During the recent Christmas season, Planned Parenthood caused quite a stir with its crude adaptation of the classic poem, “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” The Planned Parenthood affiliate in Waco, Texas used the famous Christmas story in a fundraising effort. In its 2006 Fall/Winter newsletter, Planned Parenthood begged for year-end donations to support its anti-life agenda.

The second verse of the Planned Parenthood version of the poem read:

They long for a mission of tolerance and choice
 They want to help women gain power and voice.
  To self-determination they tipped their hat.
   But what organization could embody all that?


Planned Parenthood advertises itself as an organization seeking to provide women with self-determination, but fails to accurately pinpoint the sources which deny it. The largest provider of abortions in the United States, Planned Parenthood asserts that pro-lifers are intolerant of women’s right to choose. The implication above is that Planned Parenthood is the organization most capable of protecting women’s rights to self-determination and empowerment.

In reality, Planned Parenthood is an enabler to those persons who most often pressure women to do what is convenient for them – and frequently unthinkable for the pregnant woman. These are the boyfriends, husbands, parents, friends, school counselors and others who prod females into abortion clinics to “get rid of their little problem.” This is not what the women recognize as tolerance and self-determination. In many instances, women are given absolutely no “right to choose” a course of action during a crisis pregnancy.

Polls show that most women choosing abortion — at least 70 percent — say they believe abortion is immoral. (Los Angeles Times Poll, March 19, 1989. M. Zimmerman, Passage Through Abortion (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1977). D. Reardon, Aborted Women: Silent No More (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1987). Yet many of these women were not given a choice when they experienced a crisis pregnancy. That is because 53 percent of women who experience significant post-abortion problems subsequently state that they felt pressured by other people to choose abortion. (David Reardon, Aborted Women, Silent No More, op cit. (introduction, no. 1) 333). Does that sound like self-determination?

In most cases, women who abort are violating their own consciences because of pressure from other people or their own circumstances. More than 80 percent of women who report post-abortion problems say they would have completed their pregnancies under better circumstances or with more support from the people they love. (D. Reardon, Aborted Women: Silent No More (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1987), p. 12).

Dr. David Reardon, who has done extensive research on the reasons behind abortion, said, “We know that between 30 and 60 percent of abortion patients feel they are being pressured into unwanted abortions. This is just one fact which offers us a new way to appeal to all people of good will. It also offers us the means to expose the radical pro-abortionists who are the real enemies of ‘choice.’”

Many abortive women violate their own consciences and their maternal desires because they are in a crisis and thus more vulnerable to the influence of those pressuring them to abort. This is especially true when pregnant women cannot immediately see where they can find the financial resources and social support they will need to care for their children. (Amy Sobie and Dr. David Reardon, “Who’s Making the Choice? Women’s Heightened Vulnerability During a Crisis Pregnancy,” The Post-Abortive Review 8(1) (January-March 2000).

Some young women describe being coerced into having abortions. A woman said she was coerced at age 14 by her school to abort her child.

 “[The school counselor] was sympathetic and understanding,” the woman said. “He felt there was no need to worry my family. He also explained about having a child, how tough it would be on me and that I wouldn’t be able to do what I wanted to do. He said that the child would suffer because I was much too young to be a parent. He pointed out that the best thing for me to do was to abort the fetus at this stage so no one would be hurt. No mention was made of talking to my parents about this or carrying the baby to term. He indicated that adoption would be difficult and not an option for me. ... I felt as though I had no control over what was happening to me. I started to question what I was doing, but in my logic I’d refer back to what the counselor had told me, and then I would think he was right. But still today, I feel like I did not decide to have the abortion.”

Following this woman’s abortion, she experienced suicide attempts, alcoholism, drug abuse, crime and estrangement from her family.

The Crisis Pregnancy Help Center of Slidell, Louisiana found that 70-85 percent of women seeking post-abortion counseling said they made their decision under some form of coercion. More than 80 percent of these women reported that the abortion clinics did not counsel them properly, and that if they had been given accurate information, they would not have submitted to an abortion.

Among the post-abortive women seeking counseling at the Sioux Falls, South Dakota Alpha Center, 75-85 percent in any given year report that they felt they were misled by the abortion clinics and that their decisions were uninformed and, in many ways, coerced.

The CareNet Pregnancy Center of Rapid City, South Dakota reported that nearly 60 percent of post-abortive women receiving counseling stated that their abortions were the result of some form of coercion. The women complained that the pre-abortion counseling they received was either non-existent or inadequate. (Report of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, 2005.)

Many women say they are not given free choices about unwanted pregnancies. They
say they were coerced into having an abortion by a significant other, such as their husband, parents or boyfriend. Some felt forced by medical circumstances, such as genetic defects identified in their pre-born child, or they were pressured by social or financial circumstances. Adolescents are vulnerable to the feeling that the choice is not their own and may feel obligated to comply with the wishes of someone else. (R. Zakus, “Adolescent Abortion Option,” Social Work in Health Care 12(4) (1987): 87.)

If women are not given a choice about their pregnancies prior to their arrival at abortion clinics, they most certainly will not benefit from the so-called virtues of tolerance, choice and empowerment once they are at the abortion clinic. The truth is that Planned Parenthood frequently enables those who coerce women into unwanted abortions and denies any real notion of choice.

Women have already answered Planned Parenthood’s question about self-determination, and the answer is not favorable to the large abortion provider.
 

Dennis Durband is publisher and editor of The Arizona Conservative, is also a freelance writer and webmaster and a longtime journalist.