Guide to Informed Choices
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or not that is directly because of industry or, er, animal flatulence — or simply a natural cycle influenced by sunspots — is a matter of contention among scientists. Even J Y
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if the global warming alarmists are correct and carbon dioxide is responsible for these changes, you might be surprised if I told you that volcanoes and animals, er, passing gas release far more carbon dioxide than humans ever could. I know that‘s hard to believe, especially since it‘s not politically correct at the moment, but do yourself a favor — go look it up. 1069
Reason #79 ―Population isn‘t really
exploding and people aren‘t really the cause of our problems‖ Reason #80 Abortion is a betrayal of women
Women are natural born nurturers The female body with its baby-producing organs was not designed by a conspiracy of men but by the Divine Architect of the human race. 1070
—Phyllis Schlafly, conservative political activist
s women, we instinctively nurture — whether each other, our children, pets, boyfriend, even our plants! Female strength is not out-dated or old-fashioned. It‘s who we are. There is nothing weak or shameful in being motherly. The essence of the mother is nurturing, protecting, caring — and this essence is within each one. To go against this true nature causes, ultimately, suffering and loss. But to fulfill our true nature, to love the divine design with which we were made, this brings joy and growth and happiness. Men can never achieve the power or experience the miracles of creative forces that occur in our very own body each time we are pregnant. Some argue that it is A
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women who have the real advantage. While we can continue the human race, men have to keep up by achieving symbolical accomplishment in the material world, creating ‗things‘ and building ‗things‘. 1071
Quotable Quote ―Our trouble is not our womanhood...if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory.‖ 1072
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, early feminist
birthed, protected, fed and raised their children. That is, until abortion started eroding our female sensitivity to life and our pride and faith in our abilities as a woman. We are the most powerful nurturers on the planet, yet abortion is corroding our sensitivity to life. As Post Abortion Counselor Anne Lastman wrote, ―Women were and are not designed to harm their children; they are designed to protect, to nurture and to love their baby. Had this not been the case humanity would have ceased to exist a long time ago.‖ 1073
Notice the difference… Abortion tunes you into other people‘s wishes, society‘s expectations or your own wants. On the other hand, protecting your child opens up your connection with God, Life, your life- giving body, your intuitive motherly abilities and a chance to grow as a person.
Abortion is the perversion of our female nature Jesus turned and said to them, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‗Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!‘‖ —Luke 23: 28-29
f you agree with the point I just made, that we are born nurturers, then perhaps you can also see that submitting ourselves to perversions of that nature can also be harmful. For Martha Wenger, the procedure changed her emotionally: The whole procedure toughened me; I became a tough person. It was like, ―I don‘t need anybody. Leave me alone and it won‘t I
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hurt.‖ I became hateful. I got to where ―I‘ll make it alone‖ was how I lived. I had no compassion. 1074
is where many pro-choicers are coming from, especially the angry ones. They are coming from hurt, and it is a self-defense mechanism. Let us not allow judgment or bitterness towards them but only love and kindness. I was also reminded of the words from Anne Lastman, a post-abortion counselor who herself has also had an abortion: It is difficult to imagine that a woman, who is designed by God to be a life-giving and nurturing being, can agree to the abortion process which is a medical violence. Yet hundreds of millions or even billions of women have done so since the 1960s, thus not only breaking the invisible bond of love between herself and her offspring, reshaping negatively her feminine design, but in the process she has diminished her own sense of self respect. Her own feminine genius. Her woman- hood. And she has wounded deeply her emotional and spiritual self. We must realize that with the termination of the human life in her womb, a part of her womanhood, a part of herself is also terminated, and the person after the ordeal of the abortion is no longer the person she was before. There has been a deep loss now etched into her being. It is almost as if two whole human beings have died on the operating table, one physically and one spiritually and emotionally. 1075
Trying to be like men — is that the best we can hope for? In my opinion, as long as the family and the myth of the family and the myth of maternity and the maternal instinct are not destroyed, women
will still
be oppressed. 1076
