Chapter 12: The Longcut of Abortion

Chapter 12: The Longcut of Abortion

            In 1969 Richard and I lived in California. We had two children and were pregnant with the third. Paul Ehrlich’s best-selling book The Population Bomb with the cute little baby on the cover was spreading his prediction that within twenty years earth’s natural resources would be depleted because of over-population and that millions would die of starvation. The prologue began: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…. Our position requires that we take immediate action at home and promote effective action worldwide. We must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail….  The birth rate must be brought into balance with the death rate or mankind will breed itself into oblivion. We can no longer afford merely to treat the symptoms of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out. Population control is the only answer. Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich, 1968.” (Have you learned when anyone says, “This is the only way it will work” or “My answer is the only solution,” that it’s a red flag?) This book gave birth to the zero-population movement. Richard and I read the book and didn’t buy the arguments. But wherever I went, pushing my double stroller and obviously pregnant, people on the streets and in the stores made my pregnancy their business. “You must be crazy. You got a boy and a girl. Why’d you go and get yourself pregnant?” said a store clerk. “Either Catholic or Mormon” said a woman passing me on the street, and others made snide remarks about how I needed a lesson in reproduction.

            The zero populationists got their wish. The world’s population has slowed dramatically. In 2007, the world’s birthrate was 2.6 children per mother. In many countries the birth rate is now below the replacement level—fewer births than deaths—which is causing significant long-term problems. For example: China’s policies limiting couples to one child was accomplished with fines, abortions, and enforced contraception. The results have created significant problems. An aging population. Estimates are that by 2020, one in four Chinese citizens will be age sixty or over. Who will pay for their healthcare? Where will workers be found to support the economy? Too many boys. Since Chinese couples were limited to one child, many wanted a boy. The British Medical Journal, http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/270819, reported there are 32 million more males than females. What do you do with all these men? (It doesn’t take much imagination to fear this situation.) No family life. As these “only” children grow to be adults, assuming men can find women to marry, they will have no experience with siblings and very little experience with cousins, aunts, and uncles. Will couples want children or see them as a hindrance to education, prosperity, and pleasure? Other countries are facing the same problems. It’s estimated in a few years, the average Italian child will have no siblings and no cousins and the average age will be fifty-eight. Cynically, the comment was made that Italy will become a nation of wheelchairs. Fifteen nations, “including Russia, Germany, and Italy, each year fill more coffins than cradles,” a condition termed the “birth dirth.” (Quotes from: http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/15_3%20Population%20Growth%20II.htm).

            It’s been over forty years since Ehrlich’s dire prophecies, and starvation is still a great concern world-wide even though prosperous countries have done exactly what Ehrlich said would fix the problem. The have-not countries—Asian, African, and Latin American--still struggle to feed their people just as they did when The Population Bomb was written. Even in America, hunger is a problem, but it’s not because there are too many children. It’s because we fail to see and attend to the real problems. For example: According to http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm, the world’s food necessities AND the world’s sanitation needs could be met for a price tag of $13 billion a year. Where could that money come from? Every year people in the U.S. and Europe spend thirteen billion dollars on perfume. Where else could the money come from? Every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every year $3,075.64 is spent on pornography. That equals $184,500 per minute and $11,070,000 per hour. So, only as an illustration, if we shut down the perfume industry and gave all the money to food and hygiene needs around the world, where would the manpower come from to distribute the food and create the infrastructure in these needy countries? Here’s evidence that a lot of time is being wasted. “Every second 28,258 Internet users are viewing pornography. In that same second 372 internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines. Every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is being created in the U.S.” (http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html). The prosperous nations in their excesses could resolve the world’s hunger needs. Also, in too many situations, hunger is used as a political weapon. For example in Ethiopia, the government created famine for political reasons, not because there were too many people or too little food but for the lust of power.

