ProWomanProLife

I may be losing it a little (Brigitte! Come back!) but I can’t remember whether I posted this article I wrote for The Interim. It’s a bit of a review of that Australian book I so appreciated called Giving Sorrow Words:

Each woman is unique but two ideas unify the voices. The first is the myth that abortion is a neutral or easy choice. The second is that abortion is actually a choice.

So many women felt cheated because they could never have envisioned the aftermath. Stories are punctuated by comments like “I’ll never be forgiven for what I did.” Jasmine, from Melbourne, recounts her nightmares: “I dreamt I was covered in blood that would not wash off.” Marguerite, who describes herself as non-religious, writes “for many months after termination, I woke during the night to hear my baby screaming.” For her, the grief was “palpable” and “permeates waking and sleeping hours.”

The second myth is that abortion is a choice at all. Many women awaited their abortion appointment with dread. Justine called her long distance boyfriend on regular intervals, desperate for him to change his mind. He didn’t – until the after the abortion was done. She literally wandered hospital halls prior to her abortion searching for someone who would help her keep the child. Finding only a doctor who confirmed her worst fears that her boyfriend truly wasn’t interested, she went ahead. For Anne, her mother oversaw the unwanted abortion, coming afterwards with presents “like I’d had my tonsils out.” In another, the father, “stands over me while I ring to make the appointment.” Barbara also begged her husband to change his mind, “but all he did was hiss ‘get rid of it.’” While being wheeled to the operating room she plaintively asks: “won’t anyone save me?”

We can’t forget these stories, knowing that they are all too common and also knowing that young women out there are not hearing these voices.

Rachel’s Vineyard is having a retreat April 8-10 in the Ottawa area for any person who has struggled with the emotional or spiritual pain of abortion.

Check their web site for more information.

Celine Dion comments on her twins, born six weeks ago. Part of what makes “selective reduction” (have you ever heard of such a horrible euphemism?) so terrible is that there are so many women who want children so desperately. She was supposed to have triplets, incidentally, but one didn’t make it:

She also told how she was originally pregnant with three babies, but lost one during the pregnancy. “One little baby decided to step back to help the other two survive. The doctors said to me if there’s something wrong, natures takes it’s course. “I still think of the one who stepped back. I’m sure every woman has the feeling about -the little one that’s not there.”

I wish every woman did have a feeling about the one that’s not there…but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

I think this article probably sums up quite well what many women are feeling when they go for abortions.

When I wrote my piece for the Calgary Herald, I deliberately put the name of the blog Anti-Choice is Anti-Awesome in. It’s the best way to ensure the blog author takes note and responds.

And respond she did.

A couple of small things. She seems to be annoyed I didn’t link to her in the piece. That’s just silly–of course I couldn’t, because the piece was published in print. Interested parties are supposed to go and do what everyone does: Use Google.

She also seems to think I’ve misquoted her. I have not. Someone landed in her clinic who did not want an abortion and made a big fuss about it. That was the sole point. That the blog author made fun of her, that the girl left without having an abortion is entirely irrelevant. She got that far in a process she didn’t want to participate in.

That Anti-Choice is Anti-Awesome disagrees with me is no great surprise. She works in an abortion clinic. Most women do feel some relief around the day of the abortion. That’s the short term effect; it took care of the pregnancy. It made it go away. I bet Anti-Choice is Anti-Awesome gets thank you cards for her work. In the short-term.

That’s the thing about abortion. You feel relief that you didn’t have to have a child with the wrong person, in a wrong relationship, at the wrong time…But in the long term you look back and ask yourself: Was it really so dire? Did I have to kill? My kid would have been X years old today. And that’s where I get the feedback. The questions. The friends lying curled up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor, sobbing for a mistake that can never be undone. And it’s a mistake to have an abortion. It’s a mistake to think that life problems are solved through abortion.

Anti-Choice is Anti-Awesome is 26 years old. She sounds like the type of person I’d like. After all, she’s someone who started up a blog about a topic she believes in. But she could afford to open up the dialogue and listen to the heart of what I wrote. It was something I was hoping people working in clinics would hear, and be aware of, since I fully understand that they are not wanting to do abortions on women who are unsure, or don’t want them. They should be the front lines in diverting women out the door. They should be the front lines of asking the tough questions on whether or not a woman wants to be there. They should be at the front lines of diminishing abortion numbers. I know some who actually want to do this.

