REASONS FOR ABORTION: Fear Tops the List

by Susan Fox

I love sitting in a restaurant by the water and looking out the window.

One day, I was doing just that when I saw a 9-year-old boy walk out on the dock with his fishing pole and drop his hook in the water.

It didn’t take very long before he excitedly pulled a wiggling fish out of the water onto the dock. Whoops! Somebody forgot to teach this young man what to do with a live fish! He became fearful and visibly distressed. Then he finally decided the matter. He stomped on the still-living, slippery fish with his shoes.

In many aspects of life, fear is something that can drive us to make poor choices. And while we may have compassion on the untrained fisher boy, we would argue that his actions were not merciful.  

Unfortunately, fear -- not mercy -- drives the abortion rate in the United States. The womb is probably the most dangerous place in America. But it’s not because of rape, incest, and maternal or fetal health. Even the most liberal statistics show that less than 2 percent of abortions are done for all those reasons combined. More conservative statistics put the number at less than 1 percent.

The vast majority are elective abortions: mothers state they are not ready, they can’t afford a baby, they don’t have a husband; they have no place to live with a child, their parent or significant other is pressuring them into the abortion. Having multiple reasons, 74 percent said they were afraid of how a baby would change their lives.  

Fifty-six million Americans have died in the womb since 1973 because their parents were afraid. Reasons for Having an Abortion in the United States

Pope Francis has been very blunt as to the Christian responsibility to oppose abortion. “A society that abandons children and that marginalizes the elderly will sever its roots and darken its future,” he said.

Last month, in an address to the Associations of Catholic Doctors, Pope Francis said there is, in secular society,  “a widespread mentality of profit, the ‘culture of waste,’ which now enslaves the hearts and minds of many, and has a very high cost. It requires us to eliminate human beings, especially if they are physically or socially weaker. Our response to this mentality is a decided and unhesitating ‘yes’ to life.”

“Every child who is not born, but unjustly condemned to be aborted, has the face of Jesus Christ, the Lord’s face, before he was born…and every senior, …every elderly, sick person or those at the end of his days, carries the face of Christ. You cannot discard (them), (this is) the ‘culture of waste’! You cannot discard (them)!”

Abortion is bullying. It is always done to a helpless person, who is weaker than you are. I know that the abortion lobby often characterizes people who are pro-life as lacking compassion for the mother. But it is precisely because I care about mothers and fathers that I am against abortion and I favor stable married families because secure married women are less likely to seek an abortion.

But for women not having the social safety net of a loving husband, what is wrong with American liberals that they can’t provide a place to live, medical care and emotional nourishment to unwed mothers? They just throw up their hands, refuse to help and favor the legal murder of the child in the womb? Don’t touch me with your problem, they say. Go to the abortionist. Oh, I forgot, we do pay for the abortion now through our taxes. How kind. The cash register rings and a child is delivered into a pool of blood.

I am pro-life, but don’t label me and put me away in your box, “pro-what” or “anti-what.” Every abortion has at least two victims, a woman and a child (unborn). A more accurate description of my position is PRO-WOMAN and PRO-CHILD. Hurl that insult at me.

Sometimes, abortion has three or more victims, including the father. Men grieve for the loss of their child – just like women do when they come to their senses. That makes me a PRO-HUMAN BEING FROM CONCEPTION TO NATURAL DEATH.

I have many close friends who have had abortions, and after they converted many of them realized their reasons were as flimsy as these statistics show and they were as appalled at their actions as I would be had I done the same thing.

One friend we called the One-Armed Bandit because she always had her baby girl on her arm. She was a well beloved and beautiful girl, a good Catholic at peace and free at last to do as she wished — have a baby.

This friend had four abortions. “Why did she have four abortions?” you may ask. Well, she was beautiful — she was a ballerina — and her mother felt pregnancy would mar her good looks. So when she got pregnant out of wedlock her mother got her an abortion. Trouble is she didn’t really want the abortion. She wanted the baby. So she got pregnant again, and again, and again. Four beautiful human beings – made in the image and likeness of God -- down the drain – all murdered at the altar of their grandmother’s fear.

When I met her she was married to a good Catholic man and she had her first live baby. She was so happy. He absolutely adored her. But her prior promiscuity and abortion robbed them of one of the greatest joys of married love.  The One-Armed Bandit spent so much time trying to undo the first abortion by getting pregnant again outside of wedlock that she gave me some advice for the day I got married.

She told me certain things I won’t mention that women can do in order to give their husbands marital relations without actually being involved in the act themselves. She was so burned out she really didn’t want a man. She just wanted a baby.

It’s horrible to treat a husband that way. It cheats him out of the rightful goods of marriage. It actually makes my heart hurt to think about it. But I do not judge my dear friend, the One-Armed Bandit, because she had an awful upbringing. Her mother’s sin continued to haunt the daughter and the son-in-law in their marriage. The wages of sin are death.

My roommate had a one-night stand with a guy in another city, got pregnant, and had an abortion. But that wasn’t the reason. Her mother did not want anyone to know that her daughter was pregnant out of wedlock so she insisted on the abortion. Keep it quiet, right? Her daughter dutifully had the abortion, but she also told a large number of people -- all her co-workers, friends and roommates -- what had happened and that she was having an abortion. Therefore the purpose of the abortion from her mother’s point of view was completely frustrated. I watched in anguish as she smoked dope to try and dull the pain of the choice she was making.

Another friend was a victim of rape in a mental hospital, one of those rare cases that supposedly makes abortion okay. But again, the abortion was not her choice. It was her mother’s. Because of her hospitalization, she was not in any position to resist her mother’s will.