            The most amazing aspect of the last forty years is the scientific advances as the world has become more productive with new technology and new inventions. The world has become an incredibly different place than when Ehrlich superimposed 1968 on the rest of time with a simplistic solution. For example: In 1970 the floppy disk was invented. 1971’s inventions included the dot-matrix printer, the food processor, the liquid-crystal display (LED), the microprocessor, the VCR. Nineteen-seventy-two saw the invention of the word processor and the first video game. 1973 is when gene splicing was invented. In 1977, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was invented. Cell phones were invented in 1979. The hepatitis-B vaccine was invented in 1980, followed by the inventions in 1981 of MS-DOS and the IBM personal computer. In 1984, the CD-ROM was invented and the next year Microsoft introduced Windows. In 1989, the World Wide Web (WWW) and high-definition television were invented. Digital answering machines were invented in 1991. Moving ten years ahead, the iPod was announced in 2001. In 2003, Toyota announced the hybrid car. In 2004, Youtube began and in 2007 the iPhone came to be. Throughout the history of the world, there have been pessimists, prophets of doom and gloom, who see nothing but problems in the future and try to influence, if not enforce, detrimental changes with limited vision. Thank goodness for the optimists who see opportunities and get to work to make the world a better place. Perhaps Dr. Ehrlich would like to go back to 1968 and give up his plasma television, digital cameras, computers, iPhone, the amazing photos from the Hubble telescope, his medications and healthcare, and whichever sports car he drives. Perhaps he prefers no air bags, no cell phones, no Internet, no DNA fingerprinting, no global-positioning satellites to name only a few.

            Baby number three was due in February. In November, a friend in our apartment complex had her twenty-six-year-old unmarried sister move in with her. I met her and saw that she was about as pregnant as I was. Somehow I felt I should not make reference to our pregnancies. Just before Thanksgiving, I saw my friend and her sister walking around the courtyard. I thought I was just being friendly and went into the courtyard to visit, very soon wishing I hadn’t. My friend was weeping inconsolably and her sister was obviously no long pregnant. A few days later my friend through her tears told me her sister had had an abortion despite the fact that she and her husband had offered to raise the baby as their own.

            Fast forward some years. We now had four children and were pregnant with the fifth. In my sixth month I went to a specialist because of a minor procedure. At the hospital I was told to undress, lie on the examining table, and cover myself with a sheet, which I did even though I didn’t know why undressing was necessary. The head nurse and a doctor came into the room and stood over me in an ominous, intimidating way. The doctor said, “When do you want your abortion?” “What?” I said. The doctor repeated his question. “I want this baby,” I said in shock, which provoked a tirade from the nurse and the doctor. I was called a traitor to mankind, my intelligence was demeaned, and as I continually repeated, “I will not have an abortion,” they raised their voices and threatened me. “Well, then,” the doctor said, “I will tie your tubes after this baby is born. I will not be party to you single-handedly over-populating the world.” I had no way of escaping the situation and was fearful for what was going to happen.

            I hadn’t noticed a student nurse standing quietly in the corner. Suddenly she grabbed a large towel, stepped between the doctor and me, helped me off of the examining table, wrapped the towel around me, and said, “Let’s get you out of here,” all in the blink of an eye. The doctor and head nurse were speechless. The student nurse took me to another room, went back in and got my clothes, helped me dress, and showed me how to leave the hospital. I’ve always regretted I didn’t get her name. I hope her nursing career wasn’t ended because of her courageous interference in my behalf. The baby the doctor wanted to abort is thirty-eight. She is a college graduate, has a lovely singing voice, and is beautiful to look at. She volunteers in several organization and has added to society. If she had been aborted, she would have been nothing more than another abortion statistic. One more senseless, useless crime against humanity would have been tallied.

            History records evidence that other cultures have sacrificed children. “How pagan! How uncivilized! How detestable!” we think. At the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan built by the Aztecs, remains of children have been found who were sacrificed to Tlaloc, the god of rain. In Incan ruins, little frozen corpses are being discovered on South American mountaintops. The Incas sacrificed children in a rite called capacocha to celebrate notable events such as the death of the emperor or a great victory in battle or to stop nature’s fury such as in earthquakes or famines. Their deaths were accomplished by a blow to the head, strangulation, poisoning, or they were left to die of exposure. The Moche culture of northern Peru seemed to have practiced mass sacrifices of men and boys. A tophet, a god-like brass statue had arms that stretched out. The tophet was heated to an extreme temperature and the child was placed on or between its hands. As the child began to scream, the priest would beat a drum so the father might not hear the cries of his son. In thirteen Old Testament verses, mention of child sacrifice is made. An example from Ezekiel 23:37, 39: “With their idols have they… caused their sons… to pass for them through the fire, to devour them….  For when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it; and, lo, thus have they done in the midst of mine house.” There are many more examples. Is abortion any different from placing a child on a burning hot idol and the priest (today’s pro-choice advocates) drumming out the cries of the infants? Surely our culture is as “corrupt and vicious.”

