Abortion

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="055d05a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Blithe Spirit</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Blithe Spirit"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id24.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Catholics"><U>Catholics</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Schools schooling"><U>Schools & schooling</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Literature, Close Bosom Friend"><U>Literature, Close Bosom Friend</U></A>   |   <B>Abortion</B>   |   <A HREF="id29.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Movies"><U>Movies</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id39.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Homosexuality"><U>Homosexuality</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id23.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Who is Blithe Spirit?"><U>Who is Blithe Spirit?</U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="056d2123.jpg"> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>Abortion</I></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="6" COLOR="#FF6600" FACE="Courier" ><B>Abortion 30 Years Later: Regrets Only</B></FONT> (<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#FF6600" FACE="Courier" ><B>10/14/2002</B></FONT>) . . . Elaine M. Kindler's Oct. 11 talk at a Catholic Citizens of Illinois forum, "After the Choice," was about having an abortion and many years later converting to Catholicism.  She is executive director of Aid for Women, which runs a pregnancy-counseling center at 8 S. Michigan.  She spoke after lunch at the Chicago Athletic Assn. next door.</div> <bR> <div> A bit of "I done wrong but found Jesus and now things are OK," to which "Spare us," you say?  Not quite.  The lady was not for doubting.  The abortion was 30 years ago, when she was in college, a "prodigal daughter" of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, "seduced by the culture of the day" and, she might have added, a supremely self-centered college boy.</div> <bR> <div> Fervently if opportunistically pro-choice, he said she should get rid of the baby, and she did.  "I aborted my daughter," she said, comparing herself to the animal that "gnaws off its leg" to get out of the trap.  She almost bled to death in the process, but the boy friend never asked.  Indeed, he married someone else in a few years.  </div> <div> She also married, had a son who was stillborn, divorced, and went on with her life, telling no one of the abortion, as she had told no one beforehand, not even her best friend.  </div> <div> She put on a front.  To look at her, life was a bowl of cherries.  But the abortion experience was bottled up inside.  It made her wretched even as she succeeded in work and career.  Someone finally asked her, "How closely has abortion touched your life?" and she spilled it.  </div> <div> A must-read in this respect, she told Citizens, is <I>Forbidden Grief: The Unspoken Pain of Abortion</I>, by Theresa Burke, Ph.D., with David C. Reardon, Ph.D., foreword by Laura Schlessinger (Acorn Books, Springfield IL).  (For more on the book, see: http://www.afterabortion.org/Resources/FGflyer.htm)</div> <div> Post-abortion trauma has been recognized at least since 1960, when Mary Calderone, cofounder and longtime president of the Sex Information and Education Council of the US (SIECUS) and winner of the Margaret Sanger Award, wrote about it, Kindler told Citizens.  "I am mindful," Calderone wrote, "of what was brought out by our psychiatrists . . . that in almost every case, abortion whether legal or illegal, is a traumatic experience that may have severe consequences later on."  (See http://www.afterabortion.org/PAR/V5/n4/Rue.htm)</div> <div> Kindler knows about the trauma first hand.  She said a "wall of silence" surrounds it, however, as it surrounds the abortion-breast cancer link, a subject of studies since 1957 -- "the single most avoidable risk factor for breast cancer [is] induced abortion," said Joel Brind, Ph.D., of CUNY's Baruch College -- (http://www.abortioncancer.com/) -- as well the abortion connection with suicide and cervical cancer.</div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="6" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Courier" ><B>TELLING v. LISTENING</B></FONT><B> .  . . </B>Her account seemed a sure winner with a pro-life audience such as Citizens (See http://www.catholiccitizens.org/).  She spoke in hope-filled manner of the work of God in her life, repeatedly mentioning divinity as palpable and immediate.</div> <div> But questions from the floor included two in succession from activist Joseph Scheidler, who pressed her for judgment on one of his tactics, showing photos of aborted fetuses to passersby.  She would find that hard to view, she said, since it would remind her of the abortion she had authorized 30 years ago that still haunts her.</div> <div> Scheidler pressed her:  Would she urge him to put the pictures away, as some pro-lifers had urged him?  She hesitated, then said probably not, adding that they should not fight one another (pro-lifers).  But she appealed to Scheidler, a hard-charger, to "be sensitive" to her reaction and that of other women and men who had been party to an abortion.  "When you see someone upset," she said, "listen."</div> <div> Catholic Citizens president Mary Ann Hackett, standing next to her at the podium for the question session, stepped up, recalling that she had once objected to Scheidler's pictures but that Scheidler had told her curtly, "Get over it."  Her comment, delivered affably, drew appreciative chuckles.  It also served to support Scheidler's approach and undermine Kindler's.</div> <div> Others pressed Kindler on her softer, more sensitive approach, even though her talk had been 100% pro-life, as if her emphasis on empathy might undermine their militancy.  </div> <div> "God put me here," she said, to explain her willingness to talk about her sorrow to this group whom she would expect to be wholly on her side.  She had said earlier that the millions of women who had had abortions represented a challenge or "apostolate" for Catholics, in that they needed help and were open to what the church had to offer them.</div> <div> She also described herself in ecumenical terms while singing the praises of the Catholic Church as recipient of divine revelation and as a community where pro-life views were approved and upheld.  In England she had belonged to an "orthodox" Anglican congregation, and back in the U.S. she had joined a Christian Reformed congregation.  