On Thursday at noon, I spoke to an audience of about 150 people at the University of Tennessee Medical School in Memphis at the invitation of its Medical Students For Choice group on that campus. I talked for about 30 minutes and then asked for questions. As nearly always happens at these events, the first person to raise his hand was a fellow who not only looked very eager to be called upon, he also looked older than the average medical student. It turned out that he was both. I later learned he was the "faculty advisor" for an anti-abortion group calling themselves the Christian Medical Students.
Instead of asking a question, he wanted to make a speech. To learn the gist of his speech, and about Leona's Sister, Gerri, read below the fold.
The speech the faculty adviser wanted to give was in support of the idea that women who receive safe professional abortion care end up a;most all cases with terrible emotional scars the like to call Post Aortion Syndrome and life long regret. He professed to know many such women, indeed, to have one in his own family. This is now a very common ploy among most anti-abortion radicals who almost always identify themselves as "Christian."
I stopped him pretty quickly by telling him that I had been invited by the students who organized the event to tell my stories. That if he wished to tell his that he should get them to invite him to do ao.
All these people like this "faculty adviser" say they want abortion to become illegal in the vast majority of cases. And now they tell us one of the major reasons is to prevent harm to the women seeking safe, legal professional abortion
I wish I had brought the pictures of Leona's 28 year old sister, Gerri, as she appeared in a far happier time with her two little girls, and as she looked in the police photo taken at the time she was found alone, dead and cold on a motel room floor after a desperate attempt at more or less self inflicted abortion.
If there is anything that presents a more graphic picture of what happens to desperate young women, who will seek abortion when it is illegal, any place and any method of abortion - no matter how awful and dangerous that might be - it is the short film, Leona's Sister, Gerri.
There is a brand new book out called Abortion Counseling: A Clinician’s Guide to Psychology, Legislation, Politics, and Competency by Rachel B. Needle, PsyD, and Lenore E.A. Walker, EdD.
Dr. Needle is the adult daughter of a mother who has been involved in providing abortion counseling and services to desperate young women like Gerri for most of Dr. Needle's life. I heard the two of them speak at a meeting I attended earlier this year, along with some other abortion care givers and their family members. I wish everyone could have heard all their stories. (Hell, I wish everyone could hear amd read all mine. A very few are funny or poignant)
A colleague of mine has recently written a review of this book on RHrealitycheck.org. To quote her,
"Abortion Counseling: A Clinician’s Guide to Psychology, Legislation, Politics, and Competency is a book for everyone interested in knowing the truth about women, abortion, and women’s mental health. Whether you are new to the issue or a veteran, there is much to learn from this excellent resource."
"I wish this dynamic book had been available when I first started to counsel women having abortions in 1970. There was no developed profession of abortion counseling at that time and we created a new field. This compelling book puts it all together with updated information and clear scientific discussion and analysis. Abortion Counseling cuts through the lies and will help to frame the future for women’s mental health as we continue to articulate the truth about abortion."
To quote from the book itself, Dr. Needles writes,
Growing up the daughter of an abortion provider, I witnessed first-hand the controversy surrounding abortion and how the controversy harmed women. Mental health professionals, on the whole, are not trained to address women who are considering abortion, or women who have terminated a pregnancy. There is no training on abortion counseling for mental health professionals and therefore there is minimal awareness of what is involved. There is a lack of understanding about abortion legislation and regulations, and little appreciation for how legislation can impact a woman and her family.
As Dr. Walker and I began to notice this lack of information available to mental health professionals, we felt the need to provide this resource where currently practicing clinicians and clinicians-in-training could go to learn more about abortion, including legislation, the myth of post-abortion syndrome, decision-making, competency, and how to assist women prior to and following an abortion procedure. Therapists and health care professionals need accurate information to assist women in making their own decisions about pregnancy planning.
Most importantly, despite the fact that the majority of research finds no evidence for negative psychological affects following pregnancy termination, the construct of a "post-abortion syndrome" continues to be raised by politicians and in the media. But research continues to find that terminating an unwanted pregnancy by an induced abortion does not cause women to become mentally ill. Those few women who may develop emotional problems after an abortion are then likely to misattribute their distress to the abortion rather than to the other factors that actually are known to create such emotional distress. These factors include pre-existing psychiatric conditions and a history of physical and sexual abuse. When these factors are controlled, studies of women who chose to have an abortion find that they are no more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety disorders, psychotic problems, or suicidal behavior than those women who chose to carry the pregnancy to full term.
Given all of the anti-choice rhetoric, distortion, and misinformation, as well as the lack of training in the area of pregnancy termination, it was time for a book to educate all those who are engaged in both pre- and post- abortion counseling. In order to do so, again, it is important for therapists to understand the politics and legislative history affecting women’s decision-making, be knowledgeable about accurate information about the abortion procedure itself, and understand the psychological theories about the development of stable emotions to assist counselors and therapists in determining the woman’s emotional state both pre- and post- termination. Finally, therapists—as well as the public—must be aware that research demonstrates that "post abortion syndrome" does not exist, even though some women may have some temporary negative or ambivalent feelings.
This is why we wrote our book. We trust that it will be helpful.
If there is anyone who needs to read this book, it is people like that "faculty adviser" of the Christian Medical Students at the UT Memphis Medical School.
But he, and others like him, will have no interest in receiving the information that Drs Needles and Walker want to impart to their readers. They are convinced they already "know," as one of my ObGyn colleagues told me years ago, "that God doesn't want us (professionals) doing abortions anymore."
I have often wondered - given that the majority of Christians in America, even among Catholics, think that abortion care should be legal under at least some circumstances, should be safe and always done by professional care givers = why "Chistians" like this "faculty adviser" and his students think that abortion care should be illegal, meaning that it is usually available for most girls and women only under the most painful and dangerous circumstances. And why these "Christians" actually prey for the day when girls and women like Leona's sister, Gerri, will again suffer and die in large numbers from illegal abortions.
I don't call these people Christian, I call them X-tain. These X-tians seem to have removed the love ethic that I associate with the Christians I know and love demonstrate every day.
I think of X-tians just as I do of Muslim suicide bombers. And some of these have been and are, just as willing to kill me and others for their beliefs.