MODEL: LISA DBBERN, ATCHISON SENIOR. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY KIT LEFFLER
Abortion does more than cause arguments — it alters lives.
obody wants to have an abortion. Sara* didn't. But when the Topeka senior was pregnant at 17, without health insurance and with three younger siblings to help provide for, abortion seemed the only answer. Her mom had gotten pregnant with her at 17, and Sara knew the poverty and neglect this had caused. She didn't want to perpetuate the cycle.
"There was no way I was going to bring a kid into this," she says. "It would not be nourished. It would not be loved. It would be a burden on me."
Sara doesn't regret her choice. The second her pregnancy ended was when her second chance at a good life began, she says. Rather than dwelling on the child she doesn't have now, she is thankful for what she does have and she is proud to be the first person in her family to go to college. She hopes she'll have children someday — when she's ready.
Joy Lawson, Olathe senior and president of Students for Reproductive Rights, says she has several friends who have had abortions, like Sara, they don't regret the choice — if they felt like they had a choice at all. Not every woman does, Lawson says. She adds that because not every woman can afford a child, abortion is something some must choose to sustain
Sara is far from alone in choosing abortion. Studies indicate that in the United States, 25 percent of pregnancies end in abortion. This amounts to more than 47 million abortions since the procedure became legal in 1973, and 50 percent of the women who undergo the procedure are in the 15 to 24 age range, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. These statistics show that — no matter how overly debated the issue may seem — the most important issues surrounding abortion deserve consideration, as do the experiences of those affected by them.
themselfs. And about 1 percent of the time, abortions are performed because a woman is physically endangered by her pregnancy. Sometimes people concentrate too much on what abortion does to the fetus, Lawson says, and forget about the woman carrying it.
after she was married and had suffered several miscarriages. As she mourned the loss of these children she'd wanted, she also grieved for the life she'd chosen to end.
Anna* understands feeling that abortion is the only answer. When the Kansas City woman found she was pregnant during her senior year at KU, she didn't consider other options. She didn't want to think — all she wanted was to not be pregnant. Her fiancé agreed abortion was the right choice.
Immediately after the procedure Anna felt relief, but the feeling didn't last. Within a few months she began to wish she hadn't had the abortion. Regret it especially hard years later,
by Erin Wisdom
Now, 15 years after her abortion, Anna has two little boys and has been through a post-abortion healing process. She says she knows God has forgiven her, but this doesn't mean the past never hurts.
ber is the moment she was taken from me," she says of her aborted child. "And that was my doing — mine and my husband's. I would do anything to protect my boys. It's very hard to think I didn't do that for her."
"The one thing I'll always remem-
Regret like this is not typical, says
CONTRACEPTIVE USE
But there are also numerous studies that say otherwise. One published in the American Journal of Psychiatry reports that 50 percent of the 500 post-abortive women it surveyed ex-
Vanessa Cullins, vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Women are more likely to experience psychological trauma after giving birth than after having an abortion, she says, adding that the women who are most likely to have negative emotional reactions to abortion are those who had psychological problems beforehand or who had to end a pregnancy they wanted. Numerous studies support her statement. One published in the American Journal of Psychiatry reports that up to 98 percent of the women it surveyed did not regret having abortions and would make the same choice again in similar circumstances.
Fifty-four percent of women having abortions used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant.
Source; Alan Guttmacher Institute
sexual dysfunctions, loss of self-esteem, drug and alcohol abuse, depression, thoughts of suicide and even suicide attempts.
Pat Klausner, the program coordinator of Project Rachel, an outreach program for women suffering after having abortions, has witnessed some of these reactions in women she has worked with. She says she's also seen abortion lead to failed relationships. Often the emotional trauma caused by an abortion is too much for a relationship to withstand, she says.
Unlike the women Klausner has worked with, Melinda* hasn't experienced any emotional burden from her abortion. When the senior at the University of Missouri-Kansas City was pregnant two years ago, she already had a 5-year-old and didn't want to double her difficulties as a single mother. Plus, she had her son to think about.
Twenty-five percent of pregnancies end in abortion, and 50 percent of the women who have them are between 15 and 24, according to the U.S. Census Bureau
"I felt that I had made a commitment to be the best parent I could
pressed negative emotions and that close to 10 percent had developed "serious psychiatric complications" since their abortions. Among the negative reactions to abortion that studies report are guilt, nervous disorders, sleep disturbances, regret, eating disorders,
to him under less than ideal circumstances, and that having another child at that time would have broken that commitment," she says.
She adds that although she hadn't understood the repercussions of having a child when shed had her son,
by the time she was pregnant again she knew them well.She says her decision to have an abortion had a lot to do with her being more mature than she was at 16 and with her desire to finish school and to give her son the best future possible.
Even when women, like Melinda, do not suffer emotionally from abortion, their physical health may be at risk.The National Cancer Institute does not recognize a link between abortion and breast cancer. Some studies indicate, however, that a woman who aborts her first pregnancy increases her risk of breast cancer by up to 50 percent. Other risks include infection, hemorrhage, uterine damage and cervical damage, which the National Abortion Federation acknowledges, but says occur in fewer than 1 percent of cases.
Other studies report higher occurrences of these complications. One published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, found that of more than 1,000 women who underwent closely regulated hospital abortions, 27 percent acquired post-abortion infections. Another, published in Family Planning Perspectives journal, found that abortion led to cervical lacerations in 22 percent of the women it studied. This damage can weaken the cervix and cause a woman to miscarry or prematurely deliver future children — if she conceive again at all. Three to 5 percent of post-abortive women are left sterile, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal.
Women turn to abortion because they see it as something that will help them, but these possible physical and psychological consequences raise a question as to whether it actually does, says Carol Everett, author of the books Blood Money and The Scarlet Lady: Confessions of a Successful Abortionist. In the 1970s and 80s, Everett owned several abortion clinics in the Dallas area. For her and her colleagues,
she says, performing abortions wasn't about helping women. Rather, it was about how much money they could make — even when this meant selling abortions to women who weren't pregnant.Everett says that in 1983, she was on target to make $260,000.Once the additional clinics she'd planned were up and running, she says she expected to take home $1 million a year.
When money was all that mattered, Everett says, she could look beyond the destruction she witnessed every day in her clinics. Seeing a baby's form on a sonogram, seeing it pull away from the instruments inserted into its mother's womb, piecing the body parts back together after the abortion to make sure no parts had been left inside the mother — these left her no room to believe the unborn was only a glob of tissue, she says. Witnessing physical complications and emotional devastation left her no room to
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DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNBORN
Although not a complete list, these are some of the things that occur in the unborn during the first months of life.
**Conception:** The 46 chromosomes present in the zygote determine sex, eye color, hair color, height, facial features and — to some extent — intelligence and personality.
**Three weeks after conception:** Heart begins to beat.
conception: Basic facial features begin to appear.
Six weeks after
conception: Fingers and toes form.
Seven weeks after
conception: The embryo begins moving.
Eight weeks after
conception: The brain produces almost 250,000 new neurons every minute.
10 weeks after
conception: Fingernails and toenails appear.
11 weeks after
conception: The fetus flexes and kicks.
14 weeks after
conception: The fetus begins making facial expressions and may have frequent bouts of hiccups.
16 weeks after
conception: The fetus begins to hear noises such as a mother's heart
21 weeks after conception to birth The fetus may be able to survive outside the womb if it were to be born prematurely.
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Source:The Mayo Clinic
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