Teenager Had 3 Abortions and Her Parents Never Knew

Opinion   |   Sarah Terzo   |   Jun 21, 2018   |   6:14PM   |   Washington, DC

Abortion clinic worker Brenda Pratt-Shaffer took care of a teenage abortion patient. The teenager had 3 abortions:

One of the things that really bothered me that day [At the abortion clinic] was a fifteen-year-old girl having her third abortion. Her parents did not even know that she was there. She was laughing the whole time she was in the clinic. I wondered if this was a nervous laugh or if she truly just did not care….

I just kept thinking about my fifteen-year-old daughter that I had to sign for to have her ears pierced. But here was a fifteen-year-old having such a horrific procedure for the third time that her parents didn’t even know about.

From Brenda Pratt-Shafer, David Shafer What the Nurse Saw: Eyewitness to Abortion (Mustang, Oklahoma: Tate Publishing & Enterprise, LLC, 2016), p. 27.

Study gives reasons teens don’t tell their parents about pregnancy

“One study cited the 3 most common reasons why young pregnant women had abortions without telling their parents. They were, in order, “Didn’t want to hurt or disappoint parent,” “Thought parent would be angry at me,” and “Didn’t want parents to know I was having sex.”

Allison Landes et. al, eds., Abortion: an Eternal Social and Moral Issue (Wylie, TX: Information Plus, 1996) 104. Quoted in Stephen Currie Abortion (San Diego, California: Greenhaven Press, 2000)

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Teenager’s Parents Favor abortion 10 to 1

“In the Guttmacher Institute’s 1987 study nearly 30% of minors seeking abortions attributed their decisions in part to the fact that their parents wanted them to have abortions. A 1991 Guttmacher study of teenage abortion patients amplified this pattern. On learning of their daughters’ pregnancies, parents favored abortion over childbirth by a 4 to 1 ratio. By the time of the abortion, the ratio of preference rose to 10 to 1. Mothers, fathers, and boyfriends were all more likely to encourage abortion than to encourage childbirth. More than a quarter of the mothers tried to persuade their daughters to abort, only 7% encouraged childbirth. Aside from stress on their parents, the most common repercussions the girls reported after disclosing their pregnancies wasn’t that they were beaten of punished or even that they became uncomfortable living at home but that their parents were forcing them to have an abortion.”

This is an old reference, but it is still significant. It would be interesting to find out if these numbers have changed.

FPF August 1988 170-171; FBF Sept-Oct 1992, 203-5. William Saletan Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War (Berkley: California: University of California Press, 2004,193

LifeNews.com Note: Sarah Terzo is a pro-life liberal who runs ClinicQuotes.com, a web site devoted to exposing the abortion industry. She is a member of the pro-life groups PLAGAL and Secular Pro-Life.