Women Hurt by Abortion Say Candidates Must Consider Them
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 22, 2004
Staten Island, NY (LifeNews.com) — When it comes to political candidates addressing the issue of abortion, one group of women is often left out in the cold — those who have had abortions and regret their decision.
That’s the message of Janet Morana, a director of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, an effort to help women who wish they could undo their abortion decision to speak out.
"Candidates who support legal abortion do no favors for women," Morana said. "The women we serve, who have had abortions, have been wounded by a variety of people, such as those who pressured them to have the abortion. They have also been hurt by the elected officials who have allowed abortion to continue."
"What harms the child, harms the mother also," Morana, also the director of Solidarity with Women, an outreach of Priests for Life, explained. "Add to that the fact that abortion is the most unregulated surgery in America, and you have a formula for the massive exploitation of women. We see evidence of that every day."
As more women come to grips with what happened to them and decide to help other women avoid the same difficult experiences, Morana says post-abortive women will increasingly vote for pro-life candidates.
Karen Bodle understands the pain of women who have had abortions. The Harrisburg, Pennsylvania resident also lost a child to abortion. At age 18, she learned she was pregnant from her first sexual encounter.
"I was a junior in college and was told that dropping out of college to have a child would ruin my life and future career. The only ‘choice’ discussed was abortion. I was ashamed to be pregnant and unmarried, so I thought that abortion would solve my problem," Karen said.
"I was told that I could forget about the abortion and go on with my life without any consequences. ‘You don’t even have to admit that you were ever pregnant,’ was their advice. I believed the lie that it was just a blob of tissue that could be thrown away.
"But I couldn’t forget. In dating relationships, the first thing I would reveal was my abortion because I was terrified of being rejected. For years I was ‘pro-abortion’ because I thought I had to justify my own abortion," Karen added.
Karen is now the Pennsylvania state leader for Operation Outcry: Silent No More, a national movement of women who have been hurt by abortion and who want to see an overturn of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion.
"I want America to know that abortion hurts women. Women are created to love and nurture their children, not have them ripped from their wombs and thrown away," Karen said.
Related web sites:
Priests for Life – https://www.priestsforlife.org
Operation Outcry – Silent No More – https://www.operationoutcry.org
Research on post-abortion syndrome – https://www.afterabortion.org