Today, she is one of those people you derisively label “pro-life.” She marches and rallies against abortion, trying to save another woman from the same tragic mistake and a lifetime of heartache.

My physical therapist and I got into a political discussion. I went through my usual spiel — fifty-six million Americans won’t be able to hug their moms, won’t get their first kiss, will never buy your house, never marry, never have children because they have died in the abortion holocaust.

Like a frightened chicken, my physical therapist started shouting “rape and incest!” (My husband said I was lucky I didn’t get my neck broke because that’s where he was working when we had this discussion) Do you know that abortion clinics protect pedophiles? They cover up the result of the crime of rape and incest. Life Dynamics, a research organization out of Denton, Texas, has exposed the cover-up of child sex abuse by America’s two largest abortion providers, Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation.

Despite the obligation to report to the government when they find an underage girl, who is pregnant, in the majority of cases, abortion providers fail to file the relevant report, Life Dynamics found. Child Predators

On top of that Life Dynamics ran their own underground sting operation. They had a woman with a child’s voice tell the targeted clinics on the phone a) she was underage b) she was pregnant and c) the father of the child was over the age of 18. It’s laughable to hear the abortion clinic workers on the phone advising the girl how to come in and not tell them the truth – that she was a victim of statutory rape – in order to protect the male predator who impregnated her.

So with the crime covered up by an abortion, the girl is returned to her rapist and allowed to become a victim again.

It is very popular to refer to the unborn child in the early stages of gestation, and call it a “blob of cells.” This is part of the depersonalization of the unborn child.  I told one person who used that expression that the fifty-six million Americans murdered by abortion in the United States were not a blob of cells, they were human beings -- like he used to be before he got a stone for his heart. It’s ironic that the people accusing the unborn child of being a “blob of cells” are in fact turning themselves into a heartless “blob of cells.”

I myself had two miscarriages. The first one, my son, Raphael, came out six weeks from conception and you could see my husband’s face and long legs. I went to the hospital for the DNC after the miscarriage, and the male nurse said, “Did you bring the tissue?” I burst into tears, and shouted, “I didn’t bring the tissue! I brought the baby.” The doctor agreed. He was a perfectly formed baby. (We couldn’t really see the sex of the child at that age. I simply see him as a boy)

My daughter, Mary Christina, my third pregnancy came out in pieces. The doctor failed to give me adequate progesterone to keep the pregnancy even though we knew I had a defect that required it. So at 8 weeks from conception we had an ultrasound and there was no heartbeat. My young son (my second pregnancy) was with me. He was about three years old. He was so shocked he tried to sit down on a stool, but kept falling. He said, “Mommie, you have a dead baby in your belly!” I wanted to make sure that was true. So I let her come out in pieces. The ultrasound, though, before I miscarried showed she was beautifully formed, and terribly human.

There are two victims in every abortion and miscarriage — the mother and the child. And I have read accounts of fathers, too, who finding out that the woman in their life was going to have an abortion, tried frantically to talk her out of it. When they were unable to do so, they ended up at Rachel’s Vineyard Retreat along with the broken hearted mothers. Miscarriage, abortion — it is all heartache for the people involved.

The fourth victim of abortion that is not often recognized is the sibling of the aborted child. Many women reported that they had an abortion because they didn’t want any more kids. A close friend of mine had a recurring dream when she was growing up. Her beloved mother was planning to kill her and bury her. Her father was very sad, but he was digging her grave. She didn’t understand the dream, which made her feel insecure, until many years later when she found out that her mother had an abortion when she was a child.

Yet we have a president who says he wouldn’t punish his daughters with a baby if they got pregnant out of wedlock. In essence, he would kill his grandchildren to allow his daughters to live a “comfortable” life -- a life that is comfortable until they figure out what they have done.

The problem with a decision for abortion made out of fear is that it is absent of virtue and absent of justice. Virtue consists in the proper use of things as intended by God. For instance, the function of the eye is to see, therefore seeing is its virtue. The improper use of the eye is an injustice. Abortion is an abuse of the sexual act and its fecundity. It violates the law, “Thou shalt not kill.” Do you imagine that God gave us the law so that we might be unhappy? No, He gave it to us to us for the opposite reason, so we might have life and have it abundantly.

Many times the mothers who had abortions said they did so because they were in college and they needed to finish their education, or they weren’t ready and they needed to have a baby later when they were ready. They were deciding this based on an ugly materialistic worldview. Not a peep of goodness or happiness exists in this worldview: Man is nothing but a blob of cells, has no opportunity for eternal happiness, and lives on the level of an animal.

“In his riches, man lacks wisdom:

he is like the beasts that are destroyed.” (Psalm 49)

Living on this level of discernment, man’s life becomes instinctual. Like an animal, the drive to survive is paramount. Fear will be the arbitrator of all his decisions. And this decision to abort the child  -- the last decision made in the lives of many children -- is completely absent of joy, happiness, mercy, courage, wisdom, goodness and justice.

The liberal professes to be very concerned about justice. But they are blind men. They do not understand they are actively supporting the very injustice they hate.

Even though the choice to abort is always wrong, it carries with it great mercy --  Divine Mercy, in fact.  If you have had an abortion, you actually have a greater right to God's mercy than someone who has never been involved in abortion.  This is a mystery, a paradox that is impossible to fully explain.  But Jesus himself told us He came for sinners, not for the righteous.  God, our Father, is so close to you now that His ears are stuck to your lips, and He only waits for one word from you in order to embrace you and bring you back firmly into His Life:  "Lord."  My friends who had abortions would firmly tell you this is true.

“But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Matt 9:13)

And Jesus said that.

Other sources:

Woman have abortions because they feel trapped and hopeless

A Society that Abandons Children has a Dark Future