Anne Lastman–

Abortion in our day has become a word which evokes little response and moves fewer individuals to respond. It has become so “normal” that it’s even used for other meanings (e.g. he flight was aborted) except for what it truly means and that is the killing of an in-utero baby. 

Today (Thursday) one of the reports emerging from USA, that an OBGYN Professor, Karysse Trandem, who said regarding abortion, “It harms women, it’s not necessary for their health.” Many times, these words have been said but little notice is taken because the words have not become a mantra. They are the educated words of one who is a professional in her area of work, women’s health, Someone who does know about women’s health and who sees decisions made against the design of her body cause much long term and at times lifelong pain.  According to WHO over 70 million abortions are performed every year, and this represents over 70,000,000 human beings killed. 70,000,000 mothers and fathers whose design has been damaged, and this represents especially a substantial number of women suffering a grief like no other. 

There has been so much research into abortion and its effects in the last 25 years and still the pro-abortion cabal continues calling for more abortion freedoms. More demands, more need to push the gestational period further and further till post birth abortion has now become a reality. Imagine the intentional killing of a child who is capable of survival. Who would grow to become another creature being worthy of the name human. 

A further terrible irony is that the leader of the Western world, Mr Biden who professes Catholicism, attends liturgy regularly, and at same time calls for abortions and more funds allotted more abortion facilities and providers and wants to ensure that this occurs throughout his nation and will fund other nations to do same. This, it seems is his understanding of his catholic faith, one which he believes offers sacrifice to Molech.

He uses his “religion” to be a sign that his catholic beliefs do not matter to him, and that the faith of his citizens should not prevent them from killing their children. Perhaps it’s not so surprising that the state of USA is as it is.  “the land of the free and the brave?” “free” “brave” for who? The children?

It’s an appalling state of affairs when world leaders become involved in such matters when elected and make promises to govern for all but once in office the mandate changes to become governor in chief of those who think alike. The governance promised to be beneficial for all of its citizens and not to become the leader who encourages and pays for the death of the tiniest and most vulnerable citizens. 

Tragically his assistant Kamala Harris is reputedly a strong Christian (Baptist) woman also sees and demands abortion to full term because “it’s a woman’s right and it’s really a health issue and it should be made available to all and in the reach of all, poor and wealthy, very young or older, without restrictions, colour, religion or otherwise.”  So long as it’s for abortion, or the killing of in-utero infants, these two so called leaders have no issues, difficulties, or breach of morality with it.

When we follow the money trail it’s possible to see that huge amounts of dollars are made available for the killing of infants.  The millions donated by wealthy supporters, feminists who have a hidden agenda and demand abortion. Activists who protest their right to abortion at all costs, males who demand abortions for their female partners, so they are not responsible for future child support. And the list of pro-abortion activists who are easily able to assist in achieving their stated aims, that is, kill as many babies as possible. Kill babies. Kill their mother’s spirit. Kill their mother’s innocence. Kill their father’s sense of manhood. “As a woman it’s my right to an abortion. It’s my body” says their mantra. “take your rosaries of my ovaries” is another mantra directed at Catholic pro-lifers.  “It’s my body my choice” is another mantra of the pro-choice group.  

This goes on even though research has found that abortion is very harmful to women and indeed lifelong harm with effects like, substance abuses, sterility, promiscuity, suicide and suicide ideation, addictions, self-harm relationship difficulties, guilt, and inability to look and hold other babies etc.  

Yet these and other harmful effects are not brought to the attention of society.  Intentionally there is a media blackout on the aftereffects of abortion and indeed the very term abortion has slowly been changed from abortion to more sanitised “termination”, “TOP” “curettage” “product of conception” and other health sounding but innocuous terminology so that when used there is no image brought to mind. Baby has an image. “we are going to kill your three-month baby. This immediately brings to mind pregnancy. Nearly every woman, female has known someone who has been pregnant, and the terms used especially when a baby is wanted.  They have heard “my baby is this big” “we don’t mind of it’s a boy, girl” The words which are heard are “baby” and “boy or girl” Image and a quite excitement about “boy/girl”.

