Again we welcome Vicki and look forward to read her articles and posts. She also is a moderator of one of the forums “Ask Vicki Thorn”, where you can ask her question or maybe even share your own experience.

Over the time of almost 30 years of working and helping people to deal with post abortion trauma, Vicki believes that abortion affects not only women who have abortions, but also their families and even friends.

Please stay tuned to read her articles on our website. Feel free to recommend our website to your friends, we have limited resources in order to market our website as many other Internet “giants” do and mostly rely on “spreading” the word about our site.

In the 1973 the United States Supreme Court struck down every federal, state, and local law regulating or restricting the practice of abortion. This action was based on the premise that the state’s no longer had any need to regulate abortion because the advances of modern medicine had now made abortion “relatively safe.” Therefore, the Justices concluded, it is unconstitutional to prevent physicians from providing abortions as a “health” service to women.³⁴

National abortion policy is built upon this judicial “fact” that abortion is a “safe” procedure. If this “fact” is found to be false, then national policy toward abortion must be re-evaluated. Indeed, if it is found that abortion may actually be dangerous to health of women, there is just cause for governments to regulate or prohibit abortion in order to protect their citizens. This is especially true since over 1.5 million women undergo abortions each year.

Since the Court’s ruling in 1973, there have been many studies into the aftereffects of abortion. Their combined results paint a haunting picture of physical and psychological damage among millions of women who have undergone abortions.

Read the rest of the article at Elliot Institute.

What is RU 486?

RU 486 is a common name for an artificial steroid used to block progesterone, a hormone produced and needed during pregnancy. Generic name: Mifepristone. In the United States RU 486 is sold under brand names Early Option and Mifeprex. Taken alone RU 486 causes complete abortion only about 60% at the time and a second drug needs to be administer to cause uterine contractions to help expelling the embryo. This second drug is prostadlandin and is sold in the US under generic and band names Misoprostol and Cytotec respectfully.

It should be mentioned that Cytotec use for this purpose was not approved by the manufacturer itself on. The primary purpose of Cytotec is intended for treatment of patients with risks for developing ulcers from high doses of aspirin-like medications taken for conditions such as arthritis. Following statement from Cytotec manufacturer is available at FDA website.

Since the effectiveness of this drug is emphasized by the abortion providers this article will aim to provide some information about side effects and risks involving taking these drugs.

Food and Drug Administration advises that a woman should not take RU 486 if any of the following apply:

• If it has been more than 49 days since your last menstrual period begun
• If you have IUD
• Your have been told that you have a pregnancy outside the uterus (known as ectopic pregnancy). About 2% of all pregnancies are ectopic.
• If you have problems with adrenal glands (chronic adrenal failure)
• If you take blood thinning medication
• You undergoing certain steroid treatments
• You cannot return for next 2 visits (2 and 14 days)
• You cannot easily get and emergency medical help (this may include “blood transfusion, and emergency resuscitation”)
• You are allergic to such medications as mifepristone, misoprostol or medicine that contains misoprostol such as Cytotec or Arthrotec.

FDA also provides information that women were excluded for US testing of RU 486 due to the possible health risks if they were:

• under 18 years of age or
• over 35 and smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day or
• if they lived or worked more than one hour from the emergency facility that served the abortion facility conducting the trial or
• if they had any of the following conditions:
• asthma
• glaucoma
• mitral stenosis
• arterial hypotension
• sickle cell anemia
• history of severe liver, respiratory or renal disease or thromboembolism
• insulin-dependent diabetes
• cardiovascular disease, e.g. angina, valve disease, arrhythmia, cardiac failure
• hypertension
• blood pressure over 140/90mmHg
• anemia
• adnexal masses or tenderness on pelvic examination that suggested pelvic inflammatory disease16

Side Effects of use of RU 486 alone or in conjunction with Cytotec.

It would be very difficult to list all possible side effects associated with use of RU 486, therefore it will be limited to the most serious and dangerous side effects:

Pelvic infections

A California teenager, Holly Patterson died from septic shock three days after taking RU 486.

