtaining female aborted babies from clinics (increasing clinic revenue), then slicing open the aborted children’s ovaries (ovaries actually start developing in the first trimester) and harvesting their eggs. The article went on to describe experiments he has done on mice:

A paper written by Dr. Gosden in the April 1992 Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics reviews the outline of this research a full two years before his research proposal became news. This paper bases his proposal on prior work in which Dr. Gosden has extensively performed mouse fetal tissue transplants studies to restore the fertility of sterile mice. These studies included using mice fetal tissue to restore fertility to sterile mice, restore endocrine function to mice without ovaries, and freezing and storing mouse fetal ovarian tissue for later successful implantation. Dr. Gosden's work promises to harvest eggs from aborted fetuses at the 12 to 16 week stage. They would then fertilize the eggs by in vitro methods and implant them into previously sterile women.… it would restore the fertility of women who have prematurely undergone menopause, thereby giving them extended years of childbearing.

Can you imagine going through life knowing that your mother was an aborted baby? The prospect is deeply disturbing. Many adopted children grow up wondering what their birth parents were like, but I cannot even begin to imagine how a person would come to terms with the fact that their mother never drew a breath outside the womb. It leads to all kinds of disturbing and macabre thinking.

In the Journal of Medical Ethics, Jonathan M. Berkowitz, a supporter of Gosden’s proposal, sidestepped the issue:

Certainly there may be many emotions associated with the knowledge of being conceived outside sexual intercourse… [A] study concluded that "the majority [of children produced via IVF] were performing above the norm for the chronological age but were subject to a "significantly higher incidence of… behavioral and emotional problems.

Jonathan M Berkowitz, "Mummy Was a Fetus: Motherhood and Fetal Ovarian Transplantation" Journal of Medical Ethics 21:298 – 304 (October 1995).

Of course, knowing that your mother was an aborted baby is very different from knowing that you were conceived through in vitro fertilization. It’s hard to understand how he does not see the difference.

The New York Times summarized Fletcher’s argument:

Dr. John Fletcher [an ethicist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville] said most of the ethical qualms  pale beside the good that can be done for infertile couples. For example, he said, even though a child might be troubled to learn that its genetic mother was an aborted fetus the child would almost certainly rather have been born from the fetus's eggs than not to have been born at all. "The idea that you would be filled with self-loathing if 50% of your genes are from the ova of an abortus seems to me highly questionable,” he said. 

Questionable? Really? It is questionable that knowing that your mother was an aborted baby (or, as he says, “abortus,” a dehumanizing term if I’ve ever heard one) would be traumatic and disturbing? I can’t imagine any human being not being affected by the horror of this type of beginning. The psychological ramifications are enormous – and so are the social ones. What would America be like if it were socially acceptable for people to be born with an aborted baby for a birth mother? It reminds one of the society portrayed in the book Brave New World.

One might think that the concept of harvesting fetal ovaries for future implantation in women and extracting fetal eggs for in vitro fertilization would be just an aberrant idea that would be quickly forgotten. But in 2003, BBC News described experiments with aborted babies’ ovaries taking place in Israel:

The lead researcher, Dr Tal Biron-Shental, from Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba, Israel, conceded that the concept of taking egg follicles from an aborted baby was controversial.

Presenting the work to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Madrid, she said: "I'm fully aware of the controversy about this - but probably, in some place, will be ethically acceptable.” 

It is hard to suppress a shudder when imagining a society that would condone this way of creating children. Dr. Biron-Shental went on to describe the benefits of her work, saying "There is a shortage of donated oocytes (eggs) for IVF - oocytes from aborted foetuses might provide a new source for these. There are a huge amount of follicles in the foetal ovary."

Fortunately, Biron-Shental’s work is still in its preliminary stages – no embryos or fetuses have been created using this method – at least as of 2003. But it is deeply disturbing to think about where this research is going. What will the future hold?

"Sacrifice"

[Today's blog post by Sarah Terzo is part of our paid blogging program. Sarah is a pro-life atheist, a frequent contributor to Live Action News, a board member of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, and the force behind ClinicQuotes.com.]

