The Women Who Have Abortions, and the Love They Need

by Dr. Jeff Mirus At Catholic Culture

The November/December issue of Envoy Magazine includes an article by Jane Brennan, entitled “How Could She Do That?”, about what motivates a woman to have an abortion. Jane herself had two abortions, worked with Planned Parenthood, and helped her sister get an abortion before she finally began to reevaluate everything she believed. Now she does pro-life counseling.

The article is not a statistical analysis; it is simply Jane’s own story. For Jane, feminist ideology, the lies of abortionists and their advertisements, limited understanding of the biological and metaphysical issues, widespread social acceptance, abusive relationships both as a child and as an adult, and a deep fear that each of her first two pregnancies would ruin her life all combined to drive her into the abortion culture. After her second abortion, Jane divorced an abusive husband. She later met and married a man who treated her well. Unfortunately, she needed counseling and chose to get it from a radical feminist counselor. The result was that she generally made her husband’s life a kind of hell. But when he moved out, she was shocked and upset enough to begin questioning everything the counselor had been telling her. Jane realized she had to change. Her husband moved back in. And Jane did change, ultimately finding relief and new life in a Catholic Church.

The point of Jane Brennan’s article is that pro-lifers need to try to understand the mindset of women who get abortions, as well as the problems they experience afterwards. She feels that many pro-lifers find the decision to abort incomprehensible, and that this limits their ability to reach these women. Brennan recommends that the pro-life movement make better use of women who have had abortions (such as those in the group Silent No More) to make presentations at parishes and elsewhere which will encourage other post-abortive women to begin to turn their lives around, and help pre-abortive women to do the same. As she says in her conclusion:

Then the grim reality of how abortion shatters lives would be heard, and soon it would not be thought of as a clinical procedure or a fundamental right but the tragedy it is. This might cause people to say, “I don’t want that to happen to my daughter, my sister, my girlfriend, or to me. In fact I don’t want abortion to happen at all.”
Brennan’s story is powerful and moving. While I think most people who work in pro-life counseling are far more sympathetic to the plight of women seeking abortions than Brennan tends to believe, there is no arguing with her recommendation that the pro-life movement should make greater use of personal testimony from those who have had abortions.

The pro-life movement also needs to make use of men who can get out the message of what it means to love. Brennan reveals this need in her own story when she notes that it was the departure of a man who actually treated her well that finally jolted her out of her self-centered, self-defeating philosophy of life. I have long argued that too many problems of contemporary women (especially the kind of problems that drive them to abortion) are caused by men who either do not know how to be men, or who refuse to be men—men who use women as toys, abandoning them when they no longer find them fun. Fathers who abuse and/or abandon their daughters; lovers and husbands who abuse and/or abandon their wives: These men are architects of insecurity and anger in women, both of which fuel feminism and a culture of death.

It is no coincidence that the wildly popular film Bella makes precisely this point; the film's hero ought to become a role model for males. My own prescription, therefore, is that in addition to inviting post-abortive women to become increasingly involved in pro-life work, we also need to recruit good men who can help spread the message of what it really means to love. Men must not only explain but demonstrate with their lives what it means to love a woman as Christ loves the Church. There will always be exceptions, and some good men have been devastated by a wife's decision to abort. Nonetheless, I think it is not too much to say that the single most important force in ending the epidemic of abortion is something men have the power to do: Love.

The radical feminists at the breadnroses blodsite have finally said what they really stand for. They're all hot and bothered this time because of MP Ken Epp's new 'Unborn Victims of Crime Bill' which may protect women and the child they are carrying in their womb. They have exposed themselves this time by telling everyone what they really care about- Their own selfishness.
These are some of their conservative allies who should know better:

Pro-Choice Conservatives:

Leader of the Government in the Senate - Marjory LeBreton.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
- Peter MacKay.

Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics - David Emerson.

Minister of the Environment - John Baird.

Minister of Health and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario - Tony Clement.

Minister of Defence - Gordon O'Connor.

Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Metis and Non-Status Indians - Jim Prentice.

Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities - Lawrence Cannon.

Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women - Bev Oda.

Minister of International Co-operation and Minister for La Francophonie and Official Languages - Josée Verner.

Total : 10

Out-of-Sight, Out-of-Mind....Homicide

The Crime of Innocence

According to the eye-witness,* ‘The babies little fingers were clasping and unclasping and his little feet were kicking until the murderer forced a scissors into the back of his head and then the baby’s arms jerked out in a deadly spasm.’ No police were called, no charges were made and the murderer continued on to her next victim.
While this may sound like a fictional murder story, it is, in fact, something that happens every day in North America. It’s called late-term abortion and they’re legal right up to the moment of birth in Canada, thanks mostly to feminist organizations that pressure our government for ‘choice’. Their ‘choice’ is the painful murdering of our most innocent.
Why women have chosen to be ruled by these radical feminists for the past 40 years is beyond understanding. Women wanted to think for themselves and hated the idea of anyone ‘controlling’ them, yet by the millions, they still march to the old feminist song and dance about choice, equality and freedom as if it was a product you buy instead of something you earn.
But let’s not lay all the blame on a few mean-spirited women. It took a lot of gutless government men, back in the day, to allow this to happen and it looks like nothing has changed in Ottawa and Toronto.
Most women are against war and killing, yet here we are in the 21st century, and women are killing their healthy babies with our governments blessing and voter’s support, the same voter who would be outraged if it were happening to a pet dog.
As it is now you can be charged, arrested and put in jail for simply threatening an animal but for the most violent crime to a human being, people are financially rewarded. Isn’t it a little odd that we have a higher standard and expectation for a beast than we have for an innocent child in it’s most vulnerable place?

* The eye-witness report was from an RN, as reported in the May/2007 Interim Newspaper.

"Who called me just a piece of flesh!!"

Are we civil yet?

Sometimes you wonder where the 'civil' went in our civil society. I was traveling through
the web recently and came across 'partial birth abortions'. These are abortions that are done in the late-term of pregnancy on mostly healthy mothers and babies.
The abortionist grabs the baby's legs with forceps and pulls the baby into the birth canal,
then using his hands, he delivers the body, leaving the head inside. He or she then forces
scissors into the base of the skull and opens the scissors to enlarge the hole. A suction
catheter is inserted into this hole and the baby's brains are sucked out. After immence, imminent pain,
the skull collapses, the baby dies and the parts are sometimes sold.
This is probably what M.P. Cheryl Gallant was talking about when she compared abortion
to the decapitation of U.S. soldiers in Iraq for which the media attacked her.
For some of the earlier stage abortions the abortionist cuts the baby into pieces, while in the
mother. The nurses then assemble the arms, legs and body parts in order, to make sure the entire baby has been removed.
We have no abortion laws in Canada, even up to the time of delivery. Even if you're a cold blooded atheist you must question why our tax dollars are used to pay for over 100,000 women and men's choice to have sex without responsibility. Less than 1% are because of rape and incest.
You have to wonder what kind of a 'civil' society we have that would allow human butchers
to torture and mutilate generation after generation of innocents without the media raising their
voice in protest.
They say we're only here on earth for a short 70 summers. Thank God.