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ave you ever noticed that strange thing about some people? In order to help us be more successful women, they try to make us like men! Now, I would have thought that since we are already perfect in our own right we had no need to imitate men. Let‘s face it; we don‘t make good men, anyway! Being women is what we do best — and you know what, men make pretty poor females! What does this have to do with abortion, you ask? Radical feminism tells us that our feminine abilities are in fact a bondage. Until we can free ourselves of our unwanted babies we will not be free like men. We will not be free to engage in casual sex with no consequences, for example. Yet, to be treated fairly and H
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equally does not require that we copy men! We are told that women will not be equal until we can rise up the career ladder and get paid as much as men who work those jobs. After all, don‘t we also want to spend our entire lives working late nights for our boss? In order to do this, a woman has to sacrifice her childbearing years to progress, delay childbearing, if it comes at an inconvenient time, disrupt it. Sometimes that disruption of pregnancy is no choice but one demanded by the woman‘s employer, that is, if she expects to continue there and accept that promotion. And this is liberation? Truly, how many of us at the end of our life will say, ―You know, I just regret that I didn‘t spend more time at the office‖? More likely we will regret moments not spent with those closest to our heart, our own family and friends. It is their goal to make women as emotionally and financially independent as men, whether that means aborting their children in the womb or sending them straight off to government-run day care as soon as they are born. 1077 While I‘m all for independence and equality, the point is, we don‘t need to act like men to deserve respect and equality. When we terminate our children we are only stabbing ourselves in the back and setting ourselves up for future heartache. We were not designed to kill. ―Abortion killed a part of me‖ mpty. Numb. Dead. These are all words that women have used to describe themselves following an abortion. You see, abortion does not just kill the developing baby; it kills a part of the mother too.
For NancyJo Mann the abortion took two victims: I was never the same again. The abortion killed not only my daughter; it killed a part of me. 1078
our self. In the words of Oscar Hammling, ―We die ourselves a little every time we kill in others something that deserved to live.‖
1079 Truly we are all connected, and who greater, than a woman and her child?
A year after Maria‘s abortion she wrote to me: I cannot look at babies or pregnant women without dying a little inside. I feel like I will always be missing a piece of me.
Sixteeen-year-old Christy also told me of her empty feelings: The relationship with my parents, well, it's love-hate. I have mood changes where I HATE them for killing part of me, but then E
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I love them, they're my parents. If I could live it over, I would have had my baby. I hate myself, I've tried to kill myself various times, but that didn't work either. I know it would have been difficult to have my baby, but this feeling of emptiness that I have to live with every day is worse than anything I've ever felt.
This is perhaps one of the more tragic comments I have come across — one that saddens me and makes me mad. This girl was lied to. She was not told of the possible regret. The truth was kept from her. She could have avoided this regret.
A post-abortion counselor in Australia whose newsletter I receive reports that she often gets comments like these: ―After the abortion I felt empty — it was as if something was taken from me and it left a big space.‖ ―I can‘t seem to fill that space with anything.‖ 1080
The emptiness of abortion is evidence that there is something wrong with it. Abortion is an act that goes against the nature of women. You see, we are not designed to kill but give life. That‘s why it is so self-destructive.
As Becky wrote to me, Abortion destroys you from the inside out.
Our child lives in us and we live in them. To kill them is to kill ourselves, at least in part. We are all part of the web of life — what harms another, harms ourselves. Abortion kills your flesh and blood, developing baby — even if you don‘t acknowledge it like that. Do you imagine this would not affect you at all?
I want to close with the words Stephanie wrote to me, A part of me died that day and I just hope another woman will never have to feel that too.
Reason #80 ―Abortion goes against our nature as women‖
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Reason #81 Abortion after rape is a double tragedy
Pregnancy after rape uncommon Pro-Choice study confirms abortion cases after rape are few A study by the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute reported that rape was a factor in choosing abortion 1% of the time and in <0.5% of cases rape was the main reason.
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irst of all, before we discuss it, let‘s just put this ‗hard case‘ into perspective. Pregnancy after rape does happen, but not as much as you‘d think. In fact, one study found that you have more chance of being raped when pregnant than being raped and getting pregnant! 1082
The trauma of rape can throw off a woman‘s
ovulation as
well as
implantation and pregnancy.
The woman may not be fertile due to time of the month, her current use of temporary or permanent birth control, infertility problems, being too young or old to get pregnant or be already pregnant.
dysfunction. 1083
Strange, huh?