In past research it was found that abortion will interfere with a woman’s preparation and anticipation of the next pregnancy and feel anguish, anxiety, fearful. And further, that previous abortion interferes with the bonding between mother and her new baby/babies.

A plethora of studies have shown that abortion causes psychological sequelae. And it’s more damaging to women than presently indicated.  Abortion is and remains a disenfranchised grief.  A grief which still, in 21^st century, whilst open spoken about demanded, accepted, still (except for a few radical feminists who protest) remains a silent word. A silent no go to place. It is and remains a taboo topic and whilst demanded it’s out of the range of normal topics for discussion in what we might call “normal” families, friendship circles.

It has been acknowledged that the sudden realisation that abortion has meant the death of her baby threatens the individual’s idea of their own self-worth.  One’s own idea that the world which had been a good place suddenly is no longer good.  Not because the world has changed but because the woman’s sense of her being duped and violated with wrong information and wrong decision has coloured her world with lies. Even realises that those who should have helped her have not done so. The impact of such a realisation complicates her grief further which is due to the human element aspect of the stressor, that is the intentional decision by the woman to proceed with the abortion. One of the most important elements of grief are the rituals which accompany death, and with abortion, as with miscarriage, (though not still birth because funerals can be done) the grief rituals for an aborted baby are not available to the grieving individual whether male or female. No body to see and hold and say goodbye to. (similar to suicide) .  Rituals which every society has developed in order to begin the grieving process and ensure that psychological health even in grieving is assured. A sign that they are not alone, and the dead one is not alone at the beginning of its journey, that they do not remain alone. That a whole community, family, friends are there to walk with them in all manner of times, as needed.  Absence of rituals contribute to complicated grief.  A grief which seems to never be able to resolve and recover from. Rituals are also important because they assist the one bereaved to mourn with others but then slowly then emerge and begin to re-enter life, though not forgetting and breaking bonds.

An abortive woman especially when no one knows about her abortion, will not receive the support she needs because of shame, fear, regret, abandonment, and her pain remains unrecognised as hurting, unacknowledged, and by its very nature will not have the supporters that other types of grievers will have. In this isolation, aloneness, horror at her own action the suicide ideation will begin.  The depression will begin, and she will begin to experience thoughts of being with her baby who “needs me.” These thoughts about ending it so all pain goes away and going to be with my baby, are not the words which activists and media, and professionals and climate change activists, and population control population controls enthusiasts want to reach the “normal, average” female population.  They do not care whether self-harm happens, or whether a suicide occurs, their intention has been achieved.

This kind of trauma and grief does not provoke widespread interest in the mental health of an abortive woman once the aim has been achieved.  The importance is that it has been achieved and if in the midst of it another activist (anger at all abortion supporters who didn’t help her) has been secured then all the better.

Clinical depression appears to have increased within our community and in studies reported in the British Medical Journal, it was found that women who abort a first pregnancy are at greater risk of developing long term clinical depression compared to women who carry through the pregnancy with even an unintended pregnancy.   Other researchers who also studied the effects of abortion have also found that long term grief has serious reaction. Depression, to anger-guilt, fear of discovery, preoccupation with her dead child and fear of other children, low self-esteem, PTSD symptoms, flashbacks, mood disorders, uncontrollable sadness, substance abuse.

It has been argued that controlled and wanted pregnancies will mean that no unwanted child, battered, abused, neglected, or psychologically abandoned children will be born.    Yet the reality is that there is no evidence to support this.  However, there is evidence that child abuse is increasing. It has also been found that the types of child abuse has increased and doubled over the past 12-year period.  Child abuse is the result of many factors, however one of these factors is poor bonding between mother and infant. The bonding process may be disturbed by a number of factors including postpartum depression, and further those women who have had previously undergone an abortion procedure became depressed and unsure during the next wanted pregnancy. Imagery of the past baby haunt her.  What might “he/she been like?”  As er pregnancy proceeds further her memory of the aborted child becomes stronger and post birth of her wanted child, she has a stronger memory of the other.  One client said “every time I breast fed my baby another face superimposed itself over his. I couldn’t feed him anymore” A woman with the first child after her abortion.