Drug trials in Canada where suspended in 2001 following the death of a woman participating in the trials. Death cause- septic shock due to bacterial infection.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) study 30% of women who had incomplete RU-486 abortions developed pelvic infections because one effect of the drugs combination is to suppress immune system. The same organization (WHO) advises for women to receive antibiotics for six weeks after RU-486 abortion.

After arrival of the RU-486, abortion providers suddenly began to refer to it as a “safest way to terminate” pregnancy. The safest as opposed to what? Maye it is their own way to admit that abortion is not a safe procedure after all.

This inability to hear you is not her fault and generally has to do with what is happening to her and her body on a biochemical level. Often facing an abortion, woman finds herself under much pressure and stress. This causes her adrenaline levels to rise and counteracts the effects of oxytocin a hormone that is on the rise during pregnancy and is at it’s peak during the labor and delivery. This hormone is also responsible for putting us in a “caring” state of mind, and if you want to talk “babies” to your friend or a family member, when she is in a “caring” state of mind would be the most appropriate time to do so.

In order to help her, you should be willing to do all that you possibly can to eliminate the stress and an pressures she is under. Being argumentative will only add to pressure and stress. Sometimes we may think that if we present our argument in a loving manner, she some how will be able to hear us. But the truth is that we are taking a big chance perusing this road.

So what can you do? Some times it is not so easy to eliminate stress and pressure from a particular situation, but there are simple ways that may help you to do just that. If you can afford, take your friend on a “girls day out” to a spa saloon. Good message and pampering will help to lover the adrenaline levels and may contribute to putting your friends mind into a “caring” state. Do not force the abortion topic or a “baby talk” on her unnecessarily, if she brings up the topic do not shy from it, but also do not force her into taking about it if she is not willing.

Another step you can consider is to take her out (physically) of the stressful situation. If you can offer her a place to stay where she can find herself in a more relaxing atmosphere, this also may help.

Last but not least, ask her about her diet. When under stress, we completely abandon good diet habits and stick to a junk food. This can contribute to sudden fluctuation of sugar level in our blood, and also takes us on a ride when from be highly energized we suddenly may become tired and depressed. Consider to offer your friend a had when it comes to her diet. She may not be feeling like cooking herself and sometime even reheating an already prepared meal can seam to her like an impossible task. It would be a good idea to provide her with snacks that would be readily available and would not require much time to prepare. Things like cold cuts or already made sandwich could be the best. Make sure that she receives plenty of protein and even some fat with her food. This will help her to level the sugar level in her blood and diminish times when she feels depressed and out of energy.

During stressful times, our body increases the production of adrenaline. Our body produces adrenaline whenever we feel pain, it actually helps us to feel less pain. So can it be that the feeling of “relief” is nothing more than a feeling after riding a fast roller coaster? Indeed roller coaster it is for women who make the decision to abort. Not only they are stressed but often feel considerable amount of pain after the procedure. It would be very interesting to know what are the exact levels of adrenalin in womans body while going through an abortion and shortly after the procedure. I think we are not that much off in assuming that a women who had have abortion do go through a kind of an adrenaline rush and therefore feel this “relief”. Also this is why this feeling of so called relief does not last too long no matter how much a woman tries to hold on to it.

Guilt

While guilt is not something you should live with your entire life, it can be a beneficial force in changing our lives. In any one’s life there were moments when we felt guilty about our actions. Why do we feel guilt then? We generally fee guilty when we are tormented by a memory of certain act that did not corresponded with our moral principles or set of values, we say “I have made a mistake”. Any one can make a mistake and all of us quite often taste the consequences of our mistakes. But if we make a mistake, it does not mean that we have lost our value as human being. A mistake does not affect our dignity, with which we were endowed from conception. Normal feelings of guilt call us to correct the mistake we made, make up for it and reconcile with ourselves and others. When we do this, the feeling of guilt does not persecute us and we cab find peace again.

Shame

Unlike the feeling of guilt that emerges within us and may assume a beneficial role in our life, shame comes from outside. Feeling of shame is provoked by others and it becomes and obstacle in respecting ourselves. There are at least two major causes of shame.

