Abortion: Cutting at the Roots of Human Survival

Philip G. Ney, MD, FRCP(C), MA, FRANZCP, RPsych

Presented at:  6th Father Alexandr Men's Memorial International Conference
September 10th, 1996, Moscow, in the State Library for Foreign Literature

When the roots of a tree are destroyed, every leaf will wither and every branch will die. The way in which humans treat their pre-born, helpless young is the root of human survival. It is inconceivable that a tree would destroy its own roots, yet humans are distorting the fine ecological balances that sustain our species. Only those who never considered having an abortion or were never considered for an abortion are unaffected. The net impact of abortion can be measured in many ways. One way is to examine the decreasing birth rate that is becoming world-wide. Another way is to note increasing rates of violent crimes and suicides. We must understand that without a growing population a free market economy cannot work. Without children, there is no hope for the future. Abortion kills hope and shrivels every leaf of the human family tree.

The Gospel states, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," i.e. those who have no resources in themselves to count on and who therefore must lean upon God. In many respects, there is no one more poor than a pre-born baby, but he is rich because he trusts in God and in his parents. Therefore, it is terrible that we should presume to kill one of God's favourite creations and transgress the trust the child has in his parents.

The Gospel also states that the Truth will set you free. We cannot have freedom without truth. We cannot see any kind of truth in others or in the world until we face the most desperate truth in ourselves. That truth is our killing, or allowing to be killed, an innocent, trusting pre-born baby.

What can I say about truth from a psychological and a historical point of view? I believe the following are true:

1. There is only one truth, and therefore science and Scripture must and do agree.
   
   
2. Truth will triumph. You cannot suppress truth indefinitely. If you embrace truth there is short term pain but long term gain. If you run from truth there is a short apparent gain but a much greater degree of long term pain, chaos, individual and collective death.
   
   
3. The most important truth is the most painful truth, but the most painful truth is the most deeply buried both in our subconscious minds and in the archives of our nations.
   
   
4. The most painful truth is regarding our stupidity and destructiveness, particularly our part in the death of millions of unborn babies.
   
   
5. Until we face the most difficult truth in ourselves, we cannot be honest with ourselves or with others. Until we are honest with ourselves, there cannot be honesty or trust between individuals. Families and government cannot survive without trust, except for a short time by oppression.
   
   
6. Our greatest sin is ignoring the Truth and confusing ourselves and others with palliative philosophy, religion, science or psychology.
   
   
7. Our survival is not built into our philosophy, but into our biology. Our survival has been safe up to this point. Now that we are able to undermine the biological basis of our human relationships, nobody is safe.
   
   
8. Our deepest guilt comes from our tendency to destroy ourselves and our species by killing our own young. That basic guilt stems from transgressing the biological basis of our survival and does not arise from religion or morality.
   
   
9. The observers have the greatest responsibility in the tragic triangle of perpetrator, victim and observer. There are no innocent bystanders in matters of life and death. Yet, the observers usually provide the excuse, "I did not see, and besides, I could do nothing about it."
   
   
10. We cannot be part of the solution to human dilemmas until we see how we are part of the problem. Even the most staunch pro-lifer must wonder if there is any part of what they do or do not do that contributes to the massive problem of abortion.
    
    
11. Until we understand the deepest conflicts of our painful past, we must re-enact our tragedy. We have no choice. We must understand, otherwise we die in entropy (lack of energy and chaos). The tendency to re-enact tragedy occurs in individuals, families and in nations in order to learn from our unresolved conflicts. Therefore, everyone in every nation must grapple with the devastation that results from abortion firstly in themselves and then in the nation, otherwise our species cannot survive. We are transgressing one of God's most fundamental laws, do not murder. In His disgust of what we are doing to unborn babies, I suspect He will soon allow us to experience the devastating consequence of our own stupidity. Silence and secrecy can no longer prevail. We are destroying ourselves, our families and our species.

Dehumanising and destroying unborn babies dehumanises us and destroys some of the most beautiful parts of the God-created human. Until we face this deep and widespread problem of abortion and until we acknowledge the truth in ourselves, there are increasingly wide consequences. Many of these are better seen and more widely acknowledged in countries where abortion has been practised for a longer period of time. Eastern European people know in their hearts that abortion affects everyone in the family.

