This is the final blog post in the series about abortion. The opinions and the research contained in this post–as in the previous two on the subject–were ignited in the present author by his writing in his most recent work: The Trojan Horse in the Belly of the Beast Trilogy, and by his young friend who wrote passionately and articulately from the point of view of a sensitive religious girl who places transcendent value on human life.
My young friend concluded that—beyond the unconscionable taking of nearly 56 million lives of unborn human beings—there is very significant personal and societal damage wrought by abortion, especially as practiced on a wanton and wholesale basis as has come to be the norm throughout the world as of 2014.
Rape and incest aside, unwanted pregnancy is not a condition forced upon a woman or girl. The choice to give in to sexual urges is elective, and so is the decision to carry the pregnancy to term. There are alternatives to abortion, very much viable and valuable ones. Hundreds of thousands of couples yearn for and would be altogether willing to adopt the unwanted baby, would willing bear the financial burden of the pregnancy and delivery, as well as the subsequent costs of caring for the baby. Our society would likely benefit from a sea change of attitude towards responsibility: actions have consequences. Pregnancy is the result of sex. A baby can become the precious family member of parents willing to accept the costs. A girl can go through the pregnancy and delivery; countless millions have done so successfully. Her life, to say nothing of the baby’s can proceed with little inconvenience by having the baby adopted instead of killed. She can get on with her budding educational, career, and social life. The regrets and emotional scars of having borne an unwanted infant can fade nearly to nil; while, for many the psychological effect of having been responsible for the killing of her baby never fades away. Besides, a significant number or abortions are performed on women pregnant by their legal husband or their long-term significant other. Would it really be a great wrong to make a societal turn to include taking responsibility and making a nonlethal decision?
Furthermore, contraception is readily available, effective, and cheap. The one gratifying statistic in the mix about teenage pregnancy, unloved babies, and the personal and social upheaval that surrounds unwanted pregnancies is that there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of teenage pregnancies. Girls are having less illicit sex, developing fewer STDs, using contraception more frequently when they do have sex, having fewer abortions, and having fewer pregnancies every year—a very significant reduction over the past two decades. Society’s costs for unwanted babies who are born into a situation of poverty and single parenthood are declining.
Persistent regret and psychological scarring resulting from the decision to have an abortion is significant and damaging. Depression, drug abuse, and failed marriages with all of their negative societal impact and cost are a drain on all taxpayers and caregivers. The Guttmatcher Institute, 2010, stated, “82% [of women after having abortions] had greater feelings of loneliness or isolation. 75% had less self-confidence; 63% [lived with hampering] denial…The average period of denial that the reported was 5.25 years.”
“92% of women have emotional deadening…a need to stifle their emotions. 86% [reported] increased tendency toward anger or rage. 48% reported that they became more violent when angered. 86% [expressed] a fear of others learning of the abortion or a greater sense of fear for unknown reasons. 58% suffer from insomnia or nightmares. 57% had greater difficulty in maintaining or developing relationships. 56% had suicidal feelings. 53% increased or began use of drugs or alcohol. 39% had eating disorders which began after abortion. And 23% attempted suicide. [C. Ruse, 2014]. Ruse went on to report that significant numbers of women are speaking out about the fact that abortion was not an act of empowerment for them but rather the result of abandonment, betrayal, and desperation, and that having an abortion negatively impacted and truncated their lives. Many described lives of promiscuity, chemical abuse, impairment of formation and maintenance of relationship, or bonding with future children. According to UNICEF in 2012, 6.6 million children in the world died before their fifth birthday, most of them related to maltreatment and neglect. Abortion has made a contribution to that lessening of sympathy for the defenseless. 2,300 people in the U.S. have died at the hands of physicians upon request as physician-assisted euthanasia, and 1,040 have died from involuntary euthanasia, further indication of the diminution of regard for human life.
