Abortion

Pervasive effects of abortion on women and society

Anne Lastman

Contents - Aug 2015 Pope Francis’ rallying call for the poor Obituary: Fr Greg Jordan: an exemplary Jesuit - AD2000 Report Confraternity of Christ the Priest’s Diamond Jubilee - Fr Thomas Casanova Marriage: We must stand up for marriage and the family: Archbishop Fisher - Archbishop Anthony Fisher 5: Greek Orthodox Church’s Encyclical on marriage - AD2000 Report Africa: Nigerian bishops decry “propagation of the homosexual lifestyle” Abortion: Pervasive effects of abortion on women and society - Anne Lastman The Holy Land: Believers in Israel - Andrew Scholl Letters: Help Myanmar flood victims - Brother Michael Lynch Letters: The death sentence cannot be justified - Anne Lastman Letters: “Same-sex marriage”: how much support? - Arnold Jago Letters: Don’t watch the ABC News! - Dr Tim Coyle Letters: Helping children with gender identity issues - Gillian Gonzalez Letters: Planned Parenthood scandal - Peter Callinan Books: THE EAR OF THE HEART: An Actress’ Journey from Hollywood to Holy Vows - Michael E Daniel (reviewer) Books: THE 33 DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH, by Fr Christopher Rengers - Paul Simmons (reviewer) Reflection: The doctrine of the Assumption - Pope Pius XII

The effects of abortion on society cannot begin to be measured because they are subtle yet manifold.

Apart from the known demographic winter and the loss of future generations which will create the demand for more anti life decisions/laws, abortion blunts the woman’s maternal instinct and when the woman’s maternal instinct is not acute she ignores or shuns the call of the child.

The echo of the child’s voice written on her heart, thus spurning the need to instantly respond to the call of distress when the child is in need.

The child then feeling no warmth or response from the maternal is left with a feeling of loss, fear and anger which then slowly begins to turn to rebellion against this loss and abandonment, leading to violence which becomes a normal in life.

Today the young learn to be violent to one another and to elders from young age because, I believe, there is an absence of “warmth.”

Abortion removes an inherent benevolence from society because the feminine who has been inscribed with the design of gentleness and goodness has had that goodness corrupted through the nuance and practice of abortion which removes this innate mechanism which then permits violence to be done to her own feminine self and then to the child and introduces into society an alien force, aggression.

This new violence to the feminine self removes the attraction towards life and in turn puts in place false, absent or diluted response where gentleness and love is the need.

There is found no “agape” love in the one who aborts because “agape” love demands the type of “self giving love” a movement from the self to another.

Abortion is the antithesis of “agape” it is a movement from and away from “agape” to nothing, to death.

 Today we hear about Royal Commissions into many ills including Royal Commission into domestic violence, and this rightly so.

Why so much violence against woman and child? What is at the heart of violence? And my answer would have to be that there is a more sinister and subtle violence which has permeated society for decades and which has passed by unchecked and unacknowledged.

The violence against beginnings, the child in the womb. The child who cannot defend itself and who has depends completely on its parents for protection only to find none.

The brutal violence committed against child and its mother with compliance of law and society.

There has been a deathly silence against this violence and today we wonder why so much other violence both in young generation and against the feminine. I am not surprised.

Abortion means the loss of Sehnsucht (ze: nz?xt) a German noun meaning something like “longing”, “desiring”. Something like a sighing so deep and a longing so deep and beyond reach.

This is a difficult word but it fits perfectly with the longing of the abortive woman/male. Because it’s the yearning for a loss of something never to be re found.

The loss in society is of this kind of depth. Never to be found. It is something intangible but there, and causing deep pain.

When I looked up the meaning of the word, Sehnsucht which I came across on a blog and followed it through to its meaning, it said that it feels like a yearning for a far away country, a faraway place, a place we might call home.

Abortion pain is a yearning for a return to a lost innocence. A return to a time pre violence. Pre loss of innocence. A time when violence was far away.

Abortion by its very nature is a violent act. It is the intentional destruction of a very small child, by a doctor and with the compliance/insistence of one or both of its parents or significant others.

We now know that there are psychological sequelae to abortion. The woman experiences life-long after-effects whilst the male is also affected but differently, generally through his sense of impotence in the matter.

For the male it is often the sense of helplessness at being unable to do anything to protect his child and this anger is then turned inwards to self-punish or outwards to punish the other. Further violence.

The violence we are daily fed through all forms of media is symptomatic of the “just below the surface” violence within the community – a simmering, unseen violence. There is a tension, which must be released and will not evaporate without leaving in its wake a disaster.

Perhaps an explanation of the response to abortion may shed some light on what is happening here.

Since the onset of the culture of the “pill” and “me-ism” the woman has progressively taken control of her fertility and her body.

And indeed to be able to understand her body and to guard and protect her body as inviolate is a good thing. However, this is not what has happened.

The woman has demanded control over her body in as far as her fertility is concerned, and has removed from her husband any rights and responsibility towards an act which has resulted in a conception.

This, whilst ostensibly “good” as far as some men and women are concerned, has ultimately failed all. Today, whether he chooses or not, a man can walk away from his responsibility towards a child he has engendered.

Conversely, should he choose not to walk away from the responsibility it can be forcibly wrenched from him so that he cannot do anything to change the situation. The removal of responsibility has not spelled equal rights, as has been suggested, but indeed unequal suffering.

The woman suffers lifelong anguish. Yes it’s real. It happens even for those who blithely believe that it hasn’t affected them. The man suffers loss of something of his essence, of his fatherhood, of his fathering, of his manhood.

For the woman, in her very being there is a rupture unlike any other.

There is a grief quite unlike any other. The kind of wrenching grief which is the result of guilt. The kind of grief which is the result of the intent behind the loss. The kind of grief which says, powerlessness, hopelessness, utter despair.

This grief does much violence to the human being’s spiritual and psychological being. This is the kind of grief (either short term or long term) which abortion leaves in its wake, and is the legacy for the woman and man who have acceded to the abortion experience.

For the state and nation which has decreed that the killing of its future citizens is lawful, there are other losses which cannot ever be recouped. For this state or nation the beginning of its end is in sight.

We all pass through stages of life as zygotes, embryos, foetuses, babies, young ones, adolescents, youth, and mature individuals.

Citizens of a nation have not just been deposited there from outer space. They have been conceived and permitted to be born and to be members of the state, nation, and above all humanity.

Sadly what the states of Australia and other nations have done is to enshrine in statutes the assertion that infants in the womb are not really human and when unwanted, are disposable.

What a great tragedy that women themselves have demanded their own extinction because at least fifty percent of those disposed of are baby girls.

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 28 No 7 (August 2015), p. 7