 For many women an abortion may represent the loss of a future child, of motherhood, and part of self and it may engender doubts regarding her ability to have and mother other children and research found that parental response to loss can engender a fear of punishment (God)and loss of future pregnancies or even being able to to carry another child to full term.

The degree of support for one who has the experience of abortion and found it to be a difficult one but is supported by family, friends, goes only a small way but is a significant factor in the healing process However absence of support adds substantially more grief to an already traumatised individual.  Disenfranchised grief is this because it’s a grief which cannot ever be discussed. 

Abortive traumatised women live within a societal context which is not necessarily negative but ambivalent and as such remain part of a group of traumatised but not recognised as s such.  This is because their experience and subsequent needs are not identified as those of someone who has been exposed to suffering because abortion is not now conceded as something which causes suffering.  However, even the DSM 5 states that suffering is deeper when there is present the intentional factor. With an abortion there is the intentional factor.   Abortion, a stressor outside of the normal day-to-day experiences is a contributing factor in the decline in mental health of women, and because of its legality has found little support and attention by governments all around the world and intervention strategies not even considered as necessary even though depression and other harms amongst women have been acknowledged. 

Abortion is found not to be a safe procedure either physically, psychologically or spiritually, and indeed it appears a dangerous procedure to women, men, children, and society. Encouraging health professionals and those in clinical practice to inform female patients presenting for abortion about the possibility of post abortion trauma, psychosis, grief, is very important,  and assistance in the training of health professionals how to be able to see the effects of abortion  would go a long way towards helping those who have chosen a path, even at first intentionally which has led to much pain, confusion and sorrow ,and remove from abortion the legitimacy which has been accorded by those who really have no care for women and babies, or the future.  Those who have no care for life. The global government legitimacy has done nothing to safeguard their future citizens and their country’s future. Because of the legitimacy accorded to abortion and its effects in their laws. 

 The abortion decision is always situation specific, but a human person’s conscience is not, and the conscience with maturity suffers as a result of a decision made or forced at a time of vulnerability.   The difficulties which are encountered or considered as difficulties and therefore requiring abortion as a solution, will not be thought of same in a future and different time.  However, the decision once made cannot be reversed, and the anguish, regret, self-unforgiveness ensures that we have a society of men and women hurting. A canopy of grief seems to overshadow all of us. Its reported to us the deaths, murders, wars, natural disasters, to our knowledge hundreds of millions of aborted babies we only know a culture mired with death. And it cannot be left this way otherwise the gates to Eden have been shut close again and a certain sacrifice might be seen in vain and of course this cannot be so.  

My reason for this reflection and knowledge about abortion and its aftereffects results from an encounter with a pro abortion activist who would not take enough breath to allow me to speak.  As a post abortion grief counsellor with 30 years’ experience, I have encountered all the above-mentioned aftereffects and more, and at times its seemed to be as a useless work because there will be more and more wounded women and men as laws keep changing to embrace the offerings to Molech.  Woman has changed and no longer respects her beautiful charism, as life bearer, and life becomes faster and more hedonistic we can only hope and pray that the Lord intervenes in his own way and time.  However, its important, like that OBGYN from USA which I started this with, that the most important intercessors both spiritual and in person are those in medical and mental health and healing charisms These must intervene, like the pro aborts, who are not fearful in their demands.  We pro-lifers must also do the same not be fearful of being prolife, pro woman, pro man, pro children, pro-family.  It’s our honour to be called to do this work. “Be not afraid,” said Jesus. “I go before you always”.