• First, shame emerges when parents, teachers, siblings or friends make us understand that they can only love us if we live up to certain conditions. In this case we feel that love for us (or/and lack of such) depends on our behavior, our looks, our success. This love is conditional, love that we need to work for. So when we do not feel loved, we think that we simple did not deserve to be loved.
• Second, shame can be provoked by rude treatment of any kind: physical, emotional, sexual, and verbal. Those who treat others with rudeness make the victim believe that he or she deserves it.

No matter what it was caused by, shame can hurt us for many years and may become a “nourishment” for the opinions that we have about ourselves. Under the influence of conditional love or rude and abusive treatment, a person, consciously or not, assimilates a certain “disordered pack” of ideas about their own personality.  You may find many women say about themselves: “There is nothing good in me”, “I am stupid”, “It’s my own fault that I became pregnant”, “I need to hide this for the rest of my life”, “I am not worthy (or capable) to be a mother”, “I am not worthy to have normal relations with a man”, “I had one abortion already, why shouldn’t I have one more?”, “I need to punish myself or let other people treat me badly because I don’t deserve anything else.”

While feeling of guilt can be corrected, in some instances rather quickly, by asking forgiveness for our mistakes, feeling of shame can only be healed by love and truth and may require much longer time.

In freeing yourself from the power of shame, a woman needs to remember that who she is, is not defined by actions or opinions of other people. No matter how many mistakes she personally made, she a is a human being that deserves love and respect for her dignity. Since feeling of shame may have it’s roots in very early childhood or due to rude and abusive treatments, this woman may need strong reassurance from friends and family, that no matter how bad her mistakes were she is loved unconditionally.

You can get the CD at Amazon, click on the image below:

Happy Birthday

Eight years after she aborted her baby, Madam Diana Ng went to a temple at Sims Avenue on Monday to offer prayers.

With her in the second floor hall of the Cai Shen (Fortune God) temple were other mostly young Singaporean couples at a ceremony to put their past behind them. More than 1,200 couples had registered.

Read the whole article at The Electric New Paper, Singapor.

This only shows that abortion and it’s aftereffects know no boundaries when it comes to one’s religion and belief, it affects a woman whether she believes in Buddha, Brahman, Allah or Christ.

Loss that you have suffered to abortion is not recognized by many, it is very real loss and it needs to be dealt with. You may even need to tell your story more than just once and it will take much courage on your part. But in telling your story you will have a chance to lift up years of burden, guilt and pain.

You maybe wondering where to being? Some women are able to begin telling their stories from the time they went to the clinic. Some may need to say what had happened before the procedure or after it. The abortion itself may have been so painful that it could have made you numb. Maybe the events preceding the abortion where so stressful that you felt that abortion itself was nothing comparing to those events.

No matter where you begin tell your story as it is. Truth will hurt but it also will liberate you. If you like to share your story on our forum, there maybe some one who knows exactly how your feel and no one will judge you. Down the road your story may even help other women who may try to make sense of all that had happened.

I would like to offer an opportunity to post abortion ministries across the world to be featured on my website. Pleas contact me with information about your particular ministry at feedback@healing-ater-abortion.com. Please provide your contact information, whether or not you offer retreats if you do please e-mail the dates of your upcoming retreats, if you offer support groups the days and times when your support groups meet.

The flashbacks can take you back to also events preceding the abortion as well and sometimes these flash back can be innocently caused by the people you love and love you. Unfortunately they can affect you new relationships and sometimes even prevent you from having real relationships. As long as there is something you hide and your new boyfriend or husband has no idea what is being hidden from them, they may think that they are doing something wrong, but the truth is that they are not. I am not saying that one should go around and tell the entire world that you have had an abortion, not at all. You are entitled to your privacy, and hopefully there is a kind of unconditional trust in your new relationship that no explanation is needed. It is more important for a woman herself to understand why she reacts to certain “triggers”, it will help not get get cut off guard when a flashback comes back again.

My childhood was brutal. I was abandoned by my father when I was two-and-a-half. Then when he reappeared in my life again at the age of eight, it became worse. I survived incest, starvation, and beatings. 
I clung to life. It was my two abortions that nearly destroyed me. 

