Pro-abortion advocates insist that abortion doesn’t harm women. They try to present stories of women who are glad they aborted. Imnotsorry.net was a collection of happy abortion stories which now appears to be offline. The 1 in 3 campaign, which is named after the debunked statistic that one in three women will have abortions, also alleges that abortion helps women. These sites present stories from women who say they don’t regret their abortions.
The pro-life site Silent No More, of course, has over 2,000 stories from women who do regret their abortions, far more than any pro-abortion site I’ve seen. But pro-abortion activists dismiss the heartfelt testimonies of women who suffer.
Abortion clinic escorts typically attempt to prevent sidewalk counselors from talking to women going in for abortions. Often, these sidewalk counselors want to warn the women about the negative effects of abortion on their health. Some effects include the higher rate of depression among women who abort, and the six to seven times higher suicide rate of women who have aborted. (For a teen who has an abortion, the suicide rate is ten times higher than those who carry to term.) It is almost certain that women will not hear these facts in the abortion facility, but escorts work to make sure that women won’t hear them outside the facility, either. They have been known to confiscate and rip up any pamphlets or literature pro-life sidewalk counselors give to women entering abortion facilities.
Do these escorts realize the harm abortion does to women? One does. A facility escort quoted in the pro-abortion book Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement comments on how pro-abortion groups have to keep up the pretense that abortion is good for women:
The emotionally honest approach is to acknowledge the ambivalence [of women having abortions], to acknowledge all of the complex bouquet of feelings and emotions that comes out of this decision. That’s the emotionally honest approach. But I completely understand the flipside, which is the knee-jerk reaction, where we’re under attack by all these anti-choicers, we have to present the cheeriest side, just for PR sake, we have to present women who are relieved. They’ve made a tough decision, they made the best of a bad situation, but now they’re relieved that everything is fine and happy and roses and sunshine and unicorns because that’s how to present it public relations wise.
This escort knows that although pro-abortion activists paint abortion in rosy terms, the reality is darker. She acknowledges that pro-abortion activists must discredit and disenfranchise women who talk about abortion regret. Political expediency means abortion must be described only in the most positive terms.
The many stories like this one are usually ignored by abortion supporters:
When I was 16 I was shuffled through an assembly-line abortion. I was number 13 of 17 who went through the morning session at one abortion clinic. Physically, I had no problems with my abortion, but emotionally, I created a living Hell that continues on a daily basis. I’m not sure the tears will ever stop. I’ve been waiting almost eleven years now and they never cease.
Pro-abortion advocates put the “happy” stories of post-abortive women front and center because the truth hurts their cause. They can’t allow people to hear the stories of the many women who regret their abortions. If the public realized the extent to which so many women suffer after abortion, support for legalized abortion would be called into question, so they are very selective with what they say.
The escort knows that abortion isn’t “roses and sunshine and unicorns,” and so does any intellectually honest pro-choicer. But many still struggle to paint abortion as universally good for women, because anything else threatens their cause.
Source: Sarah Erdreich Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2013) 22 – 23