No reason, then, to laugh at my article. I wrote it with a good heart, and representing the many women out there who regret their abortions, but only do so in the long term.

I had to assume when I read Dr. Robinson’s letter that she is willfully blind to the studies showing psychological problems after abortion. This letter is, er, to the point in response to her:

Dr. Gail Erlick Robinson neglects to mention that the “relief ” some women experience after abortion all too often takes the form of suicide. While Dr. Robinson rubbishes Dr. David Reardon, whose research has documented substantially increased incidence of suicide post abortion, based on medical records from California, Dr. Reardon merely confirmed what Dr. Mika Gissler and colleagues had reported back in 1996 in the British Medical Journal in another “gold standard” study based entirely on medical records from the Finnish abortion and death registries. Gissler et al. found that women who had had an induced abortion in the prior 12 months were three times as likely to commit suicide compared to women who had not been pregnant during that year, and six times more likely to commit suicide compared to women who had had a live birth in the prior 12 months. Clearly, post-abortion depression is a much more serious problem than postpartum depression. Importantly, not a single study has refuted these inconvenient but rock-solid scientific findings about post-abortion suicide.

Joel Brind, professor of biology and deputy chair, Department of Natural Sciences, Baruch College, City University of New York.

Rachel’s Vineyard in Ottawa is holding a post-abortion retreat on April 16-18. If this is something you are interested in, you can check out the web site.

The Post explains their use of graphic images from Haiti:

We recognize that these pictures are disturbing. But we think that they are also a necessary — indeed, a central — part of telling this story completely. They communicate in a powerful manner the true horror of what has taken place in that country. And understanding that horror is necessary, we think, in order to galvanize as swift and powerful a response as possible to help the people of Haiti.

Or you could just say it sells papers. But my point here is that when pro-lifers use graphic images to show who dies in an abortion they are held in absolute revulsion by some. Not me. It’s a tool that won’t work for everyone, but for some it will “communicate in a powerful manner the true horror of what [is taking place] in [our] country. And understanding that horror is necessary, we think, in order to galvanize as swift and powerful a response as possible to help [Canadians].”

A horrifying piece about RU486 and what happens to the women who take it. Is it better to abort at home, privately? I don’t think so.

The image of the baby she wrapped up and threw away would flash across her memory for a year afterwards. Stacy Massey, counselor and founder of Abortion Recovery InterNational (ARIN), said the visual memory of an RU486 abortion is the hardest. Massey lay on a table 30 years ago for her own abortion and played football the next day. But women who have a chemical abortion actually see—­sometimes floating in a toilet or a shower—the graphic aftermath of their own abortions.

A seven-week unborn child already has brain waves, a mouth, lips, forming fingernails, eyelids, toes, and a nose. After women expell their unborn babies, they have to dispose of them. Massey said she once got a desperate call from a woman who said, “My baby’s floating in the toilet. What do I do now? Do I flush it?” And one couple went to a hotel to have an abortion and the woman locked herself in the bathroom, sobbing and screaming.

The feelings of guilt can be more intense for women who have undergone chemical abortions, said Massey, since they themselves administered the pill while they were fully conscious: “For me who went and lay on a table, somebody else did it. Yes, I made the decision but I was always able to rationalize that. I didn’t kill my own baby—somebody else did.” Massey said that the trauma seems to be more severe with younger women since many older women have experienced natural miscarriages.

For the record, I don’t believe there is any way to make an abortion feel OK. But there are ways to make it be worse for the women who undergo them, and RU486 – the way it isolates the women and leaves them on their own to deal with the consequences of their choice to kill their unborn baby – certainly is one of them. How callous and lacking in basic human compassion do you have to be to give this drug to a young pregnant woman with a pat on the knee and a cheerful “Good luck!” before sending her on her lonely way???

[h/t]

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Andrea adds: A woman suffering alone at home, faced with the remains of her child is a horrifying thing. So is a sterile, government-funded clinic that “flushes” the remains for you. I guess that’s why we have this blog, to hash these things out. Pretty distressing all round.

Miep Gies, who helped shelter Anne Frank’s family from the Nazis, has died. She was 100. May she rest in peace.