Leslie Carbone

Abortion is harmful to women, argues Leslie Carbone in the following viewpoint. Physical injuries, medical complications, and even deaths have resulted from legal abortions, she points out. Carbone also maintains that many women experience long-term grief and psychological problems after an abortion. In addition, she asserts, the abortion-promoting culture of the United States encourages women to hate their bodies and reject their natural capacity for nurturing. Carbone is a domestic policy analyst at the Family Research Council, an educational organization that promotes traditional Judeo-Christian values.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. What are some of the physical complications of abortion, according to Carbone"
2. According to the author, how does suicide rate for women who have had abortions compare with the suicide rate for women who have given birth"
3. In Carbone’s opinion, how has abortion affected relationships between men and women"

A baby is delivered, feet first, up to his neck. A doctor takes a pair of scissors and stabs the back of his tiny head. Next, he suctions the baby’s little brains out. The dead infant’s body is quickly discarded.

During the struggle to ban partial-birth abortion, those who took the side of life focused chiefly on the inhumanity of such cold-blooded killing of innocent babies. We were right to do so.

The Other Victim

Even so, there is another victim. How can a woman submit to the brutal murder of her own child—while his whole body or just his head is still inside her—and not be scarred by it, if not physically, then certainly emotionally? How can a culture tell women that this act of violence, terminating a normal, natural condition of womanhood, is good for them without inevitably teaching them that their own nature is dangerous to them? How can girls grow into womanhood in such a culture and not be tainted by some degree of doubt and distrust of their own feminine nature, not feel some sense of insecurity, shame, self-disgust"

The physical damage wrought by abortion is well- documented. Twenty-five years of “safe, legal” abortion have left women physically damaged, and sometimes killed, by complications including uterine perforation, cervical laceration, hemorrhaging, anesthesia reactions, and infection (often the result of the use of unclean equipment). A link with breast cancer has been discovered, but other long-term problems are still unknown. Only as the first generation of abortive women ages will we even be able to study the long- term risks of abortion.

The emotional harm done to abortive women is also well-known. Women who have had abortions are three times more likely to commit suicide, within one year of their abortions, than the general population and six times more likely than women who have given birth, according to an article in the British Medical Journal. Even as the years put their abortions in the distance, women grieve on each birthday that might have been. They see other women’s children of the ages that their own children would be, and they hurt.

A Ghost of a Child

Margaret Liu McConnell, who had an abortion while in college, wrote, “I still carry in my mind a picture of that . . . child who was never born, a picture which changes as the years go by, and I imagine him growing up. . . . [E]very now and then my mind returns to that ghost of a child and to the certainty that for seven weeks I carried the beginnings of a being whose coloring and build and, to a large extent, personality were already determined. Buoyant, green-eyed girl or shy, dark-haired boy, I wonder. Whoever, a child would have been twelve this spring.”

Abortion’s Link to Breast Cancer

What may link abortion to breast cancer is this: in pregnancy, a woman’s body experiences a huge surge of the hormone estrogen—as much as twenty-fold—resulting in dramatic increases in the number of new breast cells. Because of the known link between estrogen and cancer, these rapidly dividing new cells are thought to be particularly susceptible to malignancy. But then something interesting happens. While estrogen begins the process of rapid cell division and tissue growth, a second hormone released during the last trimester shuts it down, allowing the cells to mature and differentiate into specialized cells that can produce milk. This hormone also sorts out and eliminates cells growing out of control, making the woman’s breast tissue actually less susceptible to cancer. An abortion, whether performed in a clinic or induced chemically—with RU-486, for example—would interrupt the release of this protective second hormone.

Candace C. Crandall, Human Life Review, Fall 1997.

The people who staff so-called family-planning clinics are well aware of the pain, the doubt, and the guilt that abortion causes women, especially when they see children, or even children’s things. These clinics serve two constituencies: women seeking surgical abortion and women seeking birth control. Many of the latter constituency already have children, whom they must bring to the clinics when they go for their appointments. Because of this, clinics designate specific days on which to perform abortions and days on which to provide birth control. This allows women seeking surgical abortions to avoid seeing other mothers with their children. Clinic staff will even hide the toys provided for these children to play with while they wait for their mothers, so that immediately pre- and post- abortive women will not be confronted with the sight of these symbols of childhood.

As calculated as it is, this act of shielding aborting women from children’s playthings pays unthinking homage to women’s nurturing nature. It is bitterly ironic that this is one of the rare remaining signs that this nature is worthy of protection.

Abortion’s Message

Abortion’s message is that women’s unique, natural role is not deserving of honor or protection. This message influences how men view women and how women view themselves. Since the Supreme Court first allowed abortion, our nation has suffered an enormous increase in rape; between 1970 and 1990, the rate of rape increased by 208.6 percent.

Men’s sexual exploitation of women is not limited to the extreme case of rape. It is expected of young men, freed by abortion of any social expectation to take responsibility for unplanned pregnancy, to coerce and cajole women into sex. Many women acquiesce under pressure to unwanted sex. Others are rejected or terminate their relationships themselves. Women must be the sexual gatekeepers in their relationships. This means that they are forced to bear the entire weight of moral responsibility in their relationships in a culture that is hostile to virtue. It is an unfair burden, and one that fewer women had to shoulder before Roe v. Wade.

Even more insidious is the effect that the abortion culture has had on women’s view of themselves. By transforming the most vital, natural role of womanhood into something limiting and dangerous to women, abortion has taught women that our own nature is suspect, even demeaning. Abortion encourages women to view their own bodies as enemy territory. The ravages of this lesson are seen in the increasing rates of self-abuse, such as eating disorders, which flatten the natural shape of a woman’s body.

Abortion lies. Its message is that womanhood is devoid of inherent value and that a woman’s physical nature is her own enemy. It tells women that our unique role is dangerous to ourselves and valueless to society. It is a lie that far too many women have believed, and they bear the scars, in mind, body, and soul.