Mary Zwicker:
Abortion pill – a chemical abortion — usage has skyrocketed in recent years, transforming the once peaceful homes of countless women into bloody abortuaries, and transforming countless mothers into agents of death as they take on the role of abortionist.
While many women choose chemical abortions because they believe that it will be safer, more private, and an overall easier experience than a surgical abortion, the truth is far more sinister. Although Planned Parenthood promises women that chemical abortions are very “effective” and that they are just like “an early miscarriage,” in reality, chemical abortions leave women damaged in a way that is not always seen in a surgical abortion.
Angelina Steenstra, national coordinator of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign in Canada and president of Second Chance Abortion Healing ministry, told The Interim that she believes that the feelings a woman would experience after a chemical abortion would be something akin to solitary confinement.
Steenstra said that sending a woman to do a chemical abortion is “sentencing her… into her own cell, to perform her own abortion, and to pick up all the consequences herself. Talk about solitary confinement!” I think that could just drive people insane,” she said.
Steestra said that she believed chemical abortions, and how they are advertised, is extremely deceptive. She said that although the idea of cutting out the middle man can certainly be appealing, the fact is that it leaves women feeling completely isolated.
The bond between a mother and her child is said to be the strongest bond that exists on earth. St. Edith Stein said that “to be a mother is to nourish and protect true humanity and bring it to development.” As in all abortions, this bond is corrupted when the mother ceases to protect her unborn child. However, in a chemical abortion, there seems to be a particularly sinister aspect since all other intermediaries are either minimized or cut out completely, and the mother alone becomes the abortionist, killing the child herself.
Alice von Hildebrand is quoted as saying that it is in a woman’s very nature to be maternal, and that this maternal instinct is in her very being, whether she acts this motherhood out biologically, psychologically, or spiritually. If this is so, then one can only imagine the spiritual suffering and damage, the internal torment that a mother would bring upon herself when she kills her child. She has killed the very thing, her child, that would allow her to most fully act out her maternal instincts. Not only would a chemical abortion be spiritually devastating, but the psychological ramifications of such an event could also take a massive toll on a woman who has become the primary murderer of the child she is meant to nourish and protect.
Jakki Jeffs, executive director of Alliance for Life Ontario, told The Interim that while she believed all abortions are an abandonment, she thought that chemical abortions especially abandon a woman to a particularly cruel fate.
“Now they are making it totally down to the woman herself,” said Jeffs. “She takes the pill, she takes it at her home, takes the next pill, makes sure to watch herself and know whether she is having a regular response to it or not, what length of pregnancy she is experiencing, or whether she has an ectopic pregnancy.”
Jeffs went on to say that chemical abortions are not healthcare, no matter how much pro-abortion organizations may insist that it is. “If you have kidney stones they do not leave you at home to figure out the best method for you, or whether or not you need surgery. So, if this is medical care why did they put the care away? This is like a back street abortion at home.”
Steenstra also expressed her pity and sympathy for women who undergo a chemical abortion, saying that the guilt and trauma experienced after a chemical abortion must be unbearable. “It’s not like in a surgical abortion, where there are all these people involved who could at any point stop what is going on,” she said. “In a surgical abortion, the ultrasound person could have said something, but didn’t. The anesthesiologist didn’t say anything.
The doctor didn’t say anything. My neighbours didn’t say anything.” Streenstra said that while in a surgical abortion, there are levels of responsibility on others involved that could lessen a woman’s guilt, in a chemical abortion, all that guilt rests on her alone. “Talk about fully culpable in this situation,” she said.
Steenstra went on to say that the things women see during their chemical abortion can all become abortion connecters – reminders to the woman of the abortion she had. She said, “depending on how it takes place, if it takes place in your house, your bathroom, your hands, all become abortion connectors.”
Steenstra went on to mention a woman who came to Second Chance Abortion Healing for healing help. The woman could not understand why, every few months, she was compelled to pack up and leave her new house and move to a new place. This would occur over and over, until the people helping this woman discovered that she had had a chemical abortion, and this was her trauma response. Steenstra said that the woman had an obsession with trying to always fix up the bathroom in each new house, which would have been where the main part of the chemical abortion would have occurred, and where the most horrific of her memories would be associated.
Jeffs said she thought chemical abortions could be made analogous to physician-assisted suicide. She said that, to date, Ontario has approximately 10,000 deaths that are attributed to euthanasia. Out of these, she said only two of these deaths were due to assisted-suicide. “I think that is because there is a deep-seated knowledge that people know that killing yourself is not right,” she said, adding that the same thing goes for killing another person. Once the responsibility can be placed into the hands of a medical professional, people feel that it is nobler. But, just like in assisted suicide, that responsibility is brought down to the individual themselves.
“I don’t know what the trauma is going to be like for women,” she said, “because now all that is on the women. You can do it all yourself, and witness the results. I do not know who would not be traumatized.”
Steenstra offered a message of hope. “The truth sets us free,” she said. “The beauty of this is we can now speak out about this, and the harm caused by chemical abortions.” Which might bring some spiritual and mental healing to women responsible for their own abortions.