Women

Every woman becomes physically attached to her baby. What happens in the body is recorded in and encouraged by the mind. Therefore every woman becomes psychologically attached to the baby whether she wants the baby or not.

A.  Grief.  Every abortion requires mourning, but it is the most difficult grief known to humans. This is because the mother;

i) contributed to the death of the baby she now must mourn,

ii) dehumanised the infant and must rehumanise the pre-born baby before she can grieve the loss of him or her,

iii) was not able to hold her dead baby's body. Seeing and touching the dead body is necessary to precipitate grief,

iv) received no social support or professional aid to grieve, 

v) has unresolved ambivalence to the baby, herself, her partner, her family and the state.

B.  Fear.  The mother now has fears, most of which come from fearing her own aggression. She has broken through her instinctual restraint to harming her own helpless young. She now knows she can kill, and she will not trust herself with her anger. Out of her fear she becomes more cautious with her emotions and controlling with her children.

C.  Identity.  She has damaged her feminine identity. To compensate, she may pursue masculine interests and career, which activity may have an impact on her hormonal profile.

D.  Self Worth.  Her feelings of worthlessness arising from childhood abuse and neglect are accentuated. If she decides the unborn infant is worthless and that child is her best effort, then she herself is worthless.

E.  Anger.  She has a deep anger because once again she has been abandoned in her time of need.

F.  Biorhythms.  Abortion damages her biorhythms by truncating the long biological rhythm of pregnancy. She feels unfulfilled, dissatisfied, and may try hard to become pregnant again.

G.  Retaliation.  She fears that what she did by killing her baby will be done to her.

H.  Poor Parenting.  She has difficulty bonding to, touching, breastfeeding and responding normally to an infant's cry.

Our research has found that women who have been abused and neglected are more likely to have abortions. We also found that women who have had abortions are more likely to abuse and neglect their children. This is partly due to the following facts;

1. Mothers who have had previous abortions are more anxious and tend not to anticipate the birth of the subsequent child or prepare for his/her arrival.
   
   
2. Her fears of being punished for her abortion tend to cement themselves into a belief that her next baby will be malformed. Therefore she tends not to want to see it and only to deliver it under the most medically proficient conditions. She may want to be reassured repeatedly that her baby is normal, requesting repeated assurance and ultrasound.
   
   
3. After the birth of the baby after an abortion, she is more likely to be depressed and consequently has more difficulty bonding to the child. Children who are not well bonded are not well protected from the parent's rage and/or helplessness, therefore they are more likely to be abused and neglected.
   
   
4. The post-abortion mother has difficulty touching and caressing the baby. Therefore the baby's mind and body are not as well integrated.
   
   
5. The post-abortion mother has more difficulty breastfeeding a baby and therefore he/she is both less well nurtured physically and psychologically.
   
   
6. The baby, being not as well nurtured, is more unhappy and demanding, accentuating the mother's feeling of helplessness and worthlessness as a parent.
   
   
7. The post-abortion parents are more likely to respond to the baby's helpless cry with feelings of helplessness, anxiety and irritation. Thus the child is more likely to be neglected or aggressed in response to its demand for nurture.

As a result of those conflicts following abortion, the mother feels;

a) pathological grief, which results in depression, and depression can suppress the immune system. As a result, her general health is poor and she is more likely to have cancer and infection.

b) occasions of panic, nightmares, rage that may be expressed against herself in self-destructive behaviours.

c) poor heterosexual relationships and lack of intimacy.

d) anxiously attached, irritable children who make her feel inadequate as a parent.

Women who are abortion survivors and who have also had an abortion suffer from a combination of the most difficult conflicts known to humans. If she is healthy and well-defended, these symptoms may not surface until some other trauma triggers the underlying conflicts.

Men

In most countries men have no legal right to stop an abortion. Fathers of aborted children are kept from asserting their prerogative of territoriality and protection. Because men fear their baby may at any time be killed by abortion without their awareness or consent, they tend not to attach themselves emotionally to their pre-born babies. Because they are not attached to the babies, they do not support the mother. Our research has shown that, other factors being equal, mothers not well supported by their partner are more likely to have more abortions and miscarriages. The more likely she is to have an abortion, the less likely he is to attach to the baby and thus ensues a vicious cycle. They feel deprived of their manhood, potency and helpfulness. As a result of the father's inability to protect his young, there is a deep underlying rage which, together with his feeling of helplessness, expresses itself in increasing rates of rape, marital violence, impotence and abandoning his family.