Every now and then, during my research on abortion, I come across a quote or statement that just makes me shake my head. Such as this quote from a post-abortive woman named Sue Nathanson. Nathanson, a self-proclaimed feminist, apparently regrets her abortion. But she regrets it not because she lost her child, even though she acknowledges this fact. No, she wishes that her child could have been “sacrificed” in a more “compassionate and loving” environment:

I wish now that my fourth child could have been sacrificed with my love and tears, even with my own hands, in a circle of a family or community of women, in a circle of a compassionate and loving community of men and women who might be able to perceive my vulnerability as a mirror of their own, and not as it was, in a cold and lonely hospital room with instruments of steel.

Wow, what a lovely sentiment! She wishes that she could have killed her baby herself. It’s hard, as a pro-lifer, to understand this kind of mentality. However, it is a logical outgrowth of the pro-choice position. I have debated many pro-choicers, and I have found that many of the most hard-core ones are willing to admit that abortion takes a life. As shocking as this is, it is an argument that sometimes stops the debate cold – if your opponent thinks killing babies is okay, it’s hard to know what to say next. The argument they put forth is that of bodily autonomy – a woman has a right to kill her baby because the baby is residing in her body. This argument overlooks the fact that the child is an innocent victim who, in 99% of cases, was put there by a consensual act of the woman herself. (According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, only 1% of abortions are done because of rape or incest).

They claim that if the woman’s circumstances are bad, abortion is the best choice for both her and the baby. Under this mentality, killing can be compassionate – it can relieve the woman of a bad situation, and it might even be kind for the child as well, who does not have to grow up “unwanted.” Killing people to help them. What a twisted concept. Perhaps telling themselves that killing a baby is good for the baby is the only way that some of these pro-choicers can sleep at night.

If Nathanson’s idea of “love” is killing, I sincerely hope she never “loves” anyone else. Killing with love. Wishing you had killed your unborn baby with your own hands, because somehow that would be more “loving” and “compassionate" than having an abortionist do it? I’m not sure how many pro-choicers would flinch at this quote, maybe many of them – but Nathanson has obviously been persuaded by the most virulent and extreme pro-abortion rhetoric to come to the opinion she has. It is a truly twisted philosophy.

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Editor's Note: The idea of abortion as "sacrifice" seems to be becoming a minor theme in pro-abortion rhetoric. Sarah has actually written about it previously; in that article, an abortion worker talked about "respecting" abortion victims by "thanking [them] for [their] sacrifice so that the woman could continue on the path she was on."

At the risk of sounding judgmental (oh, who am I kidding), this strange way of thinking about "sacrifice" always makes me think of Lord Farquaad from Shrek; specifically, this scene:



"Some of you may die... but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make." Yeah, that about sums it up.

"To me, it was not an act of murder..."

[Today's guest post is by Sarah Terzo of ClinicQuotes.com.]

There are many good reasons for pro-lifers of faith to familiarize themselves with secular reasoning against abortion. Christian pro-lifers often cite religious texts and doctrines to oppose abortion. And while "God hates abortion" may be a compelling argument for fellow Christians, we need to recognize that pro-choicers can use religion too. People's interpretations of scripture differ, of course. And apart from scripture, "my personal religious beliefs" can be manipulated by a creative person to justify practically anything.

I stumbled across an example of this in the book Our Choices, Our Lives: Unapologetic Writings on Abortion [1]. I was reading the story of a woman who had three abortions. The woman, who gave her name as Chandra Silva, was a rape survivor who had her first abortion as a teenager when she was well into her second trimester. Her baby, at this point, was highly developed. Chandra describes the injection of prostaglandin, and the pain she experienced as her body tried to expel her child:

I felt the need to use the bathroom when something started descending and my mother, who was trying to help me to the corner store style bathroom, kept forcing an orange bedpan underneath me. At one point, in desperation, I glanced between my legs and I saw a head. It was dark and bluish, and seemed to have little dark hairs. In that split-second instant there was a nurse on the floor searching between my legs. She was in a bit of panic herself, fumbling with gloves and clamps, then whisking away the bedpan contents.

