Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

Here is the text:

"The secret world of illegal abortion was mostly frightening and expensive. Although there were skilled and dedicated laywomen and doctors who performed safe, illegal abortions, most illegal abortionists, doctors, and those who claimed to be doctors cared only about being well rewarded for their trouble. In the 1960s, abortionists often turned women away if they could not pay $1,000 or more in cash. Some male abortionists insisted on having sexual relations before the abortion.

Abortionists emphasized speed and their own protection. They often didn't use anesthesia because it took too long for women to recover, and they wanted women out of the office as quickly as possible. Some abortionists were rough and sadistic. Almost no one took adequate precautions against hemorrhage or infection.

Typically, the abortionist would forbid the woman to contact him or her again. Often she wouldn't know his or her real name. If a complication occurred, harassment by the law was a frightening possibility. The need for secrecy isolated women having abortions and those providing them.

In the 1950s, about a million illegal abortions a year were performed in the U.S., and over a thousand women died each year as a result. Women who were victims of botched or unsanitary abortions came in desperation to hospital emergency wards, where some died of widespread abdominal infections. Many women who recovered from such infections found themselves sterile or chronically and painfully ill. The enormous emotional stress often lasted a long time."

Sadly, working for over twenty years in postabortion ministry, I have met women who were sexually abused by an abortionist.  As evidenced by Gosnell, there are still doctors who are not concerned about hemorrhage or infection, and abortion still isolates most of those that have them, especially with the denial of its impact by our society.

Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, there have been almost 60 million abortions in the United States and women are still dying. (Planned Parenthood had to pay a 2 million dollar settlement to the family of Tanya Reeves who bled to death from her botched abortion as a recent example.) Botched abortion, unsanitary conditions, and trips to the emergency room still happen, as does sterility.  Every day in this ministry I listen to countless women tell their story of emotional stress caused by abortion.

The judges on the Supreme Court have done women a great disservice in their desire to protect abortion instead of the women it claims to serve.