The Cost of Abortion

One of the saddest things about this job is hearing about women who have had past abortions, and are now right back in the same situation that they started in. The reasons that they didn’t want to have a child are still the same, but they still had sex and they still want to be free of the consequences. Almost every woman with a past abortion experience admits that it effected her in some way. Many still think about the baby that they aborted. They know how old he would have been and they grieve each year on what would have been his birthday. They still cry themselves to sleep at night. They wake up at night and think that they can hear the baby crying. Most of them admit that the abortion that was supposed to be a “quick fix” made their lives much worse, and they regretted the decision.
However, many of them put themselves through that pain a second time, desperate to believe societies lies that abortion will make it like there was never a baby in the first place. They want everything to go back to the way that it was, but it can’t. Whether they have an abortion or carry their baby to term, the baby changes things from the moment that it is conceived. Most of the women who have abortions believe that it is wrong; most of them acknowledge that the baby is alive. They cannot lie to themselves, but they choose to ignore the facts.
Almost worse, though, are the horror stories that women tell about the physical complications that accompany abortion. It is easy for some women to dismiss the possibility of emotional trauma, but it is much harder to ignore stories of women who have been there and experienced the horror for themselves. A woman came into the clinic in Brooklyn who had been bleeding heavily all weekend, since her abortion. She kept calling Planned Parenthood, and all they would tell her was to come back in two weeks if the bleeding hadn’t stopped. Our office was in the same building and when she came to us, we got her to call an ambulance and receive emergency care. A woman at the Jerome office told an intern about spending three days in the Emergency room and receiving blood transfusions because the doctors couldn’t stop the hemorrhaging. While sidewalk counseling outside of an abortion clinic, we see girls come out who are shaking so badly they cannot walk, they are in so much pain. One day, the clinic called two ambulances because they had botched a girls abortion. Although we were unable to find out what had happened, we did hear from the ambulance driver that the girl would recover. She was one of the lucky ones.
People want to believe that abortions are safe and quick, but the truth is that woman are being hurt every day. It is not only the babies who are victims of abortions, but the women who are never told what may happen to them when they get on that table. Some of them never get off.