{"id":220240,"date":"2020-03-19T10:44:34","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T15:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=220240"},"modified":"2020-03-18T18:24:57","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T23:24:57","slug":"abortion-regret-pro-abortion-moms-bottling-tears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/abortion-regret-pro-abortion-moms-bottling-tears\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion regret exists among pro-abortion moms: ‘Too many of us are bottling up the tears’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With the demand for women to share their abortion stories as part of campaigns like #ShoutYour Abortion<\/a>, more post-abortive women are speaking openly about their experiences. The stories that garner headlines are often the “positive” abortion\u00a0stories of celebrities<\/a>. But the reality is that many women — even pro-abortion women — have traumatic and negative abortion experiences. As more women speak publicly about abortion, that fact has never been clearer.<\/p>\n

Bottling up the tears<\/strong><\/p>\n

For some women, the trauma of undergoing an abortion is not something they describe as regret, but clearly the negative effects of abortion are deeply felt. Amanda Kingsley\u00a0describes<\/a> herself as a post-abortion counselor who found her calling after being blindsided by the emotional trauma of electing to abort her fourth baby. Kingsley wrote candidly<\/a> about the upheaval following the abortion, writing, \u201cYou\u2019d think it wouldn\u2019t hurt so much. You\u2019d think the well executed choice and the lack of regret would be healing, but it still hurts. I don\u2019t have any words to explain why, I only know that it does.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Kingsley claims not to regret the decision, such intense emotional turmoil is in line with some of the psychiatric phenomena associated with what’s come to be known as “post-abortion syndrome<\/a>.” Kingsley has since found that she is not alone in her pain. She writes<\/a>, \u201cThousands of women are not telling their stories, sharing their pain, or healing together, but we\u2019re all out here hurting in waves of unexpected emotion. Too many of us are bottling up the tears as we walk the path with our living families.\u201d At a certain point, abortion activists must ask if abortion hurts mothers more than they want to admit.<\/p>\n

Risk to future\u00a0pregnancies<\/b><\/p>\n

Other pro-abortion mothers openly acknowledge at least temporary regret for their abortion decisions. Writing about her experience, Melissa Petro says<\/a> \u201cfor a brief moment\u201d she regretted her abortion. She explains, \u201cIn my mid-thirties, when my husband and I first started trying to conceive, I was told that scarring from my abortion might make staying pregnant impossible.\u201d Studies show<\/a> that post-abortive women have an increased risk of infertility, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, and pre-term birth. For some mothers who abort, realizing later in life that they are unable to carry another child can cause significant regret and emotional distress.<\/p>\n

In Petro\u2019s case, the doctor\u2019s prediction proved incorrect and she became pregnant and has carried two healthy children to term. Having successfully given birth to two children, Petro claims she has no more regrets about her previous abortion, but she admits \u201cwho knows how I\u2019d feel had I not gotten my desired outcome.\u201d Such ambivalence indicates that despite her stance, Petro recognizes she might have continued to feel regret about her abortion.\u00a0Reflecting on the abortion she had in her early twenties, a full decade before her other children were born, she writes<\/a>, \u201cI wasn\u2019t ready to become a mother, and I didn\u2019t consider the rapidly dividing clump of cells in my uterus to be a \u2018life.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact is, no matter how Petro felt about it, she had become a mother. To scientists and any mother struggling with infertility or recurrent miscarriage, there is no doubt that the \u201crapidly dividing clump of cells\u201d is <\/em>a life. Disregarding that life does not change the fact that every abortion ends a human life as precious as any \u201cwanted\u201d pregnancy.<\/p>\n