            Statistics vary depending on the slant, but reliable sources indicate that since the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, about one million babies a year have been sacrificed in the United States not to a rain god but to the god of convenience. Abortion shows the depravity of the United States that a child must die so that a woman can do as she wishes. If she doesn’t want a child, she should not dishonestly invite a baby to be conceived within herself only to destroy it shortly afterwards. Norma McCorvey, who was Jane Roe in Roe vs. Wade said in 2001: "My case was wrongfully decided, and has caused great harm to the women and children of our nation." One of the great harms is denying society the benefit that could have come from those aborted babies. Pope John Paul II said: “A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope.”

            Over one hundred years ago, in 1909, F. M. Bareham wrote:

            “A century ago men were following with bated breath the march of Napoleon and waiting with feverish impatience for news of the wars. And all the while in their homes babies were being born. But who could think about babies? Everybody was thinking about battles.
            “In one year between Trafalgar and Waterloo there stole into the world a host of heroes: Gladstone was born in Liverpool; Tennyson at the Somersby Rectory, and Oliver Wendell Holmes in Massachusetts. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, and music was enriched by the advent of Felix Mendelssohn in Hamburg.
            “But nobody thought of babies, everybody was thinking of battles. Yet which of the battles of 1809 mattered more than the babies of 1809? We fancy God can manage his world only with great battalions, when all the time he is doing it with beautiful babies.
            “When a wrong wants righting, or a truth wants preaching, or a continent wants discovering, God sends a baby into the world to do it" (As quoted in Faith Precedes the Miracle, Spencer W. Kimball, 323).  

            Of the millions of babies that have been sacrificed, who knows what genius, what art, what literature, what science and discovery, what music, what leaders have been sacrificed? A nation reaps what it sows. Mother Teresa’s said: "Saying that there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers." Abortion is an act of desperation; it is an act of violence; it is an ultimate and final abuse of the weakest among us; it is as ugly and horrible as a priest drumming so that the cries of the child cannot be heard. Dr. Seuss makes the point: “Even though you can’t see or hear [your baby] at all, a person’s a person, no matter how small’’ (Horton Hears a Who!). I believe in babies. I believe in adoption for unwanted pregnancies.

           

Questions and Answers about Abortion

Question: What does abort mean?

Answer: Abort means to terminate, end, abandon, call off, cancel, stop before it’s over.

Question: What is abortion?

Answer: An abortion is a medical procedure that terminates a pregnancy by killing the unborn baby. Abortion means ending a pregnancy before the baby can live independently outside the mother. A partial-birth abortion kills a baby that could live independently outside the mother.

Question: How is abortion performed?

Answer:  There are five methods.

            The abortion pill (RU486, Mifepristone) is approved for use up to the 49th day after the woman’s last menstrual period. Three offices visits may be needed for the procedure. At the first visit the “mother” takes the pills to kill the life growing within her. If with two days, the abortion has not happened, more drugs are given to cause enough cramping to expel the dead embryo. On the third visit, the “mother” is checked to make sure the procedure worked.             If the pregnancy occurred more than 50 days before the last menstrual cycle, the doctor inserts a thin tube into the uterus and attaches it to a hand vacuum which suctions the embryo out.

            If the pregnancy occurred between 6 to 14 weeks after the last menstrual cycle, a tube is inserted. This time a suction machine sucks the embryo out in pieces. A curette which is a loop-shaped knife may also be used to scrape out any parts that don’t come out easily. This process is called Dilation and Curette or D&C for short.     

         If the pregnancy has progressed to between 13-24 weeks, suction alone won’t pull the body apart. So the doctor pulls the baby out in parts with forceps. The head is crushed to help it come out easier. This process is called Dilation and Evacuation, or D&E for short. The curette may be needed again to remove remaining tissue. 

            If you are 20 weeks to full term, the process is called Dilation and Extraction, D&X for short. In this process a drug to kill the baby is injected into the baby’s heart. The cervix is stretched. This takes about two days and then amniotic sac is punctured and drained. Then the doctor proceeds as with the D&E. (See http://www.optionline.org/abortion.html for more information.)

Question: What are the physical risks of abortion?

Answer: Physical risks of abortion include:

         Heavy Bleeding: Some bleeding after abortion is normal. However, if the cervix is torn or the uterus punctured, there is a risk of severe bleeding known as hemorrhaging. When this happens, a blood transfusion may be required.  Severe bleeding is also a risk with the use of RU486. One in every hundred women who use RU486 requires surgery to stop the bleeding.