Even now, as a "confirmed Catholic" for 18 months and glorying in her Catholicism, she called herself "an evangelical charismatic Christian."</div> <div> But her audience seemed unwilling to let her softness go.  A man likened Scheidler's gory pictures to movies such as "Saving Private Ryan," with their presumed antiwar lessons.  He indirectly criticized the American public for unwillingness to expose themselves to grim reminders of death and injustice.</div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#993300" FACE="Courier" ><B>Providing Aid for Women </B></FONT>. . . They seemed to be jumping on her -- though another observer, also a writer, thought not -- and she of the same pro-life position as theirs, hard at work on the same problem, I thought.  I sought her out on the Web and there she was, in a <I>Catholic New World</I> interview of 2/18/2001, saying, "We do not go in for scare tactics here; we don't go in for grossing people out."</div> <div> This would have sounded an alarm to Joe Scheidler and his troops.  The interview is worth quoting further.  It was much about her Aid for Women program.  They offer free pregnancy testing, free ultrasound examination if the test is positive.  They show the ultrasound of her baby to the abortion-prone woman "to try to help her deal with the reality of what she's doing."  </div> <div> Counseling her, they "carefully cover . . . options," including adoption.  Two of their volunteer counselors, who "are adopted" (not "were adopted," signaling the continuing condition), tell her, "If my mother hadn't done that, I wouldn't be here."</div> <div> "We do not go in for scare tactics . . . " Kindler told <I>New World</I>.  "We don't go in for grossing people out.  We do talk about the [abortion] procedures . . .  about the risks, both immediate and long-term.  Through all of that, we're listening to what's going on in this woman's heart.  It's very sad when we don't get to hear what's going on in her heart, when she has encrusted [it] with defenses and the pain that's been caused her.  It's really hard to help a client then.  If she opens up just a little bit, God will usually help us find a way to soften her heart."</div> <div> This is not go-get-'em talk, though some may object even to this much discussion of the issues.  Kindler might disarm them, however, if they heard her talking as she did at the CAA, where she exposed herself to slings and arrows or at least persistent prodding from apparently impatient allies.</div> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000080" FACE="Courier" ><B>Down to cases </B></FONT>. . . It's better if the boy friend is on hand for the counseling.  Too often he isn't.  "Especially if he is abortion-minded, we want him to hear directly from us what he's asking her to do, and what risks he's asking her to take," she told <I>New World</I>.  "We want him to [know] that by asking her to do this, [he encourages] increasing her risk of breast cancer, her risk of infertility . . . her risk of [inability] to have a normal pregnancy, that her cervix will be so damaged that she'll miscarry."</div> <div> Kindler asks the boy friend him if he loves her and what he thinks of the antiabortion video if he's watched it.  It makes a difference, she said.  "People's minds are changed."</div> <div> More than half the pregnancy tests are negative.  When they are, they talk "lifestyle":  Married but not wanting children?  They talk up Natural Family Planning (fascinating rhythm).  Not married?  "Without preaching," they join that issue:  </div> <div> Is it intimacy they are looking for?  They won't find it from multiple partners.  They could find sexually transmitted diseases, about which ignorance abounds.  "People are just not informed," Kindler told <I>New World</I>.  "{We have these bright college students coming in, and they don't have a clue.  They have no idea that condoms don't prevent HIV.  They think they're having safe sex, and they're not safe at all.  There is no cure for AIDS yet, so they are really playing with their lives."</div> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#808000" FACE="Courier" ><B>Relieving the pressure </B></FONT>. . . She's is "a post-abortive woman," she told <I>New World</I>.  It took her 21 years to begin her "post-abortion healing."  She didn't tell anyone about it for 20 years.  "God takes . . . sin . . . and, if we allow him to, turns it for good."  </div> <div> Her story was this.  As a public-relations professional, she interviewed with an antiabortion referendum campaign in Maryland.  The boss lady asked her the question that did it, "How closely has abortion touched your life?"  She knew she couldn't lie, and out it came.  She "realized [she] had killed [her] child," had done "the worst thing" she could do.  She had run wild in various self-defeating ways.  God "used it," and there she was, "where the Lord told [her] to be."</div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#800000" FACE="Courier" ><B>Other Rooms, Other Voices </B></FONT>. . . In <I>The Catholic New World</I> she's the good guy, of course.  At the Catholic Citizens forum too, even if oddly pressed on her opinion of someone else's strategy and tactics.  But at <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#008000" FACE="Courier" >Positive.org/Just Say Yes (</FONT>http://www.positive.org/JustSayYes/abortion.html<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#008000" FACE="Courier" >), she gets no respect whatever.  Her Aid for Women operation is called one of the "bogus clinics" which "seem real, but aren't</FONT>," being "actually run by antiabortion groups."  At these places, says Positive, the counselors "try to scare you out of having an abortion."  Positive says look for "real clinics" under "abortion services" not under "abortion alternatives," which is where Aid for Women and their ilk are listed.  </div> <div> Indeed, the Yellow Pages spell that out at the start of each section:  Services show to get an abortion, alternatives don't.  Nor is Aid for Women listed under "clinics," where one can find A Abortion Access Health Center and lots of other "real clinics" as Positive defines them.  Nor does the Aid for Women newsletter for Spring, 2000, where Elaine Kindler is announced as new executive director, say anything about running a clinic.  Nor does the www.aidforwomen.org site, which unfortunately says nothing about anything else.  It's blank!  Too busy scaring women, apparently.</div> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>