The liberal media sure wants you to believe that women never regret their abortions. Just look at some of these recent headlines.
A Salon article was published titled “Debunking the ‘abortion regret’ narrative: Data shows women feel relief, not regret.” The Washington Post’s headline mused, “Five years after an abortion, most women say they made the right decision.” CNN went with “The majority of women feel relief, not regret, after an abortion, study says.” Meanwhile, VICE published a piece titled “Most women don’t regret abortions. Why would they?”
This reporting stems from the “Turnaway Study,” conducted by pro-abortion researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and other pro-abortion institutions, and funded by pro-abortion foundations. The results of the study’s survey of 667 women — a small sample size that amounts to less than a third of the number of women who have abortions every day in the United States — is that abortion regret essentially does not exist.
This will be news to the thousands of women who have registered their regret and testified publicly with the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, as well as and the hundreds of thousands of women who have sought healing after abortion at Rachel’s Vineyard. According to the liberal media, these women must live in an alternative universe, one where there are actual emotional consequences to aborting one’s own child.
Of course, this latest bit of pro-abortion propaganda conveniently comes out just before the 47th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and as hundreds of thousands of Americans are making travel plans to the March for Life in D.C., San Francisco, and all over the country. The liberal media’s misleading coverage of this study, which stops just short of recommending abortion, cannot reverse the powerful pro-life trends at work in our nation.
The abortion rate is lower than it has been since Roe v. Wade, record numbers of abortion businesses have closed, and states have passed hundreds of laws designed to protect the unborn. And the most hopeful sign that the tide is turning is that the abortion rate is falling even in states with few restrictions. The fact is, mothers are choosing life because it, not abortion, is the truly empowering choice. The theme of this year’s March for Life is “Life Empowers – Pro-life is Pro-woman.”
It is not pro-woman to tell an unexpectedly pregnant mother that she is not up to the challenge of motherhood. No one is saying teenage motherhood is ideal (those numbers are down, too), but choosing abortion is a dead end. Meanwhile, choosing life allows for countless possibilities.
There’s also nothing empowering about the act of abortion itself.
Abortion is not an act of power, but despair. And the abortion industry is not a beacon of freedom, it is a money-making industry, and nothing more. Abortion is not “healthcare,” because pregnancy is not a disease. Women are manipulated and abused by abortion providers, and their babies are thrown away as medical waste.
The women of Silent No More who will share their heart-breaking testimonies at the March for Life in D.C. and the Walk for Life in San Francisco this coming week will tell their stories of being held down on cold tables as their children were violently ripped from their wombs. Afterward, they were guided to (often filthy) recliners with all the other women who had just endured the same nightmare. They will tell you about the weeping and the anguish, and sometimes, the excruciating pain.
And yes, they will tell you about the regret, sometimes repressed for years, but ultimately responsible for life-altering consequences such as failed relationships, drug and alcohol addictions, more abortions and, sometimes, thoughts of suicide. Additionally, sometimes women are the victims of botched abortions and will never be able to have children afterwards.
In 2013, the New York Times tucked an interesting fact toward the end of a long story on abortion: Just 5% of women who were denied abortion and had their babies wish they hadn’t. The other 95%, in the words of the researcher quoted, “adjust.”
Every life is full of adjustments: Illnesses we haven’t planned, deaths of loved ones that we would never have chosen, lost jobs, divorce. The list of unexpected events is endless, and yet we find a way to go on. Adjusting to the reality of a brand new unplanned life, while admittedly difficult in many circumstances, is the most empowering adjustment we can make.
Rev. Frank Pavone is the national director of Priests for Life.