When reflecting on this abortion, as well as her other two abortions, Chandra wrote:

What I experienced was unique to me and my evolving self. To me, it was not an act of murder, as the religious zealots and right-wing oppressors would condemn, because I believe the soul and personality (which includes the body) are separate energies. I believe that we can check in and out of our physical vehicles when the situation requires it – or desires it. And I think that in cases where a woman chooses to terminate her pregnancy, there is an agreement between her soul self and that of her child. There is always agreement.

Chandra’s talk of the “soul self” and “separate energies” and unborn babies agreeing to be killed are obviously religious ideas, in the sense that they rely upon supernatural assumptions. Her claim that the soul of the baby makes an agreement with the soul of the mother, and that the baby somehow agrees to be aborted, can never be proved – but is a justification of abortion that makes sense to her, in the same way that “If you have an abortion, you’ll go to hell” makes sense to Christians. I doubt that Chandra could be argued out of her religious beliefs, any more than most fundamentalist Christians or devout Catholics could be argued out of theirs. If a Christian were to come up to her and tell her that God had intended her to have her baby instead of aborting, I doubt that Chandra would listen.

Perhaps it is too late to reach Chandra, but the point I’m trying to make is that religious arguments can be used by either side. It is just as easy to support abortion with religious arguments as it is to oppose it. Pro-lifers are not the only ones who use religious beliefs to support their position. From a secular standpoint, religious arguments often seem nonsensical. No doubt, most Christians would find Chandra’s beliefs absurd. Yet people who are not a part of the Christian faith may find the concept of an unborn John the Baptist leaping in his mother’s womb after encountering the unborn Jesus just as absurd.

Christian pro-lifers should take note that as nonsensical and unconvincing as Chandra’s rationalizations are, when they put forth their Christian religious arguments against abortion, they sound just as unconvincing to those who do not share their religious beliefs. The result is that pro-lifers and pro-choicers who do not share the same religious background end up talking right past one another. By focusing on areas of consensus, like human rights and the science of prenatal development, pro-lifers are far more likely to reach someone like Chandra.

[1] Krista Jacob, editor Our Choices, Our Lives: Unapologetic Writings on Abortion (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2002, 2004) 32 – 34

Planned Parenthood: Committing an Abortion is Like Swimming

[Today's guest post by Sarah Terzo of ClinicQuotes.com is part of our paid blogging program.]

During my research on Planned Parenthood I stumbled across a quote from a Planned Parenthood clinic director that I’d like to share. It is from an old article (Sandra G. Boodman, “The Dearth of Abortion Doctors; Stigma, Low Pay and Lack of Personal Commitment Erode Ranks” The Washington Post, April 20, 1993), but the quote is so revealing of PP’s attitude towards abortion that I thought it deserved a mention.

Irving S. Rust, director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in the South Bronx, was asked about the declining number of doctors doing abortions. His response was that abortions are "boring" to perform, and that is why many doctors won't do it. It's an argument I have seldom encountered. A first trimester abortion is "like swimming," he said. "It can be sort of boring and kind of monotonous, but unless you're good at it, you can wind up with some major complications."

It is amazing how many incriminating quotes by Planned Parenthood one can find when digging through news archives. It is disturbing (but not surprising) that a Planned Parenthood director viewed killing unborn babies so casually. Planned Parenthood campaigns to allow non-physicians to perform abortions and opposes even modest safety regulations for abortion clinics. But these candid words from a Planned Parenthood director reveal that they are well aware of the dangers of abortion, especially when done by people without much experience. They know that even first trimester abortions can be dangerous to women, contradicting their public position that abortions are safe because they are legal.

The comparison to swimming is particularly callous. Does Planned Parenthood believe that an abortion is no more morally significant than a swim in the pool? It's stunning how lightly the largest abortion provider in the United States views killing unborn children. Even midway through the first trimester, the baby is very well developed. By 7-8 weeks after conception, the child has arms and legs with fingers and toes. He or she has a beating heart at 21 days. Jewels Green, who worked in a clinic that performed abortions in the first trimester only, nevertheless testified to sorting through recognizable body parts. (If you have a strong stomach, see for yourself what an aborted baby at 8 weeks looks like.)

