Abortion advocates, led by the example of the abortion industry, have made a habit of gaslighting women who experience abortion regret. Though abortion advocates argue that women don’t regret their abortions and even cite faulty studies in an attempt to prove the claim, many women have shared for decades that their abortions left them broken.
Live Action’s Sami Parker recently dismantled this argument in an Instagram post highlighting one woman’s story of abortion remorse and the countless commenters who attempted to gaslight her.
“Does nobody talk about how hard abortions are on a woman? It’s probably been a month,” the post-abortive woman said in the video, “and I hate myself every day. Sucks, cause in the moment I felt like I was doing the right thing. But every time I’m going to bed here I’m just so alone. I just think about like, what if. Because I’m not like, I’m not a child. Like, I’m an adult so this just like hit me on a different level. I had all the means in the world to do it on my own. But I thought like that I did it so that it would benefit not just me, but everyone else. And I’m just so broken.”
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In the comments to that original video, other women diminished her grief, telling her that the abortion was the right thing to do.
“The best decisions aren’t the prettiest/easiest, we’ll get our time with them again.”
“You did what was right for you with the information that you had at the time. Always remember that.”
“You absolutely did what was best for you. you sent baby back to God.”
Parker noted, “It’s a typical comment section for a post-abortive woman’s video. But in general, when somebody shares with you that they have guilt and regret for a decision that they made, what you shouldn’t do even if you have good intentions, is gaslight them into thinking that they actually made the right decision. It’s certainly more comfortable for you to sit there and say, ‘Oh, you did what was best for you. You sent the baby back to God.’ But you’re not actually being of service to the person who’s grieving.”
Reddit user BackgroundPea7785’s photo of aborted baby at 9 weeks gestation (enlarged).
Denying abortion regret is common among abortion advocates, who put great effort into ensuring that women believe they have no other option but abortion. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is decidedly pro-abortion and told NBC News that “regret associated with abortion” is a “myth.”
“People seeking abortion care do so after making thoughtful decisions that align with their values, priorities, and their family’s unique needs,” it told NBC News in a statement. “Questioning those thoughtful decisions and promoting myths about regret associated with abortion only perpetuated abortion stigma.”
In other words, if a woman like the one in the above video says that she regrets her abortion and is dealing with abortion-related grief, abortion proponents will tell tell her that her feelings are nothing but a myth, and are invalid — because she did the ‘right thing’ by ending her child’s life, regardless of how she feels about it. Her regret must be silenced — because if it isn’t, it may lead other women to learn from her mistake and choose life for their own babies.
Photo: Reddit user brazen 177 (10-week aborted baby by abortion pill)
Abortion advocates often cite the heavily flawed and debunked Turnaway study to support this, which claims that 95% of women who had abortions felt it was the right decision and 90% of women who have abortions do not regret it five years later. But the data is highly deceptive because a large majority of the women in the study dropped out. Previous studies have found women who have had negative abortion experiences may be reluctant to talk about them. The fact that the authors chose to ignore this relevant information should cast significant doubt upon the integrity of their study.
And yet, as Secular Pro-Life has pointed out, with all its flaws, the Turnaway Study also shows that by the end of five years, only 4% of the women denied abortions (and who continued to participate in the study) still wished they could have aborted. That would leave 96% of women who didn’t regret giving birth to their children — even in a skewed study with a high dropout rate.
Additional issues with the study seemingly make it impossible for it to accurately represent the feelings of women who have had abortions. No matter how much abortion advocates want to gaslight women and deny the truth, abortion regret is very real and very distressing. Research has shown that abortion trauma and regret exist, with 20% of women in one study found to be struggling with clinical depression after an abortion and 31% of women saying they would not choose to abort again.
“Somebody who truly cares, a friend who really wants to help would step into that grief with the post-abortive woman,” said Parker, “and you would affirm the guilt and regret that she feels is properly felt because she did make that [decision].”
