The possible reversal of Roe v. Wade in coming days or weeks has stirred up emotions on every side of the abortion debate.
It has caused fear among some who have come of age after Roe, who perceive legalized abortion as the best answer our fractured society can offer in the face of poverty, abuse, lack of education, real health concerns or fear of the responsibility of parenthood. They are not convinced that there are better answers — often because they have never encountered the broad and comprehensive help that has been developed and offered by the pro-life movement since the 1970s.
Following the leak of a draft opinion that called for Roe’s reversal, there have been shouting and near-hysterical pro-abortion protests across America. Women and men, who have spent years rationalizing their involvement in abortion, shout and carry signs and threaten the Supreme Court, the very institution that set this tragedy in motion in 1973.
The outcry would have you believe that the majority of women involved have little or no remorse about their abortion experiences and that abortion did not leave scars on the hearts of the women who had them.
The shouting is itself an example of the trauma caused. People don’t often shout about things that bring them peace of mind. In this case, the shouting is a statement of stress, exposing the listener to a depth of injury that few can ever understand. These individuals expend so much energy continuing to justify a decision that ended the life of a child, trying to make something awful seem reasonable.
I was one of the very first women to go public with the story of my own child’s death by abortion in 1981. I helped to form Women Exploited by Abortion, the first peer-to-peer program created by women for women to talk about how we really felt about our abortion experiences. Many in the pro-life movement were supportive and still are. In 1985, I became director of American Victims of Abortion with the National Right to Life Committee. There are now a wide variety of post-abortion support programs in all 50 states.
Women who seek help after abortion confirm what available research suggests. The aftermath includes depression, anger, grief, confusion, doubt, anxiety, even thoughts of suicide. While individual responses vary, the available data indicates that the majority of women will experience one or all of these problems at some point after abortion.
Nonetheless, the myth persists that abortion is safe and relatively easy to go through.
What we are seeing now in post-abortion care is the result of the damage and stress that 50 years of legalized abortion has caused: in every abortion, a baby killed, and a woman wounded.
Traumatized people too often avoid the details of their injuries because it is too frightening to confront the pain of the original wound, especially a self-inflicted one such as abortion.
Women often repress or deny their feelings because they were told that abortion was a smart decision. Few women have anyone they can talk to honestly about their experience because many abortions are kept secret. Shouting in the streets with other women in denial only reinforces the narrative that women need abortion because being pregnant is such a threat.
The loneliness so many women face when pregnant is deep. The father may not support her or family and friends see the baby as an embarrassment. Some women still face loss of employment or education due to pregnancy.
Add the deliberate manipulation abortionists use to convince women to pay for the killing of their children, and you begin to see the way abortion is rationalized. She hears, “This is a bad time for you to be pregnant, so just get rid of this one and someday you can try again. Do the smart thing.” That is what I was told, and it is what so many of the women shouting in the streets right now heard as well.
Pregnancy is a challenge that our institutions often fail to meet, leaving thousands of mothers feeling the need to end their pregnancy. Paying to have our children killed only adds to the brokenness and failure.
Punishing the mothers who have abortions, if Roe is overturned, would be tragically wrong and would ignore the role that fathers, parents and others play in pressuring some women to get abortions.
The 3,000-plus pro-life pregnancy care programs in America, including more than 40 in Virginia, belie the narrative that pro-lifers wish to judge women.
I fear that all these shouting voices and propaganda may scare many women away from getting the help they need to make life-affirming decisions for their babies. There are women desperately in need of healing after abortion unaware of help from programs such as Project Rachel.
The protests happening now are fraught with the pain of families wounded by the death of one or more of their members whose names they’ll never know. Everyone has been touched by these deaths. We must open our hearts with compassion and prepare for many more years of work to repair what we have done to each other.
If Roe v. Wade does fall this summer, it will be a reason to rejoice. The people shouting in the streets right now may not understand that because of decades of self-inflicted injury and the successful campaigns of abortion promoters, but it will be a good day. The question is this: Will Americans be ready to finally comprehend how cruelly legalized abortion has altered the society in which we live?
Gans Turner is president of the Virginia Society for Human Life and director of American Victims of Abortion.
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