Since 1993, the number of doctors committing abortions has declined even further. Abortion advocates are getting nervous:

[T]he number of state-based restrictions on abortions has increased significantly over the last two years. Defining a “scarcity” of abortion providers to mean a state where either 60 percent of the women live in a county without an abortion provider, or where there are 200,000 or more people for each abortion provider, we found that fully 32 states were experiencing scarcity as of 2008, the last year for which these data are available. 

The number of abortion facilities in the United States continues to decline rapidly, with 87 closures in 2013 alone. May the trend continue in 2014 and beyond!

Loving Them Both

Editor's Note #1: Today's guest post is by Sarah Terzo of ClinicQuotes.com.
Editor's Note #2: This is our 1000th article since we moved to the Blogger platform many moons ago. Thank you to our readers for allowing us to reach this milestone!
Editor's Note #3: Due to the drop in web traffic that occurs during the holiday season, the blog will be on hiatus for a few days. Whatever you celebrate, Secular Pro-Life wishes you a happy time with your loved ones. Safe travels.

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In an article in the American Medical News (Diane M Gianelli, “Abortion Providers Share Inner Conflicts,” American Medical News, July 12, 1993), a counselor at a Dallas abortion clinic talked about how she deals with the stress of doing her job. In her own words:

This may sound like repression: however, it does work for me. When I find myself identifying with the fetus, and I think the larger it gets, that’s normal… then I think it’s okay to consciously decide to remind ourselves to identify with the woman. The external criteria of viability really isn’t what it’s about. It’s an unwanted pregnancy and that’s the bottom line.

This clinic worker is struggling with her conscience. Deep down, I suspect that she knows that the “fetuses” her clinic aborts are actually babies. You don’t “identify with” tissue, products of conception, or collections of cells. You identify with human beings. This clinic worker is struggling to silence her conscience, which tells her that these babies are more than just tissue or uterine growths. They are people. As the developing child grows bigger and begins to look more and more like a newborn, it becomes harder and harder to deny his or her humanity. This forces the clinic worker to rationalize what she is involved in. In order to cope, she blocks out the reality of the child and focuses only on the woman as her patient, making the woman her only concern.

Pro-choice arguments almost always focus solely on the woman involved in the pregnancy. The baby is completely disregarded.

The pro-life movement, on the other hand, is at its best when pro-lifers are concerned about both the child and the mother. Groups like Silent No More and countless postabortion support groups and organizations exist to help women cope with their past abortions. Crisis pregnancy centers, which outnumber abortion clinics, help women through their pregnancies and try to meet their needs. More and more, it’s becoming clear that women are physically and psychologically harmed by abortion. In opposing abortion, pro-lifers are not simply helping the baby – they are helping the mother as well. It is important that we do not deny that there are two people involved in each pregnancy – the woman, and her unborn baby. Both are important. Both require our support and compassion.

Focusing on only one person at the expense of the other should never be a tactic of the pro-life movement. It is important that we never allow ourselves to see only the baby and disregard the woman who also needs our help and support. It is of course the baby whose life is at stake – but the woman obviously has a pivotal role and should never be forgotten.

Pro-lifers are here to support both people involved in the pregnancy. We don’t exclude either one from our help and care.

Murder suspect uses pro-choice viability argument as defense

[Today's post by Sarah Terzo is part of our paid blogging program. Sarah is a pro-life atheist, a frequent contributor to Live Action News, and the force behind ClinicQuotes.com.] 

Apple Valley, Minnesota prosecutors allege that Roger Holland killed his pregnant wife Marjorie and their 15-week-old unborn baby. Holland's lawyers are defending him using the argument that the murder of the baby was, in fact, an illegal abortion. They claim that the killing of the baby fits the criteria for abortion rather than murder.

At 15 weeks, the baby in this case would have had all the organs in place and fully developed feet and hands. However, over 450 legal abortions are performed between 13 and 15 weeks' gestation every day. Holland and his legal team are trying to exploit this inconsistency in the law that allows abortionists to kill unborn babies legally, but punishes non-medical-practitioners who kill these babies during the commission of a crime. Marsh Halberg, Holland's attorney, contends that the unborn babies have no inherent right to life. He says that rather than murder, Holland should be tried for performing an illegal abortion, which carries a much lighter sentence.

