Eliminating the Suffering of Women and their Babies
by Kirt Wiggins, President
At Caring Network, we hear a clarion call to eliminate the desire for and the suffering from abortion in Illinois, to serve women who are facing unexpected pregnancies, and to save them and their babies.
If you were to listen only to those in the abortion industry and the politicians who promote abortion as some kind of elixir for the ills of life, you would believe that those of us who promote and advance life are the enemies of women, seeking to steal their freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact is, abortion itself is not as highly popular with women as we are led to believe. Many anti-abortion women believe that the principles behind women’s rights also call them to oppose abortion on right-to-life grounds, and that abortion hurts women more than it benefits them.
Many if not most women who have had abortions regret it. While it is politically unpopular to even research the extent of this regret, and advocates of abortion often gaslight the women who express regret over their abortion, it is true. 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.
One young woman’s post-abortion comments are revealing. She wrote: “Does nobody talk about how hard abortions are on a woman? It’s probably been a month and I hate myself every day. It sucks, because in the moment I felt like I was doing the right thing. But every time I go to bed, I’m just so alone. I just think about the what if. Because I’m really still a child, so this just like hit me on a different level. I thought that if I had an abortion it would benefit not just me, but everyone else. But I’m just so broken.” [1]
Research on Post-Abortion Impacts
Social scientists have studied the impacts of abortion, although there is tremendous pressure in the academy to avoid studies that may be politically damaging to the abortion lobby. How do women feel after an abortion?
The results of one study by the National Institutes of Health, completed by 1,000 women, aged 41-45, revealed that at least one-third of the respondents who had an abortion experienced psychological side effects. Depression, worrying about not being able to conceive again, and abnormal eating behaviors were reported as dominant psychological consequences of abortion among the respondents. Decreased self-esteem (43.7%), nightmares (39.5%), guilt (37.5%), and regret (33.3%) were other resulting emotions.
One question was: “Which best describes your abortion decision?” 33% identified it as “wanted,” 43% as “accepted but inconsistent with my values and preferences,” and 24% as “unwanted or coerced.” Sixty percent reported they would have preferred to give birth if they had received more support from others or had more financial security.
In the NIH study, 54% of women affirmed the statement that they would have continued their pregnancy if they had more financial security, and 42% would have given birth if they had more support from others. Only those in the “wanted” group associated with positive emotions or mental health gains as a result of abortion. All other response groups attributed more negative emotions and mental health outcomes to their abortions.[2]
A 2015 study undertaken by an abortion advocacy group, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), despite their support for abortion, revealed nonetheless that a significant portion of women who had abortions reported experiencing negative emotions, including: regret: 41-66%, sadness: 64-74%, guilt:53-63%, and anger: 31-43%.
The study also found that women who were denied abortions and carried their pregnancies to term reported lower levels of these negative emotions compared to those who had abortions. [3]
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote: “Among all the crimes which can be committed against life, procured abortion has characteristics making it particularly serious and deplorable. The one eliminated is a human being at the very beginning of life. No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined. In no way could this human being ever be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor! … And yet it is sometimes the mother herself who makes the decision and asks for the child to be eliminated, and who then goes about having it done. Many women carry these sentiments in their hearts for years, but find no one who understands their profound sorrow and guilt. The denial of the scientific fact that a tiny person—their own child—was destroyed during the abortion procedure, a denial which permitted them to submit to the abortion when it happened, has crumbled over time.” [4]
Since an unborn child is a living human being created by and loved by God, it is not at all surprising that an abortion leaves an indelible wound on the mother. That’s why I’m glad that in addition to equipping abortion-minded women to choose life for their baby, we also provide a post-abortion program to help women and men who have an abortion in their past to find freedom and forgiveness.
At Caring Network, we seek to eliminate the suffering from abortion — the suffering of mother and child.
[1] https://www.liveaction.org/news/abortion-supporters-gaslight-women-abortion-regret/
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3395931/#:~:text=Results,of%20abortion%20among%20the%20respondents
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10257365/#:~:text=A%202015%20study%20undertaken%20by,data%20for%20reanalysis%20%5B5%5D.
[4] https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/abortion/post-abortion-healing/a-special-word-to-women-who-have-had-an-abortion
