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MS. MAGAZINE CALLS POST-ABORTION HEALING EFFORTS EXPLOITATION

NEW YORK, Aug 15, 2001 (LSN.ca) - In Ms. Magazine's August issue, author Cynthia L. Cooper accuses Christian based post-abortion counseling groups, and specifically Elliot Institute director Dr. David C. Reardon, of "exploiting" women who have had abortions.

She contends that "anti-choice" efforts to educate women about post-abortion emotional problems are premised on a "bogus affliction invented by the religious right" to make women feel guilty. Post-abortion outreach and healing programs are similarly ridiculed as nothing more than cynical attempts to "use" women (through guilt-tripping techniques, or perhaps even brainwashing?) into working for the overthrow "abortion rights."

Although Cooper interviewed a number of pro-choice activists for her article, she never bothered to call the central target of her attack, Dr. Reardon, to ask his response to her accusations about the motivations behind his pro-woman/pro-life strategy. Instead, she simply took a sprinkling of quotes from Reardon's published material and blended them with a generous dose of her own insinuations of misogyny to construct the charge that Reardon's efforts on behalf of women are "merely a cynical ploy aimed at bringing down the walls of choice."

The first half of Cooper's article is an attack against the "lie" that abortion hurts women. The thrust of her argument is summed up in her claim that "the overwhelming scientific evidence shows that abortion does not hurt women-physically or mentally" but she finds it hard to completely support to that claim. By the middle of the article she admits that while some few women may have problems, it is only "pro-choice" groups that have their real interests at heart and can offer them effective help.

Even then, however, she attacked "anti-choice" groups as the root of the problem. "If women do feel negative emotions, they are probably a result of the anti-abortion movement itself," she wrote. "After all, the picketers who scream 'murderer' at women entering clinics are significant stress-inducers, too."

A copy of the article is available on line at http://www.msmagazine.com Letters of response can be sent to the magazine by email to

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