Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

 On September 14^th, Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders addressed the students at Liberty University. He focused on issues that he felt they agreed on, but a question on abortion was brought up by one of the students. It is no secret that Sanders is extremely proabortion, even unwilling to ban late term abortion. Here is his response to the student: 

"My view is I respect absolutely a family that says no we are not going to have an abortion," Sanders said, recognizing that "this is an area" where his view would not match his audience's. "I would hope that other people respect the very painful and difficult choice that many women feel they have to make and don't want the government telling them what they have to do."

My first thought was, here it is again, the false assumption that most women freely choose abortion. True, women do not want the government telling them what to do, but neither do they want, boyfriends, parents, husbands, jobs, or school situations telling them what to do, but it happens all the time and no one is concerned about it. Countless numbers of women are coerced daily to have an abortion, but the bullying they go through is never an issue with the supposed "free choice” crowd.

Take Mary, who had suffered from post partum depression. When she found herself pregnant again, her husband told her she would have to abort or he would leave her. Imagine the pressure. The thought of being a single parent with a young child frightened her and she caved in to her husband's demands. It took decades for Mary to find the help she needed to heal.

Or how about the call I received recently from a woman who had just undergone a late term abortion. As she described it, she "caved in" because her boyfriend kept telling her how she was ruining his life by having the baby. She is now filled with regret and wonders how she could have allowed the abortion to happen.

I myself personally know coercion, having been kicked out of the house as a teen by my dad and abandoned. Everything I knew was taken from me until I agreed to abortion.  I felt I had no choice. I am far from alone.

Or how about the student, who can easily get support from her campus to procure an abortion, but finds no resources are available to her if she chooses to have her child and continue to study.

Let’s make it clear Mr. Sanders, and the rest of you who claim abortion is a women’s choice – we all would hope that other people respect the very painful and difficult choice that many women feel they have to make and don't want the government telling them what they have to do, but we also wish you would respect and take action regarding the countless coerced abortions that happen everyday in our country giving women no choice. Those women matter too.