Abortion has negative effects on mother and father, not just unborn

Last month was the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. For 32 years, a highly controversial Supreme Court decision has permitted abortion on demand to anyone who wants it nationwide.

In the controversy surrounding this debate, much of the focus is on the nature of the unborn, and rightfully so. After all, if the unborn is a human being - as I am convinced that it is - then that Supreme Court decision was one of the greatest steps backward in our nation's history of respect for human rights. Certainly, the injustice of many millions of abortions is mind boggling.

However, in the debate over abortion, there is a key dimension to the issue that is very commonly overlooked: abortion's impact on everyone else. Abortion doesn't happen in a vacuum, it impacts everyone involved. It's this other side of abortion's effects that I would like to address here.

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to listen to Lansing resident Stephanie Butler speak to a small group in Wells Hall. She was invited to speak to Students For Life and told her personal story, which included an abortion she had. It was a very powerful story, and I was very affected by it. It really shed some light on the impact abortion has on all the people involved in one.

While studying overseas in Japan, Stephanie discovered she was pregnant. When she found out, she was more scared than anything else. She didn't know if she would be able to care for the baby, and was worried about it having a less-than-ideal childhood. So, at three months pregnant, she decided to abort, assuming it was in the best interest of everyone.

It wasn't. Stephanie described very vividly how traumatizing an experience it was for her to go through. During the procedure, she was filled with guilt and cried hysterically. Things didn't improve after the abortion, either - she broke up with the baby's father, and she became extremely depressed over the whole ordeal. Stephanie said that during that time she felt suicidal.

Stephanie is not alone. Women who have abortions are, according to a University of Minnesota study, much more likely to commit suicide than women who don't. Fathers of the child are also likely to experience emotional problems - it was theirs, too, after all.

In fact, depression isn't the only impact abortion has on women - it can hurt them physically, as well. Women who abort early face an increased risk of breast cancer (having an abortion causes certain hormones, which cause the breasts to begin to produce milk, to crash), and abortion can cause physical damage of all kinds to women. There are numerous physical risks it can cause - the rate of ectopic pregnancy, for example, in which a fetus develops outside the womb, is higher in women who have had an abortion than in the general population. There is also a high risk for massive bleeding, like any surgery.

Fortunately, Stephanie's story has a happy ending. She eventually had a religious experience that allowed her to begin to heal from the experience. It took several years, but she was finally able to come to peace. Today she is married with two children, and is beginning a program for girls in her situation.

So why did I bring this story up and print it here? There are two reasons. First of all, it is a popular assumption that religious opposition to abortion is based on legalism and a desire for social conformity - hence the "pro-choice" label among abortion-rights advocates. That is probably true for some individuals, but it is certainly not true for pro-lifers as a group.

Throughout her speech, Stephanie hardly resembled the image of pro-lifers as aggressive zealots, and she kept reiterating that her religious beliefs offered forgiveness alongside a moral standard. Her religious beliefs are against the practice because it does damage, and she knows that quite well.

The second reason for this piece was that it puts an often-overlooked aspect of the abortion debate in the spotlight. As mentioned earlier, usually the focus is on the nature of the unborn, but abortion doesn't only impact them. It impacts the woman and the father.

Considering what happened with Stephanie and other women who experience problems after an abortion, it's somewhat surprising that it's defended as "pro-woman."

Mark Myers is a political theory and constitutional democracy sophomore and a member of MSU Students For Life. Reach him at myersm11@msu.edu.

Published on Thursday, February 3, 2005