The pro-abortion film, Happening, took home the coveted Golden Lion award from the 78th Venice Film Festival this month. The French-language movie was an underdog and had not been expected to win, prompting the filmmaker to say she felt “heard.” The film takes place in the early 1960s and tells the tale of a female college student who wants an abortion but is unable to get one due to the French laws prohibiting it. She eventually finds an illegal abortionist to carry out the procedure.
“I did this movie with anger,” said filmmaker Audrey Diwan during her acceptance speech. “I did this movie with desire also. I feel heard tonight.”
But while Diwan’s voice was “heard” in the film, millions of other voices weren’t: women injured or killed by legal abortion, women suffering emotional trauma from legal abortion, and, of course, the millions of human beings killed by legal abortion. Each of these individuals has a voice and a story that deserves to be heard, but they are — more often than not — shut down by abortion advocates and treated as if their voices are unimportant.
Women injured or killed by legal abortion
Keeping track of abortion-related injuries and deaths is difficult, as only about half of all U.S. states are required to report abortion complications. We do know that in 1972, the year prior to the legalization of abortion in the U.S., 39 women died from legal abortion. Though tragic, this number is far lower than what abortion advocates led Americans to believe.
Since the legalization of abortion, women have not been any safer. On a frequent basis, abortion businesses call 911 for serious abortion complications that they are not equipped to handle. Pro-life watchdog group Operation Rescue records these instances, usually recorded by pro-lifers who are present. It is likely that there are far more happening that are never brought to light.
In June of 2020, late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart injured two women (both past 20 weeks of pregnancy) so badly just nine days apart that they both required surgery at the hospital — which left the hospital staff traumatized. One hospital worker said Patient #1’s injuries were “the most horrific thing I have ever seen.” She had a “huge” hole in her uterus and her bowels were “mangled.” Parts of her baby had been shoved through the hole in her uterus. Patient #2’s mostly intact baby had been pushed through the nearly nine-inch hole in her uterus, the child’s head still attached by a strip of flesh.
In addition to immediate damage, abortion can lead to an increased risk of infertility, breast cancer, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, and pre-term birth in future pregnancies. A woman may not realize the impact her abortion has had until years later.
The abortion pill, marketed to be as safe as Tylenol, is actually four times more dangerous than a first-trimester surgical abortion. As previously reported by Live Action News, abortion pills have caused nearly 4,200 adverse effects, including 1,042 hospitalizations, and nearly 600 instances of blood loss requiring transfusions.
As for women who have died from legal abortion, according to the FDA, 24 deaths have been associated with the abortion pill.* Many others have died as a result of botched abortions, including Jamie Lee Morales, Christina Stile, Lakisha Wilson, Jennifer Morbelli, Tonya Reaves, Christin Gilbert, Tamiia Russell, Keisha Atkins, and Sarah Louise Dunn.
These injuries and deaths were all avoidable but occurred because of legal abortion. Yet their stories are ignored by major media outlets. Their voices have been silenced.
Emotional trauma
Even women who manage to escape injuries and death from legal abortion are likely to suffer from emotional abortion trauma. Yet, abortion proponents say women don’t regret their abortions and snuff out the voices of countless women who say they do. Because of the pressure to make abortion “normal” and “liberalizing” for women, women who have had abortions remain silent about their pain.
“It’s taken me 33 years of shame and guilt to be able to admit to another human being that I murdered my child,” Donna told photographer Angela Forker for the After the Abortion Photography Series. She added, “From the moment I completed my abortion I felt gagged, bound and silenced. I felt oppressed and as if I was nothing. I regret not mothering my child. Not giving that child a chance to live.”
Even among women who say they don’t regret their abortion, the pain is still there. “You’d think it wouldn’t hurt so much. You’d think the well executed choice and the lack of regret would be healing, but it still hurts. I don’t have any words to explain why, I only know that it does,” said Amanda Kingsley of her abortion.
READ: Post-abortive mom: Abortion regret ‘weighs down every fiber of your being’
These voices are silenced and ignored because they don’t fit in with the image the abortion industry wants to portray. If abortion is empowering, how could a woman regret it? How could it possibly increase a woman’s risk of depression, alcohol use, drug use, and suicidal thoughts? The truth of what abortion does to a woman’s mental health is hidden in order to keep spinning abortion as a positive for women.
The preborn child
The voices never heard by abortion advocates are those of the preborn children who are being killed every single day. But their voices matter.
Abortion isn’t the simple and clean procedure that abortion businesses want women to believe it is. In a first trimester abortion using the abortion pill, a child who has had a beating heart since at least 22 days post-fertilization is deprived of nutrients before being forced out of her mother’s womb — forced out of her natural environment only to be flushed down a toilet or tossed in a trash can.
In a first trimester surgical abortion, the preborn child is torn to pieces by powerful vacuum suction and removed from the uterus. The abortion workers put her back together like a puzzle to ensure all of her body parts are accounted for. These babies have been seen on ultrasounds trying to get away from the abortionist’s instruments because even at this young age, they are aware and have a sense of touch. Recent research has shown that babies can likely feel pain by the end of the first trimester.
In a second trimester abortion, the preborn child is killed when she is torn apart by forceps. The abortionist dismembers her, ripping her arms and legs off of her torso before crushing her head. This is the type of procedure that caused such gruesome injuries in Carhart’s patients as he pushed and pulled inside their uterus, puncturing them so badly their baby’s body parts were pushed through the holes he created. A live dismemberment is inhumane, yet no one ever speaks of it despite the fact that many of these babies are 20 weeks and older — capable of surviving outside of the womb.
In the third trimester, babies are injected with a drug that causes them to suffer cardiac arrest. After three days, the mother delivers a dead baby. These babies are old enough to survive outside the womb. If their mother’s health were at risk, they could be safely delivered alive by an emergency C-section or preterm delivery. There is no medical need to kill these babies, yet a heart attack is cruelly inflicted on them.
After they are killed, the bodies of these innocent children are tossed in medical waste bins and dumpsters. Their remains have been found stored in an abortionist’s car and have even been burned to create heat. Who will finally allow their voices to be “heard” like Diwan’s was allowed to be heard in her film?
Abortion survivors, whose very lives prove that life begins in the womb, have also been ignored by the media. Their stories have been squashed, their very existence denied.
The voices of women and children who have suffered the effects of legalized abortion deserve to be heard just as much as Diwan’s deserves to be heard. When will the world start listening?
*Editor’s Note: The FDA has received reports of serious adverse events in women who took Mifeprex. As of December 31, 2018, there were reports of 24 deaths of women associated with Mifeprex since the product was approved in September 2000, including two cases of ectopic pregnancy resulting in death; and several cases of severe systemic infection (also called sepsis), including some that were fatal. The adverse events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of concurrent use of other drugs, other medical or surgical treatments, co-existing medical conditions, and information gaps about patient health status and clinical management of the patient. A summary report of adverse events that reflects data through December 31, 2018 is here.”
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