Not only women and society suffer from the effects of the abortion fad. Men who pressure the mother of their child to submit to an abortion often later report that they have violated a fundamental part of a man’s nature—that of defending and protective his woman and his child. For society and the family, this impact on men has been shown to cause less restraint for inflicting violence against women and others and child abuse. Rates of domestic violence and child abuse have risen fairly dramatically since the decriminalization of abortion. Granted, abortion is only one of many associated elements of the decline of civilized behavior over the past several decades, but it is difficult to deny the watershed point of Roe v. Wade in 1973.
Induced abortions are associated with a markedly elevated incidence of pregnancy and delivery complications for which our society pays a hefty financial as well as human price. The complications are those associated with pre-term birth: premature rupture of the uterine membranes, hemorrhage, postpartum cervical and uterine abnormalities and the attendant risk of future infertility and difficulty with carrying out successful desired pregnancies. Abortion in younger girls, often for the purpose of postponing parenthood to a later age, results in an increased incidence of infertility, fetal deformities, and premature deliveries associated with aging in the woman. 400 women are reported to have died from legal abortions in certified clinics and hospitals in the U.S. since 1973.
Planned Parenthood, the greatest purveyor of abortion, admits that the short-term risks of abortion are undisputed: blood loss, blood clots, incomplete abortions requiring return hospitalizations with the attendant financial drain on the public purse, pelvic inflammatory disease and infection, and injury to the cervix and the uterus—including lacerations and incompetent uterus–with the long-term risk of miscarriage of wanted pregnancies.
The most egregious forms of abortion shock the consciousness of even the most jaded body politic. Full-term abortion, even abortion after the head of the baby has crowned or has been delivered are permitted by law but nonetheless disturb even pro-abortion enthusiasts. Abortion clinics have been convicted of selling babies’ body parts to medical researchers; a Philadelphia abortionist was charged in the deaths—the outright murders—of babies delivered alive in failed abortion attempts. Physicians in a prominent Chicago hospital determined that they had been aborting healthy infants and infants with non-fatal deformities, and that many of these babies lived for hours after birth. [A. Hawkins, 2012]. They further concluded that no efforts were made to determine if any of them could have survived with appropriate medical assistance. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, is quoted as saying, “The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” A great many thinking Americans would disagree and would recoil from its implications if the news and the media were to publicize that attitude that furthers the massive and expensive abortion industry. Nevertheless, in 2012, researchers found that, “86% of all abortions are done for the sake of convenience.” [Michael]
New Zealand, with its high rate of abortion has suffered direct consequences. The nation needs between 30 and 40 thousand immigrants to maintain the status quo and will shortly have an inadequate working class to support its population. This will force the aging class to work longer and to live with less financial security. According to a report, Impact of Abortion on Society, 2011, in the year 1999, there were 15,501 abortions in the country with a small population. The result seen in 2005 was that 574 classes of 27 children would not need teachers; 15,501 school uniforms would not need to be made and a similar number of other clothing would not be required; 62,000 pairs of shoes will not be needed; 19 million food packets will not need to be produced for schools; $620,000 worth of school stationery will not be purchased; $1-1.5 million worth of school fees will go unpaid; $1 million worth of toys will not be purchased or used. On the obverse side of that coin, if abortion had not become rampant after 1973, more than 17 million New Zealanders would not be employed resulting in $400 billion entering the economy from those workers and $58 million contributed to the social welfare safety net programs for the aging population. Upwards of 400 million babies have been aborted who could have eventually contributed to the robustness of the New Zealand economy which is now in a state of what appears to be a slow but inevitable decline.
It is sobering to realize that high fertility cultures such as Muslims are now tipping the balance of culture in Europe and Asia with attendant increases in rates of poverty and government dependent citizens because nonMuslims cannot maintain the 2.1 children per family required to maintain a stable national population and a culture. This is especially true of Southern and Eastern Europe. In the United States, the birth rate is 2.0, and many of those births are occurring among illegal immigrants.