Ten reasons why women should abandon abortion

By Marita Vargas

1. Women are the guardians of life. Women have held the unique position of giver, protector and nurturer of life since the human story began. They give up this singular position at their own peril. In recent years they have been taught that it is smart, chic or sophisticated to deny the role and abdicate the position by availing themselves of abortion, but the cost to women, babies and society can no longer be denied. Men, for example, are less likely to live by the law of "women and children first," the first cry heard in times past when tragedy struck on land or sea. Our adherence to the old code was the finest acknowledgment we had that preserving the lives of mother and child was the surest way to preserve the future. Now that we find ourselves sailing on a dangerous societal sea, it's time to reassert common sense and embrace the common heritage that has preserved us for generations.

2. Abortion is not the Great Equalizer: Those early campaigners for abortion rights sold their idea by claiming it would level the playing field between women and men. Abortion was supposed to erase the consequences of sexual union and allow men and women to compete on an equal footing in the bedroom and in the boardroom. In reality, a woman who has undergone an abortion is not the same as a man who has never undergone an abortion and never will. She carries around the scars, emotional wounds and regrets — not conditions that make for peace of mind or clear judgment in any arena. In fact, if you throw in the potential of male coercion in favor of her obtaining her abortion, you have stripped away any pretense of equality. The unsought consequence: broken lives, not just broken promises.

3. Abortion is a right that doesn't require its exercise to maximize fulfillment: Stack abortion up against any of the great freedoms and you have a shadow right. If freedom of speech is denied it has the effect of crippling one's ability to act in the public square. It's the same with freedom to worship, to assemble, to publish a political opinion or to petition the government. Conversely, if you do not exercise these rights, you are only a fraction of what you could be. In order to be fully alive you must speak up, carry out your duty before God, disseminate your views and let the government know when it has failed in its duty or gone beyond its rightful bounds. Not so with abortion. Go through life without exercising your "right" and you can at the very least breath a sigh of relief or at most breath the peace of angels.

4. Abortion is linked to breast cancer, among other threatening conditions: Though you may not hear it from your friendly, neighborhood abortionist, groups such as the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons; MaterCare International, an international group of OBGYNs; and the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute have affirmed the breast cancer/abortion link. [1] Further, they've called on doctors to warn their patients of the risks. A risk warning is, of course, the least that we might expect in a medical setting. But while abortion providers are divided on what constitutes non-medical pre-abortion counseling, doctors should not hesitate to mention health complications such as the risk of infection, infertility, miscarriage or pre-mature birth in post-abortive women. Choice, after all, must mean informed choice. It's a woman's body we're talking about..

5. Abortion leads to emotional scarring: You can read the stories posted at Operation Outcry: Silent No More about the emotional toll abortion takes (www.operationoutcry.org). Each one is heart rending. Then take time to learn about Rachel's Vineyard, an organization devoted to helping women find healing and forgiveness after an abortion (www.rachelsvineyard.org). If you're the skeptical type, unearth the 5,347 affidavits filed as part of Norma McCorvey's Rule 60 Motion asking the Supreme Court to overthrow Roe v. Wade in light of the anguish and pain abortion causes women. Excerpts of the affidavits testify to the guilt, depression and anger that follow in abortion's wake. [2] Millions of women have suffered through post abortion trauma. Their voices should go a long way toward creating the sisterhood feminism promised but never delivered. Learning about the emotional price of abortion will help you avoid making such a choice, and it could help you talk to a friend who hasn't been quite so lucky.

6. Abortion doesn't figure into life's dreams: Few young women make a five-year plan for their life that includes: college, affair, abortion, heartache. Followed by: career, affair, another abortion, heartache. Then finally: marriage, third pregnancy, first live birth, happiness. Though some may find nothing wrong with the life scheme given above, most women will spot the flaws right away. To further complicate things, abortion may make the standard marriage and family dream difficult or impossible. Problems can include a range of post-abortion reactions from grief on the emotional side to infertility on the physical side. It is hard to make gambling with one's emotional and physical health sound like a good way to live with purpose or reach personal goals.

7. Abortion doesn't make for honest relationships: When the abortion option is kept at the back of your mind, you don't have to be fully honest about your love relationships. Trouble is, whether held consciously or not, the abortion contingency plan may prevent your asking what you really want from your relationship and from asking him what he really wants. Now, it doesn't take a genius to see that if either party is masking his or her true desires, basic honesty is lost. Though it may be painful to wade through the unspoken assumptions and wishful thinking inherent in love outside courtship, it's more painful to do so when a baby's life is at stake. Even more painful to awake to discover, after the baby is gone and the relationship is over, that you've allowed yourself to be treated like an object. It happens — you know. It happens. But it needn't happen to you. After all, the women's movement was invented to ensure that women would never be treated like objects again. Isn't that what you've heard?

8. Abortion contradicts the nature of motherhood: The mother/child bond is the source of unconditional love, the model of nurture and relatedness. Besides ensuring their child's emotional health by establishing a strong bond, millions of mothers the world over guide their children through morals and manners and equip them to lead meaningful lives. This happy arrangement has blessed the human race for eons. No one who's thought about it could possibly believe that weakening the nurturing role of mothers strengthens children. Yet abortion does just that — it weakens the mother/child bond. Women who have wielded both their life giving and death-dealing capabilities often become troubled mothers. [3] That's why a post-abortion society has seen a rise in child abuse, not a decline.

9. Abortion costs a baby's life: All of us are living a life that began at conception. Though we took our right to privacy for granted, we unfolded according to an intricately balanced plan so that we might emerge and leave the womb behind. Only 21 days into the process our hearts were pumping. Twenty-one days later, somebody with the right equipment could measure our brainwaves. Though we stuck to the serious business of growing, we were not indifferent to others — especially our mothers. At 21 weeks we recognized our mothers' voices, but our mothers must have been talking to us all the way along. Guided by maternal instinct, these baby-talkers initiated the mother/child bond. Science has only corroborated what every expectant mother knows — that the life she holds inside herself is a human life. Through pictures taken at ever earlier points of gestation, the mystery of life has been revealed. We should marvel at the miracle at each step along the way. Every finer instinct urges us to cherish this new life.

10. Abortion alters history down through the generations: The baby growing within your womb contains not only a unique blend of traits inherited from her mother and father, but contains within herself the unique traits that will be passed onto her children. She doesn't only become an individual with her own personal hair color, fingerprints, blood type and propensities; but, in utero, contains the DNA codes that will be passed onto your grandbabies. It is impossible to rob the world of one life without robbing it of all possible lives that may be born to the baby you carry. The wonder of it all is staggering.

However, the imagination it would take to multiply the effects of loss to the human race, down through the ages, as the result of abortion, has yet to be developed. That is, we haven't grasped just what is happening to the shape of humanity as a result of widespread abortion. In a world where we have not yet begun to assimilate the effects of genocide, where ethnic and ideological cleansing on a wide scale, defy our moral sense; should we not tremble at the horrible day of reckoning that the continuance of abortion must surely bring? Can we not use our wisdom and honor, our love of beauty and sense of wonder to stop the practice now? Surely, women should be the first and easiest to convince that walking away from abortion is in their best interest.

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© Marita Vargas