On June 4, the Senate Health, Education, and Labor Committee held a hearing titled “The Assault on Women’s Freedoms,” during which pro-abortion Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) claimed pro-life lawmakers are inflicting “trauma” on women by protecting children from abortion.
“Today we take a close accounting of the trauma Republicans are inflicting on women and families across our country and the damage they are doing to basic reproductive health care through their horrific anti-abortion crusade,” said Murray. “The issue here is simple, and it cuts to the core of American values: freedom.”
Three pro-abortion and two pro-life witnesses were present to give testimony. Pro-life activist Melissa Ohden, an abortion survivor, told the committee, “The nightmare here is not abortion bans… the nightmare is that abortion continues to be aggressively promoted so that it is seen as the only option.”
She said it is abortion that causes “trauma.”
Abortion causes trauma
Calling legal protections for preborn children traumatic for women and likening such protections to assault is offensive to rape survivors, especially those who have chosen life for their children or who regret their abortions.
Abortion has been known to cause trauma for mothers — and even fathers and other relatives. Research shows that undergoing abortion can affect women deeply. In fact, an October 2018 article in SAGE Open Med found that abortion is “consistently associated with elevated rates of mental illness” compared to women who haven’t had abortions. In addition, it found that abortion “directly contributes to mental health problems for at least some women,” and that certain factors may put certain women “at greatest risk” of struggling with mental health after an abortion.
In addition, a study published in July of 2016 — using data collected from 8,005 women in the United States who were followed over 13 years — linked abortion with an increased risk of mental health disorders and substance abuse.
Women have also shared their personal stories of the trauma abortion caused them. On the Netflix dating show “Love is Blind,” contestant Amber Pike shared the trauma she suffered from abortion. “After the fact, [my boyfriend and I] were just talking. I’m telling him, like, I’m trying to explain what I’m going through, like, I’m having a really hard time getting out of bed in the morning. I don’t eat. I’m not really sleeping. […] I can’t survive [another abortion]. It would destroy me.”
Likewise, TLC band member Chilli revealed in 2010 that her past abortion is still a source of pain for her. “It messed me up,” she said during an interview. “I don’t know; It just, it broke my spirit. […] I cried almost every day for almost nine years and then I was caught up, I had to have a baby.”
Julie Lambotte aborted her daughter following a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis and afterward suffered such deep sorrow that she killed two of her three born children. She drowned her 22-month-old daughter and stabbed her nine-year-old and seven-year-old children. The nine-year-old survived. Lambotte told authorities she did it because she “missed her little girl.”
Rape survivor Ashley Sigrest explained how abortion affected her. “I could never ever deal with my rape because I was so focused on what I had done in choosing abortion. And that’s what people don’t understand when they tell rape victims, ‘Oh yes, have an abortion so that way you can go on and we can deal with the rape.’ But the abortion just makes the rape 1,000 times worse because now you have these two horrible events that you have to deal with.”
Paula Peyton, however, chose life for her son after she was raped. She explained that she “endured trauma the night he was conceived.” But choosing life for him was not traumatic. She calls him “my life’s greatest blessing – a child conceived in gang rape, a child who far too many people deemed disposable, a child who saved my life, a child who was always meant to be my whole-hearted, honorable gift of God.”
Abortion is violent
Abortion is also traumatic for the child. Every act of abortion is a violent assault on an innocent human being. Every induced abortion carries the intent to kill a preborn child through starvation, dismemberment, powerful suction, or induced cardiac arrest. To say that protecting children from this is “assault” is ludicrous:
Baby Harriet found in medical waste bin outside DC abortion facility. Photo courtesy of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.
While abortion advocates claim that preborn children are nothing more than tissue and are unaware of the violence being carried out against them, at least one sonographer has said she has witnessed a preborn child “trying to get away” from the abortion instruments. Sarah Cleveland, a board certified Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer, explained:
… I placed the transducer over the uterus and saw a baby approximately 18 weeks gestation on the screen. He was kicking, playful, and happy. Then the doc inserted the needle.
Immediately, the baby knew something was in his space. That something was different. As I held the transducer to guide the needle to a safe area away from the placenta and away from Baby, I saw Baby dart away from where we were in the uterus and move as far away as possible to the other side of the womb. He stopped kicking and playing… Then the heart rate. His little heart rate sky rocketed. He was scared. In fact, I am convinced he was terrified.
After only about 20 seconds of withdrawing fluid, the needle was out. … I watched Baby for a few minutes longer, while the parents conversed with one another. The Baby slowly, eventually, came out of the corner and the heart rate slowly decelerated.
According to the Endowment for Human Development, by 11 weeks, the preborn child is “sensitive” even to “light touch.”
Pro-life laws protect women
Pro-life laws protect babies from abortion but they also protect women from abortion and abortion-related trauma. Studies show that 64% of post-abortive women felt pressured to abort by parents, boyfriends, employers, friends, and their personal situations, but pro-life laws can help to release them from that pressure. The further a woman lives from an abortion facility, the less likely she is to have an abortion — which means pro-life laws protect women from the trauma of abortion.
The pro-life politicians that Murray and other pro-abortion lawmakers attacked during the hearing are taking steps to offer true help to women and children. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Sen. Katie Britt introduced the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) Act this month, which aims to support women during and after pregnancy by increasing access to resources and assistance for prenatal, postpartum, and early childhood development.
