This just in, first hand, from someone working in a hospital:
One teenage girl came in last week for an abortion. She was all alone, and clearly she was struggling with her decision. After the abortion, I saw her in the waiting room, and the look on her face said it all…the suffering and pain she was feeling was quite apparent. The poor girl had no one with her. There was no pre-abortion counseling, nor was there any post-abortion counseling. This, sadly, is still the state of affairs here in Canada.”
by 
Don’t want an abortion? Don’t have one. (/sarcasm, just in case you were wondering)
Why, oh why are the doctors not screening out these clients?
I think most of us pro-lifers, certainly the ones like me who are supportive in terms of time at vigils, donations, and prayer, need to bump up our involvement, learn about the dangers/damage of abortion and be ready to talk when the need arises. We need to be able to speak up because surely we hear of some of these cases. I know I have personally heard of at least one and still wonder what I might have done differently.
Also, is it out of the question for our Catholic schools to have more of a prolife presence? How much is there now? I would so much rather that they focus on abortion, premarital sex, and pornography – very real moral evils that our children face – than “green issues.”
I teach in a Catholic high school. The closest I came to direct knowledge of a student’s abortion was from a girl who said she had gone with another girl to the clinic for her 3rd abortion. I didn’t do much (certainly not enough) for this after-the-fact situation. As for the prolife presence in school – many schools consider it controversial (whether it is or not, I would argue that we have a duty to speak from the Church’s perspective about these issues). I had the misfortune last year of having to bring an Amnesty International poster to my administration’s attention – it included quotes that somebody had copied down speaking of the ‘good’ that AI does in promoting birth control and abortion to young people. That poster came down very quickly, but I have no clue why it wasn’t noticed before it was first put up! With the possible exception of some of our religion teachers, I suspect I am the only other teacher in the school who addresses these things at all, which is itself a travesty, in my mind.
Melissa: Doctors are very clinical and the ones who do abortions think they are helping by doing it. I’d say given that they are already doing abortions, they obviously don’t think too much of what that decision might mean for some/many women. They certainly can’t afford to ruminate over the origins of life, children, motherhood with every abortion they do–if they did, they wouldn’t do abortions. They should be screening these girls out, yes, but it seems highly unlikely to me that they would.
@ Melissa
I recently finished a rotation in a high risk obstetrics clinic where women, who have diabetes, twin pregnancies, babies with congenital anomalies, or whatever other high risk condition, go to receive care. I quickly noticed that one of the physicians in this clinic was particularly fantastic, one of the best I’ve ever seen.
She is compassionate and an empathetic listener. She speaks slowly and takes as much times as necessary to convey the often complex situation that couples find themselves in. And yet she points people towards abortion when they are faced with an infant with disability/defect/ poor odds of survival, even in spite of their obvious aversion to it. I was so angry because I can’t reconcile compassionate loving people promoting abortion nearly so easily as I can angry, bitter, spiteful people supporting it…until I realized that abortion is very much considered a mercy.
With some exceptions, doctors consider abortion to be a compassionate offering in many situations even if it is a hard, guilt ridden choice for some. And continuing from that perspective, sometimes doing the hard thing is still the better choice; doctors are not going to screen out patients because they believe that it’s the better choice for them- in spite of the difficulty and loss for some women- it is still the better choice in many situations.
Our societal framework will have to shift completely to the point where we recognize that A) the life of a fetus is still a human life of worth, and B) a disabled life is still better than no life at all, before doctors start thinking critically about the implications of abortion.
Andrea and Leah,
Thanks for your responses. I agree with your assessments, that doctors who perform abortions think that they are providing a mercy.
However, informed consent is a pretty standard requirement of any medical care, especially any elective care. It is a doctor’s JOB to make sure that their patients understand the ramifications of the decisions that they make. It is a doctor’s JOB to ask the woman “Are you sure? Are you really sure? Are you sure that you are sure?”
Look at the worst case scenario either way. If a woman doesn’t abort, there is a very good chance that she will grow to accept her pregnancy and love her child. The worst case scenario is there is an extra child in the world that we have to take care of. If a woman aborts, the worst case scenario (barring a terribly botched abortion that kills the woman, which is extremely rare) is that the woman is traumatized and regrets her choice.
Would it kill these doctors to book the woman an appointment for a week or two down the road and tell her that she should take some more time to think through her decision. Do they really see a traumatized woman as preferable to an unwanted child? Or do they merely deny that women are traumatized by abortion?
Melissa:
perhaps when doctors are asked to perform lifestyle choices they throw all standard advice out the door? The average abortion today is pure choice, nothing medical, for the recipient. Perhaps doctors know this, and just do it robotically, because they were asked. What I’m getting at here is perhaps this farce that abortion is “medically necessarly” has eroded good medicine.
oh and i’m quite sure they deny that women are traumatized by abortion.
another two cents…
Andrea,
I just hope that the Canadian Medical Association is paying attention, and takes cases like these into consideration when it comes time to revise their guidelines on abortion.