When I became pregnant for the fifth time in seven years, my doctor asked me if I really thought I should “continue the pregnancy.” Abortion had never occurred to me until he suggested it. 

My husband said, “It’s your decision. Do what you want,” and left for work. Naively, I began looking for women who had had abortions. But I couldn’t find anyone who would admit to having had one. I asked my doctor and he said, “It only takes a few minutes and it’s over.” 

Having already had four babies, I am now appalled at how ignorant I was about fetal development. My doctor said the baby–at six-and-a-half weeks–was “just a blob,” and I believed him. Afterwards, before I even got home, I began to cry. It didn’t help. 

When finally I stopped crying on the outside, I kept crying on the inside. I felt so dirty and alone. Something deep inside of me froze, I think. I dreamed a lot about snow and ice, as well as about babies. I felt cheated, betrayed, and manipulated. 

I went to counseling and the psychologist said, “forgive yourself,” and “let yourself go on.” She didn’t say how. 

Two years later, I had another abortion as an act of self-punishment. I wanted to die, or at least go crazy so I could escape the torment, the nightmares about babies, the self-disgust and the degradation I felt.

Read the entire story at Elliot Institute’s Website

I have created a forum on my website where people can express they feelings, whatever those might be, grief, sadness and even anger. Forum, so far, is the only major addition to my website, so please feel free to check it out.

“How can you deny an abortion to a twelve-year-old girl who is the victim of incest?” complains an indignant supporter of abortion. “And how can you call yourself a loving Christian if you would force a victim of violent rape to give birth to a rapist’s child?” Every pro-lifer has heard these same challenges in one form or another. They are the emotionally charged questions designed to prove either 1) that pro-lifers are insensitive “fetus lovers,” 2) or ethically inconsistent, allowing abortion for some circumstances but not others. Unfortunately, most pro-lifers have difficulty answering these challenges because the issue of sexual assault pregnancies is so widely misunderstood. Typically, both sides of the debate accept the presumption that women with sexual assault pregnancies would want an abortion and that the abortion would in some way help them to recover from the assault. Thus, the pro-lifer is left in the uncomfortable position of arguing that the sanctity of life is more important than the needs of the sexual assault victim with whom everyone should rightly sympathize….

You can read the entire article of David C. Reardon, Ph.D., at Elliot Institute’s website. It is one of the best articles ever written regarding the issue.

During the pregnancy woman’s body is set in motion that will last and continually change over the period of the entire 40 weeks of pregnancy. There is not a single part of the womans body that is not touched by these changes. The changes rage from visible signs to invisible changes in hormones. This process begins at the very moment of conception some effects last beyond pregnancy.

During pregnancy breasts are changing do to hormones (estrogen) that are preparing for the future nourishment of her child. Her hear must work harder, to provide more blood flow to the uterus, generally the amount of blood pumped by a heart of woman that is pregnant increases by 30 to 50%. Like the heart, her kidneys work harder to filter increasing amount of blood. The increased production of progesterone sends a signal to her brain to lower the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood, as a result pregnant woman breathes faster and deeper in order to exhale carbon dioxide. Her digestive system is affected and many women report unusual cravings for different foods and of course “mornig sickness” is caused by changes in digestive system. Virtually every hormone in her body is affected.

An abortion puts a sudden stop to all these changes. No one in their right mind could argue that abortion has no affects on woman’s body. In fact it is like driving a car straight into a solid wall. But even in such accidents there may be a miracle of survival. There is not such miracle for a woman that has gone through an abortion, it does not turn the clock back and make her “un-pregnant”. But what is most upholding is that so called “doctors” can lie time and over again that abortion will not affect you at all.

The relief you may feel after the abortion is very deceiving, it is temporary and if it lasts few days you will be very lucky.

They told you that 99.9% of women do not experience any complication. But they don’t tell you that down the road your heart will be torn apart. They never tell you to expect dreams of babies. They never tell you that some times you will hear a baby cry when there is no baby around. They never tell you that every time you see a child, your heart will sink and you will wonder “How would my child looked like?” And you can’t share it with no one since you have been told that 99.9% of women are just fine, and you begin to believe that you are the only one these things are happening to.

