TV personality Teresa Guidice, best known for her role as an original cast member on Bravo’s “Real Housewives” series, is again courting controversy by criticizing another “Real Housewives” castmate who spoke with Glamour about her abortion. Giudice, who began appearing on “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” in season one, is one of the series’ most notable stars and has rarely been shy about expressing herself in the media.
Erin Lichy, a cast member on “The Real Housewives of New York City,” spoke with Glamour in November about a past abortion, attempting to portray it as a positive event in her life yet also admitting that it was traumatizing. Though she said the abortionist at Planned Parenthood was caring and her boyfriend was supportive, she said it was so traumatic for her that she never spoke to her boyfriend again.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “Something broke inside me, and I just didn’t even want to have any connection to it.”
Fellow cast mate Jenna Lyons then shared her own abortion story in solidarity, saying she had undergone an abortion at 21 after moving to New York City to start a career in fashion. “It’s a really hard thing to go through,” she said.
Lichy is now mom to three children and is pregnant with her fourth; Lyons has a 17-year-old son. This is what Giudice took issue with.
In an interview with Bonded by Bravo, Giudice responded to the abortion conversations.
“To me, I don’t know, a mom of four girls, I don’t think I would really want to advertise that I’m getting abortions,” she said. “I wouldn’t want my kids to think that that’s okay. I know that’s a touchy subject. But to me, it’s something private … I was just like, ‘Wow.’ I was taken aback by that.”
Giudice has since been criticized for her take on the issue, but in reality, she’s not wrong. Siblings whose brothers or sisters were killed in abortion have spoken about how traumatic it was to learn about the loss of their siblings. One woman, who participated in last year’s March for Life, said not being able to mourn her lost siblings has deeply affected her.
“I march for my four siblings, because there is no grave,” she said. “There’s nowhere to lay flowers. They have no names, there are no birth dates, and there are no death dates. So, they didn’t have a voice.”
She added that she stopped supporting abortion when she realized she was only alive because the timing of her conception was convenient. “The more I thought about the reasons that they gave, you know, ‘It’s your mother’s choice,’ and ‘I didn’t want to go through this,’ and ‘I didn’t feel like this,'” she said. “The more I thought about the reason why I was had is more that I was the more conveniently timed one.”
Other sibling survivors have shared similar feelings. “Knowing I wasn’t inconvenient enough to end up the way my sister was, and the fact my mother felt she needed to do what she did out of vulnerability, pressure, and panic makes me feel guilt in that I was spared and that I couldn’t help her choose life at the time,” one woman, Penelope, said.
READ: Bereaved siblings of aborted children speak out against abortion
Another, Leah, said she has felt like there has always been someone missing in her life. She explained, “I will always wonder the course life would have taken had my sibling been afforded the gift of life, but I have faith I’ll meet him or her one day, and when that day comes, I want to be able to say I fought for the children who needed a voice and helped protect other families from the pain mine has gone through.”
Chloe said knowing she had aborted siblings made her question her place in the world. “I felt heartbroken, and at times, I feel guilty,” she said. “I struggled with depression before I found out, and after finding out about the abortion I constantly questioned my worthiness of being on this planet. I always felt (and still feel) like there’s an important part of my life missing.”
Dr. Philip Ney has said that survivor’s guilt is common among adults whose siblings have died by abortion because they have come to understand that their own existence is arbitrary, based solely on how much they were — or were not — wanted by their biological parents.
So while Giudice’s comments may not have been what the abortion industry and its supporters like to hear, it doesn’t mean she’s wrong for pointing out how this information could be damaging to Lichy’s and Lyons’ surviving children.
