May 15, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One year ago, I had just finished the final leg in a 212km walk from Montreal, Quebec to Ottawa, Ontario. I was the youngest member in a team of 25 women who participated in the Back to Life Walk. The purpose of the walk was to empower women who have been personally affected by abortion in some way by giving them back their voices. Over the course of the 3-week journey, I had the privilege of getting to know the women and hearing their stories. Their stories opened my 16-year-old eyes to the reality that, thanks to abortion, women’s choices are being restricted.
Out of the 25 women on the walk, 10 of them were post-abortive. Eighty percent of those post-abortive women had been coerced into ‘deciding’ to abort, and 100% felt like they had no choice other than abortion at the time of their crisis pregnancy. The stories that these women shared with me made me realize that, in the name of choice, women in Canada have lost true choice.
Ashley's story
One of the post-abortive women, Ashley, shared how she at first received support from her boyfriend when she got pregnant at the age of 17. Thrilled, Ashley started preparing to have their child, and together they brainstormed different names for their little girl or boy.
Things changed, however, when Ashley was about four months pregnant. Her boyfriend told her that he would no longer help support her, and he counseled her to have an abortion. As the day for the abortion drew closer, Ashley felt that she could not go through with the abortion “decision”. She told her boyfriend as much, and he told her that she had no choice in the matter and she would have the abortion, regardless of what she wanted.
He drove her to the abortion clinic and waited in the outer room as Ashley was prepped for the abortion procedure. Out of nowhere, her boyfriend had a change of heart and rushed to the staff at the front desk. He explained to them that Ashley didn’t want to have the abortion and that she was only going through with it for his sake. Ignoring his pleas that they ask her whether she really wanted to go through with the abortion, the medical staff told Ashley’s boyfriend that it was her body, her choice, and that he should stay out of it. After the first step of the abortion was completed, a nurse told Ashley what had happened with her boyfriend. Ashley was devastated.
Ashley recounted this story to us with tears streaming down her face. Not only had her boyfriend coerced her into having the abortion, but the medical staff had also played a part in taking away her true choice. She alone was left to suffer all the negative after-affects of the abortion. As tragic as her story is, she was not the only one on the walk who had been coerced.
Lisa's story
Lisa, another post-abortive woman on the walk, told her story about having 3 abortions. She became pregnant when she was 15 years old and felt immense pressure from her family to have an abortion. She became pregnant a second time at the age of 16. She lived on her own at the time, so her family didn’t mind her decision to keep the child. This time the pressure to have an abortion came from her boyfriend’s family, who said that she was being selfish if she kept the child and that she would ruin their son’s life. She became pregnant for a third time when she was 18 years old. By this time, Lisa was suicidal and made the abortion decision on her own.
But not only was Lisa coerced into having the first two abortions by others, she was also being fed lies, since medial personnel told her that her babies were “just tissue”. When she had her two children later and saw the ultrasounds, she realized how untrue that statement was. Lisa was also never told that there were negative after-effects, both emotionally and physically. She was never told that, as a direct result of her abortions, she would have difficulty bearing children later on, since an abortion thins the lining of the uterine wall and makes the womb less able to sustain a child. She was also never told that she would struggle with endometriosis and another condition that has no cure apart from a hysterectomy.
What these stories showed me is that there is a desperate need to redefine “choice” in our society. In Canada, the government pours its resources into abortion. In Canada, society does not condemn coerced abortion. In Canada, medical staff have no requirement to tell women the truth about all the negative after-effects of an abortion. Is this truly empowering women?
I will never forget the women on the walk or the stories that they shared. With tears in their eyes they said, “I felt like I had no choice.” The statistics say that over 64% of abortions are coerced. Research also shows that 80% of women who have abortions would have carried their child to full term if they had better circumstances or more support from others.
It can be easy to ignore statistics. You can dispute their reliability, question previous biases, etc. But a story is different. You cannot look at a post-abortive woman who is telling you that her abortion caused her deep pain, regret, and physical harm and tell her that she’s wrong or unreliable. You can argue with a statistic, but you cannot argue with a woman’s story.
The dark underbelly of the abortion industry
A few years ago, I came across the story of Carol Everett. A post-abortive woman herself, Carol Everett owned an abortion clinic and occasionally participated in performing the abortions. In an interview for the movie Blood Money, the former abortion clinic owner says this:
“We had a whole plan that sold abortions and it was called sex education. Break down their natural modesty, separate them from their parents and their values, and become the sex-expert in their lives so they turn to us. When we would give them a low-dose birth control pill they would get pregnant on, or a defective condom, because we didn’t buy the most expensive condoms, we bought the cheapest condoms. Our goal was 3 to 5 abortions from every girl between the ages of 13 and 18.”
This is the hidden underbelly of the “pro-choice” movement. This is what abortion truly is: an industry, a business, a political agenda. It isn’t about choice. It isn’t about women’s rights. Abortion is about money and flawed ideologies. Plain and simple. Carol Everett herself says that her plan was to open three more abortion clinics in her area, not because she wanted to help women in crisis pregnancies or advance women’s rights, but because she wanted to be a millionaire by the following year.
This should come as no surprise.
Fact: Planned Parenthood makes millions off legal abortion and the belief held by women that abortion is the only solution to unplanned and crisis pregnancies.
Fact: When someone has a vested, monetary interest in the legality of something like abortion, they cannot be trusted to make an unbiased decision on what it is truly beneficial for women.
There is only one way to counter this reality: redefine choice. If choice doesn’t involve presenting women with more than one option, protecting them from the coercion and manipulation of others, and giving them all the information, then we have failed women. But, if we can start to discuss what true choice really looks like, then there is hope for women and for future generations. Until then, society must face the ugly truth about abortion: it kills a child, harms a woman, and the only ones who benefit are those profiting from it.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the abortion industry.