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How many near to us are at risk or hurt?
"I wanted so badly to talk to someone, maybe someone would say,
'Don't do it, I will help you.' ... instead I was herded into a room
with about 10 other girls like cattle."
Certain themes run through the stories from women who've been there.
Young women or vulnerable couples seeking answers, information or assistance are instead pressured, deceived or funneled toward a "one-choice" system.
The research supports this. One study clearly exposed the prevalence and synergy of coercion, showing that most felt rushed or uncertain yet were given no counseling or inadequate and often false information.
[ed. This has been repeatedly shown through the video and audio expose' series of Lila Rose...]
SueAnn's abortion took place when she was a teen.
It is not indicative of "choice" that phrases like "no time for questions," "herded like cattle" or simply "shut up" come up often in the stories of women of all ages and from all walks of life.
Their realities don't fit the sanitized mantra of "choice."
SueAnn's story below is one of many that reflect systemic abuse of power.
Following this section, we offer
links to ads and materials you can use to educate and challenge leaders
in a holistic and compassionate way about abortion's exploitation of
women, men and families at risk.
~~~~~
SueAnn's Story
I was sent to the Family Planning Center for help. Well, they helped me
all right, so much so they had me booked in for an abortion the next
day. Their reasons were I could not take care of myself let alone a
baby. I had no permanent home, and to even think of keeping 'it' was
totally selfish on my part.
They gave me no options and no information; my rights as a human being
were not valid because of who I was, just another stupid teenager who
got pregnant.
I wanted so much to talk to someone, maybe someone would say, "Don't do
it, I will help you through," or maybe, "You can keep your baby, there
is help available and there are people who care," but instead I was
herded into a room with about 10 other girls like cattle and spoken to
like I was a piece of dirt and treated as such.
Sara also felt her needs were not properly addressed in the pre-abortion process:
I had to stumble through a system which was not supportive of my
emotional needs, and I certainly did not make an informed decision. At
no stage did [they] discuss the alternatives, or the procedure, possible
effects or how I felt for that matter ... This wasn’t really counseling
at all, and my guess was it was to satisfy some legal requirement ...
no professional created an opportunity for me to discuss anything,
really ... no one that I came across ever said to me, "Why is this
happening to you, what is wrong, why have you had more than one
abortion, what can we do about it?"
One teenager’s experience of counseling was to be put in a room on her
own with a tape recorder and cassette tape to listen to. Another teen
wrote: "I didn’t really understand what the lady was saying but I just
agreed with basically everything she said." And Jasmine was given a
pamphlet but no counseling:
I was nine weeks pregnant. There was no counseling offered, just a
leaflet telling me that I might feel a little upset, but that it was
hormonal and would pass ...
Laura was asked by the counselor "if this is what I wanted to do. I said
I didn’t know. She said, 'Well, you are here so it must be.'"
Many women expressed feeling desperate for just one person to suggest they pause and think a bit more about the decision.
One woman wrote about her abortion experience as a 31-year-old in 1995:
I told both family and friends that I had become pregnant and not one of
them was at all pleased about it. They said I was "mad" to bring
another child into an already unhappy household ... I didn’t want to go
through with it but I had no support; I felt so alone. The night before
the dreaded abortion I must have cried myself to sleep, holding my
stomach and saying, "I'm so sorry," over and over ...
[The next day a nurse] took some particulars. Although she was very
sympathetic to my very distressed state, she did not ask me to perhaps
think about it a bit more, which, looking back now, was all I wanted
someone to say ... I was allowed to go home a little later in the
afternoon but what I really wanted to do was throw myself off the
nearest bridge ...
I look back now and wish just one person would have said, "If you don’t
want an abortion, don’t do it." Why didn't anyone hear my cries for
help? Why didn't the staff at the hospital not ask me if it was what I
really wanted to do, after they saw me in such a distressed state?
Criticisms were leveled at the state of counseling back in 1985 by Kerry
Peterson, writing in the Australian Journal of Sex, Marriage and
Family:
Two major criticisms can be directed at the present system. First,
abortion counseling is not readily available to all women seeking
abortions; and second, it could be argued that some of the counseling
that is done in the private sector is more concerned with "appearances"
and evidentiary matters than the genuine well-being of the clients ...
counseling should be independent of the abortion service in both the
public and the private sectors.1
The accounts told here suggest there has not been much improvement since
those criticisms were made. The more recent publication, "We Women
Decide," also acknowledged the reality of coercive or judgmental
counseling.
