Pro-Abortion Crowd Silences Women Who Regret Them – The Federalist

Abortion proponents have embraced a drastic shift in messaging over the past few decades. In the 1990s, Bill Clintons safe, legal, and rarewasthe standard line which isa far cry fromtodays well-traveled maxims like Free Abortion on Demand Without Apology and Shout Your Abortion. Indeed, in the heart of abortions most ardent base, the strategy entails encouraging pride over shame and celebration over regret. But does this shift reflect the experiences of those who are disinclined to shout their abortions?

Theresan accusation lurking in the subtext of the abortion debate over abortion regret, implying that no woman should feel bad terminating a pregnancy if it was never suggested that abortion itself is bad. How paternalistic. First, Big Abortion sells women short by suggesting they will never be able to handle both a career and a family, and then they sell them an abortion. And now, abortion zealots make themselves the masters of how women must feel about it.

The pro-life movement at large has consistently perceived two victims in an abortion scenario a child whose life is on the line, and a mother who is vulnerable toan industry that profits from violence and deceit. Those sellingabortionmust sever the one-of-a-kind physical relationship between mother and gestating child through abortion lethal pregnancy violence that will be painfully understood by a mother when she finds herself empty of life.

Widespread abortion regret issupported by data, yet seldom reported.Thephysical and psychologicalrisks of abortion are well known to those of us who support post-abortive women.New studieshave shown that women who have abortions are 81 percent more likely to experiencesubsequentmental health problems. This includes being110 percentmore likely to abuse alcohol and 115 percent more likely to develop suicidal behavior following abortion. Another study notes women who ended their first pregnancy by abortion arefive times more likelyto reportsubsequentsubstance abuse than women who carried the pregnancy to term and four times more likely to report substance abuse compared to those whose first pregnancy ended naturally.

But the bestsource for understanding abortion regret is the women who have experienced it firsthand.Consider an entire legionof both men and women who were traumatized by abortion yet feel unwelcome in the Shout Your Abortion era.

For every handful of celebrities shouting their abortions,theresone who courageously goes against the abortion-loving mob to tell a different truth. In 2015, Nicki Minajsaid in an interviewthat her high school abortion has haunted her all her life. Eminems 2017 song Riverputson full display his abortion regret as a father. In 2020, Kanye Westbroke down in publicwhile explaining how much pain he suffers for even considering aborting his daughter, North, as well as his wrestling with the knowledge that he himself was almost aborted.

From our own work at Students for Life of AmericasStanding with You program. We know that women struggle for years to grapple with the loss of their child through abortion or the fallout of abortion fathers and families experience. Healing ministries likeProject Rachel,Rachels Vineyard, andSupport After Abortion exist to offer loving care to those experiencing grief.

But the second flaw in the argument against the realities of abortion regret is in who is making it.Consider that those encouraging the celebration of abortion are also in the abortion business. This is further evidenced by the fact that a disproportionate number ofabortionresearchers are funded by pro-abortion entities.

If, for example, the everyone loves abortion research comes from the Bixby Centerat the University of California(asitoften does),itshighly relevant that the Center is funded and organized to find in favor of abortion.The Bixby Centertrains abortionists through itsRyan Residency Training Programand is funded by population control-loving Warren Buffett, along with Planned Parenthood and their Guttmacher Institute andGynuity Health Projects, which profits from chemical abortion sales and so on.The Bixby Center is as unbiased on abortion as The Tobacco Instituteis on cigarettes.

Even worse than the clear and present bias in abortion data is the audacity of those blaming pro-lifers for abortion regret to cite TheTurnawayStudy, which isfamously so flawedthat a Planned Parenthood exec could drive their Lamborghini through the holes in its reasoning.

The studywas published in 2015 by the abortion group ANSIRH and, in simplest terms, is an attempt to dismiss the trauma and long-standing pain many women feel following an abortion. It tries to conclude that women are hurt by being denied an abortion, but as explored at lengthby Live Action,Turnawayhas four glaring problems: a bad study sample, no true control group, a lackluster assessment of physical health, and misleading questions.

The study tracks only a small number of women fewer than 200 who were denied abortions. Additionally, the results were only presented at an academic conference. This data has not appeared in an academic journal nor gone through the peer-review process. Finally, the study and the full results do not appear to be publicly available. Thus, despite shamefully poor research practices and an utter failure to prove the claim it set out to, that womendontregret abortion,itsstill propped up Weekend at Bernies style by abortion proponents.

Furthermore, these women were denied abortions not because of legal restrictions, but because many facilities do not carry out late-term abortions.

Itsfascinating that a movement once sold as pro-choice refuses to allow women the freedom to feel loss after receiving an abortion.Every parent who made an abortion decision, from the main streets of pro-life communities to the pro-abortion hills of Hollywood, deserves the freedom to be honest about their experience. And for those who want to process those feelings, the pro-life community is heretohelp.

Working mother Brenna Lewis is a staff writer with Students for Life of America.

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Pro-Abortion Crowd Silences Women Who Regret Them - The Federalist