Halberg attempted to have the murder charge for the baby dismissed, saying "The exact conduct [Holland] is being accused of is chargeable under a separate, less severe statute… If there are different statutes that can be used to penalize criminal conduct, then you should use the statute that most accurately depicts the crime involved."

Halberg said of the unborn victim, "It's not a separate interest at this point, because it's not viable."

Halberg also uses as part of his argument the case of Donald Wickstrom, who was convicted of illegal abortion after he beat his pregnant girlfriend and caused a miscarriage. In Wickstrom's case, the mother survived the attack, but her 8-month-old baby died. Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom, who is prosecuting Holland's case, moved to dismiss Halberg's argument on a technicality, saying that the laws were different when Wickstrom’s crime was committed. Backstrom said that the use of the "illegal abortion" defense was "offensive and legally unsupported."

If convicted of the death of Marjorie Holland, Roger Holland faces life in prison. The murder charge pertaining to the unborn baby would, therefore, not greatly affect the punishment that he is already facing. Even if his “abortion is not murder” strategy succeeds, it will not save him from life in prison if he is found guilty of the separate charge of murdering Marjorie Holland. Still, the use of this defense is appalling, and could have ramifications for future cases.

Late-Term Abortion to Save a Mother's Life: Two Doctors' Perspectives

[Today's post by Sarah Terzo is part of our paid blogging program. Sarah is a pro-life atheist, a frequent contributor to Live Action News, and the force behind ClinicQuotes.com.]

Pro-choice activists sometimes claim that late-term abortions need to be legal in order to protect women’s lives. These abortion activists know that many people shudder at the thought of killing a fully formed baby who could survive outside of his or her mother’s womb. They know that the simple “woman’s body, woman’s choice” slogan is not enough to convince the public that aborting full-term babies should be legal. In order to justify these abortions, pro-choicers sometimes say that if late-term abortions were banned, women’s lives would be at risk; in other words, women have late-term abortions in order to save their own lives.

Is this true? Common sense seems to indicate that it isn’t. A third trimester abortion is performed by injecting poison (usually dioxin) into the baby, then inducing labor. A woman essentially “gives birth” to a dead baby.

In both a third trimester abortion and a traditional live birth, the woman has to go through labor. The only difference is that in an abortion, the baby is injected with poison, killing him or her. This is done for no other reason than to prevent a live birth. It seems to be common sense that injecting deadly poison into a woman’s body would carry some risk. It is hard to believe that it is safer to inject poison and induce labor rather than to simply induce labor without the injection.

Way back in 1972, when abortion’s legality was still being debated, the medical director of the Pittsburgh Planned Parenthood, Dr. Rose R. Middleman, was quoted as saying:

“It’s extremely rare, if nonexistent, for a physician to have a medical reason to abort a woman in the 7th or 8th month.”(1) 

Middleman’s statement is very revealing. It comes from a pro-choice Planned Parenthood administrator, who had every reason to stick to the pro-choice talking points. In 1972, Planned Parenthood was just as pro-abortion as it is today. This doctor's admission probably did not sit well with those who were advocating for late-term abortion, because it revealed the truth.

If in 1972, late-term abortions were not needed to save the lives of women, it is highly probable that they are even less necessary today. There are been many medical advances in the past 40 years.

A more contemporary quote comes from a practicing abortionist, Dr. Don Sloan. When Sloan wrote his book “Choice: a Doctor’s Experience with the Abortion Dilemma” in 2002, he had already performed over 20,000 abortions. He said:

“If a woman with a serious illness- heart disease, say, or diabetes- gets pregnant, the abortion procedure may be as dangerous for her as going through pregnancy … with diseases like lupus, multiple sclerosis, even breast cancer, the chance that pregnancy will make the disease worse is no greater that the chance that the disease will either stay the same or improve. And medical technology has advanced to a point where even women with diabetes and kidney disease can be seen through a pregnancy safely by a doctor who knows what he’s doing. We’ve come a long way since my mother’s time….The idea of abortion to save the mothers’ life is something that people cling to because it sounds noble and pure- but medically speaking, it probably doesn’t exist. It’s a real stretch of our thinking.”(2) 

Dr. Sloan is of the opinion that abortion is never necessary to save a woman’s life at any time in pregnancy. He believes that “life of the mother” argument is a smoke screen, a useful argument, but not based on fact. It is true that in some cases, pregnancy can complicate illness, but even this abortion provider admits that in most cases, a competent doctor can see a woman through even the most difficult pregnancy.