[I]t was surprising and alarming to find that such information [held by
women to be appropriate and helpful] was quite commonly absent or
inadequate ... there were disturbing accounts from some women about the
superficial pre- and post-operative information that was received from
one clinic [sic].2
Unfortunately, superficial information is not the preserve of only one
[abortion business]. Yet it appears that little is being done to change
these practices.
Allowing Women to Explore the Meaning of “The Baby”
The stories related in this book demonstrate that a woman must also be
permitted expression of her desire to reflect on the meaning of the
baby. Many women told me they had tried to do this during pre-abortion
counseling but received curt, dismissive answers: "a scrap of paper," "a
10-cent piece," "just cells," "nothing there."
Sue wrote, "The doctor said, 'Don’t worry, it's not formed till after 12
weeks.' Then I saw the Human Body program [on TV]. I would not have
gone ahead if I’d been told the truth about the formation of the baby."
Feminist Naomi Wolf has written about the trivialization of the
fetus—which she labels the fetus-is-nothing paradigm.3 A New Zealand
woman involved in post-abortion counseling and who has had an abortion
says the fetus is the "F-word" of the abortion establishment.4
Laurel Guymer, a former abortion [business] counselor, was disturbed by
the deception of women who asked for information about their children
after the abortion. She told me:
When the women woke up in recovery they often whispered to me, "Was it a
girl or a boy?" I was instructed to tell them it was too small to know
for sure. But occasionally a woman would ask, "Can I see the fetus?" The
standard line in an abortion setting was "a pregnancy is a bunch of
cells, too early to differentiate" (unlike in IVF, where the women
having miscarriages at earlier stages are told they have lost the
"baby").
But some women insisted on seeing the fetus, so we would check how many
weeks they were and select the appropriate pot off the shelf. None of
the containers had a fetus in them, nothing recognizable to the naked
eye at least. The contents resembled pavlova mixture: egg whites stiffly
beaten, floating in a clear solution. They never saw their own fetus.
It had been discarded ...
For many post-abortive contributors, abortion had a personal moral
dimension not necessarily linked to a religious background. They sought
answers for their moral and spiritual pondering, but the abortion
assessment process did little to facilitate these deeper questions—and
they were not allowed the time.
Genevieve had cancelled two appointments at the abortion site. Before
the next appointment, she spent four hours walking around the place, her
mind battered by conflicting thoughts, incapable of making a decision.
In a submission she forwarded to me, written for a
government-commissioned report, she described trying to express her deep
inner conflict:
I collapsed in sheer exhaustion. I told [the counselor] that I had been
outside for hours. I cried curled over with my head in my hands on my
knees. I said that "I feel like I’m depriving my child of life."
Our conversation was cut short by the doctor. The pressure was on. I
stopped crying in disbelief when the counselor told me that if I was
going to abort then I would have to do it right now. The counselor said,
"Look, I’ll give you five minutes to think about it and when I come
back, I want your answer." I couldn't believe it. Now I was going into a
state of panic and shock. I could now barely speak ... The counselor
glared at me, sighed a deep sigh and impatiently said, "Look, they're
all waiting for you, you know ..." They seemed angry at me. They were
sick of me and in the end I obeyed their commands.
Genevieve’s expression of deep psychic pain—she felt she was "depriving
my child of life"—was dismissed. There was no time for philosophical
ruminations, nothing would be allowed to hold up the process.
Another woman, Lee, also wished in retrospect that others had
facilitated her need to reflect more on what the loss of the baby might
mean to her: "I wish someone had said, 'There would be losses having a
baby, but don't underestimate the loss of having an abortion.'"
~~~
Excerpted from the book Giving Sorrow Words: Women's Stories of Grief
After Abortion, by Melinda Tankard Reist. Copyright 2007 Melinda Tankard
Reist. Reprinted with permission.
Citations
1. Kerry A. Petersen, “Abortion Counseling in Australia,” Australian Journal of Sex, Marriage & Family 6(2): 93-103 (1985).
2. Lyndall Ryan, et. al., We Women Decide: Women’s Experience of Seeking
Abortion in Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania 1985-1992
(Adelaide, Australia: Flinders University, 1994) 123.
3. Naomi Wolf, “Our Bodies, Our Souls,” The New Republic, Oct. 16, 1995, p. 34.
4. Philippa Peck, “Abortion: a woman’s right to refuse.” Unpublished, Aug. 1999.
[http://www.theunchoice.com/articles/deceptivecounselinggsw1.htm ]
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