Abortion hurts, not helps, women

To the editor:

The 2014 mid-terms elections emerged as a watershed moment, producing a Republican House and Senate. We can expect the lightning-rod abortion issue to come to the fore over the next few years. Everyone familiar with the abortion debate recognizes that the abortion issue divides quite starkly between progressive (pro-choice) and conservative (pro-life). Yet being pro-life need not be a Republican-and-conservative-only project. Here is why.

At the time of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, abortion was presented as an important alternative to a woman in a terrible position (homeless, will be abandoned if she has the baby, will become poor if she has the baby, etc.). What was not understood, and has taken the decades since the Roe decision to come to light, is the devastating effects of abortion on the women who undergo them. Consider this data about post-abortive women from professional medical journals:

• 64 percent of women having abortions felt pressured by others.

• 31 percent suffered health complications.

• About 10 percent suffer immediate complications, of which 20 percent are life-threatening.

• 65 percent suffer multiple symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

• Suicide rates are six times higher if women abort vs. giving birth.

In one study, 26.7 percent of post-abortive women indicated relationship problems caused by an abortion experience. In another large, well-controlled, prospective study, 22 percent of German women’s relationships with their partners had ended a year later.

Find more evidence of the damage abortion does to women at afterabortion.org.

All people of good will, be they conservative or progressive, Democrat or Republican, want women to prosper. As the facts of the effect of abortion on women gain wider and wider currency, let us hope that all sides unite on behalf of women and recognize that abortion hurts and does not help them. Let us stand with women in crisis pregnancies to choose life for themselves and for their children.

Rudy Poglitsh

Wasilla