         Infection: Infection can develop from the insertion of medical instruments into the uterus, or from fetal parts that are mistakenly left inside (known as an incomplete abortion). A pelvic infection may lead to persistent fever over several days and extended hospitalization. It can also cause scarring of the pelvic organs.

         Incomplete Abortion: Some fetal parts may be mistakenly left inside after the abortion. Bleeding and infection may result.

         Sepsis: A number of RU486 users have died as a result of sepsis (total body infection).

         Anesthesia:  Complications from general anesthesia used during abortion surgery may result in convulsions, heart attack, and in extreme cases, death.  It also increases the risk of other serious complications by two and one-half times.

         Damage to the Cervix: The cervix may be cut, torn, or damaged by abortion instruments. This can cause excessive bleeding that requires surgical repair. Other abortion instruments may cause permanent scarring of the uterine lining. 

         Perforation of the Uterus: The uterus may be punctured or torn by abortion instruments. The risk of this complication increases with the length of the pregnancy. If this occurs, major surgery may be required, including removal of the uterus (known as a hysterectomy).

         Damage to Internal Organs: When the uterus is punctured or torn, there is also a risk that damage will occur to nearby organs such as the bowel and bladder.

         Death: In extreme cases, other physical complications from abortion including excessive bleeding, infection, organ damage from a perforated uterus, and adverse reactions to anesthesia may lead to death. (Quoted from www.pregnancycenters.org/abortion.html.)            

       “A study published in the Southern Medical Journal, linked death records to Medi-Cal payments for births and abortions for approximately 173,000 low income Californian women. In that study, the researchers discovered that women who had abortions were almost twice as likely to die in the following two years and that the elevated mortality rate of aborting women persisted over at least eight years. This is the second record-based study to be published in the last eighteen months to show that the death rates following abortion are significantly higher than those associated with birth…. Researchers believe that higher levels of depression and anxiety following abortion may explain this result.” (See www.afterabortion.org/news/Gissler AJOG.html.)

Question: What are the emotional risks of abortion?

Answer: There is evidence that abortion is associated with a decrease in emotional as well as physical health. For some women these negative emotions may be very strong, and can appear within days or after many years.  This psychological response is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Some of the symptoms are eating disorders, relationship problems, guilt, depression, flashbacks of the abortion, suicidal thoughts, sexual dysfunction, alcohol and drug abuse.

Question: What are the spiritual consequences of abortion?

Answer: “People have different understandings of God. Whatever your present beliefs may be, there is a spiritual side to abortion that deserves to be considered. Having an abortion may affect more than just your body and your mind -- it may have an impact on your relationship with God. What is God's desire for you in this situation? How does God see your unborn child? These are important questions to consider. You have three options: kill your baby, raise your baby, place your child for adoption. Each year over 50,000 women in America make this choice. This loving decision is often made by women who first thought abortion was their only way out” http://www.birthline.org/questions.html).

Question: Where can I get addition information?

Answer:

·      Birthright:  800-550-4900

·      Pregnancy Hotline: 800-848-LOVE

·      Bethany Christians Services: 800-238-4269

·      OptionLine: 800-395-HELP

·      Rachel's Vineyard: 877 HOPE 4 ME (877 467 3463) or www.rachelsvineyard.org