Why am I writing these things? Many reasons. If you are a woman that have had an abortion you will now what I am taking about. If you have not come to peace yet, you should know that there are people willing to help you and you are not alone.

I am writing this also for women that may be faced with the choice of abortion. I don’t know your situation and but I can understand it is not a simple one. You may consider and abortion out of the fear that your parents would find out that you are pregnant. Maybe your boyfriend is threatening to leave you. I probably will never know what is your situation. If you are reading this I would like you to know that there are other options. If your particular situation is stressful and you feel like you are being pressured by others to have an abortion, think about some one you may be able to trust and turn to. Maybe a member of your family or a friend. In your area there may be places and people that can provide you with assistance and help.

In spite of what is being told about abortion, its aftereffects are profound and our society has not began yet to fully realize the extent of damage abortion can cause. If an abortion has taken place in a marriage it is very likely to disrupt the dynamics of a healthy and happy family. It is particularly true if subsequent children were born out of desire to replace what was lost to the abortion. But it does not affect only children that are born after an abortion, it affects children that were born before as well. Some children may develop a “survival syndrome”, while not being a medical or psychological term, it definitely exists in many children that were affected by abortion. These children will do just anything they can in order to please their parents and people around them. They often may feel that they can not do enough to earn respect and love. But on the other hand if a child is misbehaving and call for some discipline and reprimand, parents may be so overwhelmed with guilt over past abortion that hesitate to reprimand the child when they called to so. This inability to discipline and reprimand the child can be present in parent-child relationship in both with children that were born before abortion as well as with children that were born after.

Children that are born after abortion, and in particular children that were born out of desire to replace a child lost, may go through some very difficult times in their relationships with their parents. One of the most difficult parts that parents need to learn that nothing will ever replace what was lost. This can be done by acknowledging that what was lost was very precious, unique and irreplaceable, and help bring a closure. Many teenagers have asked “Why don’t you accept me for who I am?!” While this kind of question can be result of a rebellion stage of their lives, one can not help but wonder whether the parents see in this child some one else? Not only did they see some one else, but it is very possible they wanted to be that child some one else. In the mind of parents the child, that would have been born if abortion did not take place, is better and the child that they have never meets their expectations.

To brake through this kind of vicious cycle, the couple who may have had an abortion would need some deep soul searching and maybe some professional help as well. The good news that there are many people today who come forth and talk about their personal experience of abortion and its aftereffects on their lives. The support groups are being formed around the world where people help each other on the path of healing after abortion.

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple; all the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now the law of Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bend down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you, be the first to throw stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. But hen they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest, and Jesus was left along with the woman standing before him. Jesus looked up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.”

John 8:1-11 While you may have heard or read this story many times in the past, I would like you to look at it fro maybe a little different point. This woman identified as a prostitute elsewhere in the New Testament. To keep her “profession”, her life was very likely scarred by abortion, or maybe even by many abortions. So when Jesus forgives her, his forgiveness is much deeper than just an act of adultery. There is so much more to this story, and I will try to touch up on it in the future. For now I will leave you with this single thought. Even if you feel like every one around is condemning you for abortion, turn to Jesus because he will say to you, “I do not condemn you, go and do not sin again.”

Abortion may have been recent and she may have suffered complications and needs medical attention. It is very unlikely she would go for the follow up to the same doctor that she had abortion at. If needed she should be sent to an emergency care room. She may be pregnant with another child. Most of the second abortions occur within one year of the first one. If she is pregnant, she needs to be referred to some one who knows how to handle a “crisis” pregnancy. Finally, she may have had more than one abortion. It is fine to ask her if this is the only abortion she had. Many women say that one of the most difficult things to do is to come up with the “number” if they had more than one abortion. Women also say that getting the number out is very healing. Do not be surprised or taken back by the number you hear. Every number generally represents years of guilt and self-punishment.

Finally, this kind of ministry will probably be most rewarding experience for you. You are one of the most important people these women will ever meet besides God himself. Picture by: tome213