Abortion like rape for some women o some women an abortion may feel like rape. It may be experienced as a violent penetration or as something unwanted. After undergoing an unwanted but agreed upon abortion, Wendy wrote to me: It was like being "raped." I was doing something I so didn't want to be doing. Sabrina also experienced her abortion as a raping of her body: The abortionist doctor never said a word to me. He first invaded my body by giving me a shot to numb my uterus; he then intruded further, before the numbing took effect. The pain was unbearable… Having an abortion caused me to feel worthless, and I carried a heavy burden of guilt and shame for a very long time. I felt violated by the abortionist doctor, who invaded my body with foreign objects. The dignity of my motherhood and being a woman was stolen from me all at once. And my baby was dead! F T
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Perhaps you are thinking: these were not fair comparisons; these women had never been raped. Well, what about the next two stories then? Denise has had firsthand experience of both rape and abortion. Raped at the tender age of 13, she later had two abortions. She compares her abortion to a second rape: This time I went to an abortion clinic and went through the most horrifying experience in my life. Searing pain, like no other, cut through my abdomen like hot knives on fire... I cried and begged the doctor to stop — he wouldn't. It felt like I was being raped again! When it was over, the nurse slapped a pad between my legs, and I curled up into a fetal position, and could not talk... I went into some kind of shock.
―It felt like I was being raped again!‖
One dear lady who wrote to me her sad story tells about her rape and the forced abortions that followed… Her beautiful name — Hope. My story starts out as a sad one. First, let me tell you a little about me. My name is Hope and I am 33. I am divorced and have no living children. As a child, I was sexually abused by five men in my family. It started at a young age and continued into my teenage years. At the age of 12, as the incest continued, I found myself pregnant. I DID NOT have a choice; I was COMPLETELY
forced to have an abortion. From personal experience, I know how it feels to be violated, lonely, used, dirty, dead (inside), hurt, and pain. Often a girl covers for the abuser because she is afraid of losing (the person that she is led to believe) is the ONLY person
who really "loves" her. She may be told that if she tells, either no one will believe her or that she is a bad girl. I was made to believe that I could only be loved through sex. I was afraid of losing my father's love, and I was led to believe that he loved me and that if I ever told anyone, no one would believe me anyhow. I was told that I was doing the right thing because a baby should not come into the world if it was the product of incest or rape. I wasn‘t told that it would feel like a part of me was being "sucked" out of my body... like my whole entire soul was being taken from me! …I was 6½ weeks along and just couldn't even
fathom.... a teen pregnancy, which was the product of incest and rape. I experienced depression, sadness, guilt, anger, hurt, and pain after the abortion. The abuse did not end there and at the
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age of 15, I ended up pregnant again and had to have another abortion, against my choice. The next two pages of her story detail Hope‘s struggles to conceive and carry a healthy pregnancy, her 12 miscarriages (yes, you read that right), two failed marriages, a broken relationship and weight issues. The abortions following incest did nothing to improve Hope‘s situation or future. She was never asked what she wanted. Just like rape, abortion leaves scars. Physical scars. Emotional scars. Mental scars. Abortion is a form of violence against women.
right Every time I look at Phoebe, I know I made the right decision. I never wanted to end my baby's life just because of how she came to be. 1084
—19-year-old Elizabeth Cameron, mother and former rape victim
want to start by saying that rape is a truly horrible crime. It is a violation of a woman‘s body. It is violent. Rape is executed without permission from women. It is an abuse of power by one physically stronger. It is so wrong and I am totally for rapists receiving the appropriate penalties under law. As you know, I am also against abortion. It is also a violation of another body — this time the unborn child‘s. It is violent. Abortion is executed without permission from the unborn child. It is an abuse of power by those bigger and stronger. Rape is wrong and the perpetrator should be penalized for his crime. He is the one who should be given the sentence. Rape is a crime, but that doesn‘t make the child produced from it a criminal. After all, it was not the child‘s fault that he was conceived in rape. We all acknowledge that there are trying circumstances in life. The question is, is killing a valid way out of this or any situation? Abortion does not suddenly stop being the termination of human life simply because the pregnancy scenario changes. Whatever circumstances of a child‘s conception, he or she is still human, still has feelings and is still precious in God‘s sight. Abortion still ends a child‘s life, whether rape is involved in conception or not.
Rape is a wrong and a violation of rights.
rights.
Two wrongs don‘t make a right. I
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