·      LDS Family Services: 1-800-537-2229; https://www.itsaboutlove.org/

Agency-Preserving Principles

Take wisdom and counsel from those who have walked the road of life before you.	Pope John Paul II said: “A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope.” Mother Teresa said: “Saying there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers. Norma McCorvey, the woman who wanted an abortion and let her case be used in the 1973 Supreme Court case, Roe vs. Wade, making abortion legal in the United States, switched sides in 1995, regretting what her case has done to America. She said: "My case was wrongfully decided, and has caused great harm to the women and children of our nation."
Never believe you will be the exception to the laws of nature.	The odds are one-hundred percent you won’t get pregnant if you don’t have sex. If you get pregnant when you are not married and keep the baby, you will be in the poorest economic group in the U.S. “Single mothers with children are in the lowest economic category. American family structure has changed in the past four decades due to a rise in the divorce rate and a rise in never-married women with children. Mother-only families have become increasingly common. In 1960, non-married women headed about 9 percent of families with children; by 1999 the number was over 20 percent (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1961, 2000). In the meantime, female-headed households consistently comprised a large proportion of poor households. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, female-headed families with children were five times more likely to be poor than two-parent families with children (Furstenberg, 1990; Garfinkel & McLanahan, 1986; Nichols-Casebolt & Krysik, 1997; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001).
Know you will harvest what you sow.	Nearly 40 percent of babies born in the United States in 2007 were born to unwed mothers, according to data released by the National Center for Health Statistics. The 1.7 million out-of-wedlock births, of 4.3 million total births, marked a more than 25 percent jump from five years before. In 2000, 35.1 percent of female-headed families with children under 18 lived in poverty, compared with 6.9 percent of married-couples with children under 18. In the same year, female-headed households with children under 18 comprised 52 percent of all poor households with children under 18 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001).
Learn the lessons of history so you won’t repeat the mistakes.	The children who waited for the second marshmallow achieved more throughout their lives. Resist any impulse to have sex before you are married. Resist and persist any impulse to have sex with anyone other than your husband or wife after you are married. Persist in your resolve. Don’t let the desire for sexual gratification interfere with your hopes and desires for the future. People who get married for sex is like buying a jet plane for the peanuts.
Find the power in resisting impulse, persisting, and delaying gratification.	You’d think by watching TV and movies that everyone has sex before marriage. They don’t, but even if everyone else did, it wouldn’t make it right, or wise, or good. The argument: “Everyone else is doing it” is unfounded. But even if everyone else were jumping from an airplane without a parachute, would that mean you should too? Sex only in marriage means no sexually transmitted disease, no abortions, no guilt, no scandals, no embarrassment to yourself or your family, no emotional trauma that attends doing something wrong. And your actions will be in harmony with what the Bible teaches. If you have already had pre-marital sex, an abortion, a baby out of wedlock, an affair during marriage, begin today to gain your agency back by making moral choices.
Develop personal integrity and make moral decisions.	“It's more difficult for unwed mothers to get married, and if they do, they tend to not marry well. Overall, the results show that women who bear children out of wedlock do not fare well in the marriage market. Most unwed mothers want to have a satisfying marriage and family, but have significant obstacles to finding a good mate.”  (See http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/unwed_mothers). No matter what your choices have been in the past, you can begin today to develop the courage to make moral decisions.
Work , work, work.	You can do hard things. You can work through any and every problem.
Know that others see things you don’t and welcome their perspectives.	Life turns out best when done in this order: Graduate from high school; Train for a career with additional education; Get married; Have children; Stay married .
Make goals, write them down, use failure avoidance, prioritize, avoid procrastination.	Make a goal to get the most education you can. Failure avoidance looks ahead to the future and doesn’t do things today that will cause sadness, heart ache, or embarrassment in the future.
Value yourself. Know you can make a difference. Do good to feel good.	Having sex before marriage or with anyone other than your husband or wife after marriage diminishes your feelings of self-worth. To feel good about yourself means when you make a mistake you work to make it right, learn the lessons, and move forward. If you have become pregnant before marriage and the man who got you pregnant will make a good husband and father, get married. If he won’t, allow your baby to be adopted by a woman and a man who are married and who are emotionally and financially secure.
Develop a happy inner core.	Remember the “happy face advantage.” If you get pregnant before marriage, you can still have a happy life. Don’t turn one bad decision, having sex before marriage, into two, aborting the baby. If you get pregnant before marriage, so did 1.7 million in 1997. This may be common but it’s not smart, or wise or good for either your or your baby’s futures. Having sex before marriage is wrong and killing an unborn children is more wrong. Keeping the baby does not make the wrongs right. The best outcome for an unwed mother is to allow a woman and a man who are married and emotionally and financially secure to adopt the baby. This is the best choice for the unwed mother and the baby, but adoption happens in only 2% of the time: §   From 1952 to 1972, 8.7% of all premarital births were placed for adoption. §   From 1973 to 1981, this percentage fell to 4.1%. §   From 1982 to 1988, it fell further to 2%. (Bachrach, Stolley, London, 1992) §   Women who voluntarily place their children for adoption are likely to have greater educational and vocational goals for themselves than those who keep their children. Women making adoption plans often come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. These women come from intact families which are supportive of the placement, and which have not experienced teenage pregnancies by other family members. (Stolley,1993) §   Women whose mothers completed at least one year of college were 3 times more likely to place their babies for adoption than women whose mothers did not complete high school. (Bachrach, Stolley & London, 1992.) §   If you give your baby to a married man and woman, you will always know you made a moral decision.
Develop the backbone to say “NO!”	Say “no” to times, places, and to people who try to persuade you to commit immoral acts. Say “yes” to living a moral life. Do things today you will be proud of in twenty years.