When pro-lifers make the claim that abortion is seldom necessary to save a woman’s life, especially in the last trimester, people might be inclined to doubt them. When pro-choice doctors say the same thing, it is not as easy to dismiss.

1. “Doctor Refutes Abortion Claim” Reading Eagle June 14, 1972 
2. Don Sloan, M.D. and Paula Hartz. Choice: A Doctor’s Experience with the Abortion Dilemma. New York: International Publishers 2002 P 45-46

Coerced abortion makes mockery of "choice"

[Editor's note: Today's feature is a guest post by Sarah Terzo, who runs ClinicQuotes.com.]

It is not unusual for men to try to coerce their partners into having an unwanted abortion. In fact, according to the Elliot Institute, which deals with post-abortive women, 64% of women who have abortions claim that they were pressured by other people (usually their partners) into having them. So much for women's choice!

So it's no real surprise to find out that a British man has taken coercion one step further – he drugged his pregnant fiancée with an abortion pill, causing her to miscarry.

The woman, who has not been named for legal reasons, was rushed to the hospital with severe bleeding, were she found out that her baby had died. She was forced to undergo an emergency operation and required a blood transfusion of two pints of blood.

She did not know the cause of her miscarriage until months later, when she overheard her fiancé bragging to someone over the phone about slipping the abortion pill to her without her knowledge. She reported the crime to the police, who arrested him. It is not clear at this point where he acquired the abortion drug.

When the abortion pill was first made available in the United States, I remember some pro-lifers expressing concern that men would be able to force a woman to abort by acquiring the drug and making her take it by deceit or threat of violence. Pro-abortion activists laughed off these concerns. But now it seems that our fears were well-founded.

Hopefully authorities will be able to determine where the perpetrator got the abortion drug and tighten up whatever regulation allowed him to acquire it. [Editor's note: Here's one possibility: a website, run by "pro-choice" activists, that lets people order the abortion pill online and have it shipped to their house.] The case makes one wonder how many other times an abortion drug has been slipped to unsuspecting women, threatening their lives and their pregnancies, without them ever knowing.

Could such a thing happen in the United States? Abortion proponents would say no –after all, only licensed clinics can dispense the RU-486, the abortion pill. However, there has already been at least one similar case in the United States. New York resident Dr. Stephen Pack ambushed his pregnant partner outside a hospital, screaming “I'm going to give you an abortion!” He injected her with a dose of methotrexate, a drug that induces abortion but that also has legitimate medical uses. In that case, thankfully, the baby survived and the mother was not seriously injured. And in October of 2010, an Ohio man drove his pregnant girlfriend to an abortion clinic at gunpoint.

These incidents highlight the fact that many women face incredible pressures to abort from their partners, and that when they refuse, partners may take matters into their own hands. The murder of pregnant women is disturbingly common - in fact, murder is the number one cause of death for pregnant women. It is often the partners that are the perpetrators.

For example, the body of 15-year-old Daphne Sulk was found that a rest stop in Wyoming. Her 38-year-old boyfriend was arrested and convicted of stabbing her to death because she refused to abort his child. Teshibra Bell, also 15, was killed by Shannon Meschack, the father of her unborn baby. He had threatened to kill her if she did not have an abortion. Another man, Michael Baldwin, confessed to the brutal slaying of his girlfriend, who was 15 weeks pregnant with his child. These are just a handful of cases that have been documented by the Elliot Institute.

No one should be allowed to force a woman into having an abortion she does not want. Whether the coercion is subtle, overt, or violent, it is always wrong. Pro-lifers should try to force the abortion industry to be held accountable for performing abortions on women who express that they are being pressured into having them. Pro-life activists have the opportunity and the responsibility to protect women from coercion by publicizing these incidents and raising public awareness.