Children

It is not lost on young minds that if the first right of every child is to be wanted, then if they are not wanted they have no right to be. Children born because they are wanted try to stay wantable. Eventually they resent living by the tenuous thread of wantedness and violently rebel. Children who live in countries where many or most children are aborted, or have siblings who were aborted, or who are part of a minority who would have been aborted had they been detected, or who have survived an abortion attempt, are abortion survivors. Most, if not all, children know when a brother or sister is aborted.

Abortion survivor's conflicts are;

a) Survivor guilt. "I don't deserve to be alive when my sibling, just as good as I am, was arbitrarily killed."

b) Existential anxiety. "I suspect some force over which I have no control will kill me just like it killed my unborn brother or sister."

c) Ontological guilt. "I can't plan for the future or take advantage of my opportunities, so now I feel guilty for not becoming the person I could have been."

d) Distrust of parents and parental authorities. "How can I trust my parents when they killed by unborn siblings. They said they did it in love for me. If that is what love and being a parent is all about, I don't want either."

e) No inherent worth. "They tell me they had me because they wanted me. If I am alive only because I am wanted, I have no inherent worth, so neither does anybody else. Without inherent value, it is not hard for me to die and it isn't hard to kill others."

 f) Superficial relationships. "My parents weren't really attached to me nor I to them, so how can I commit myself to others."

g) Rage. "Why didn't the state or my father protect my aborted brother or sister? If they don't protect people when they are most vulnerable, why should I care what happens to them?"

A combination of these conflicts may result in angry, narcissistic, destructive young people. There are millions of abortion survivors who are all too ready to destroy or be destroyed.

Grandparents 

Having aborted some of their children or having urged their children to abort, older people have a deep fear of retaliation. Recognising they are losing their wantedness, they desperately cling to their children who, in irritation avoid them or put in an old age home. They fear their growing frailty and dependency, and may try to assert their last vestige of control with physician assisted suicide.

Medicine 

Ignoring good science and discarding ancient ethics, medicine is ruled more by what can be done than by what should be done. Medicine should be ruled by wisdom and a concern for long-term benefit. There are no scientifically proven physical, psychological or social benefits to abortion. Psychiatric illness is a contraindication for abortion. Abortion is neither safe nor therapeutic. Lying about its benefit has made much of medicine dishonest and encouraged the population to be distrustful. As the credibility of and confidence in medicine declines, practising defensive medicine greatly increases the cost of medical care and the size of malpractice lawsuits grows.

Nation

Without purpose and hope, every nation declines. The presence of children makes us concerned about the quality of the future, the conservation of resources, the increase of civility of our interactions, and the promotion of art and science for those who follow. When there are few children, there is less hope. Without hope people are not inclined to have children. A vicious cycle of declining hope and fewer children creates a national atmosphere of apathy and hedonism. There is increasing evidence that when basic family nurturing and bonding mechanisms are undermined, there is little desire to have and protect children. Soon after, the declining birth-rate cannot be reversed by incentives or coercion. When humans kill or consent to the killing of defenceless innocent children, no law can maintain order, no one is safe. Random violence and chaos soon follow for now there is no moral or instinctual restraint to abandoning or attacking.

Diagnosis.

Humanity is committing its own genocide. Unless we understand and correct the individual and national conflicts that stem from abortion, the deep conflicts that result from the tragedy of killing babies will be handed from one generation to the next. Since there are no innocent bystanders, if we are not curing, we are killing. If we are not doing good, we are doing evil (Luke 6:6-11).

The damage is extraordinarily deep, cutting at the very roots of our existence. It is also extensive. There are approximately 60,000,000 abortions per annum, affecting 45-90% (depending on which country) of all women and men by the time they reach 45 years of age. There are approximately 50,000,000 mothers, 50,000,000 fathers and 100,000,000 siblings being deeply damaged by abortion every year. The evil of killing deepens and extends so that more pre-born babies will be first scapegoated then sacrificed by abortion in a vicious downward spiral. The Lord, the Creator, will not overlook what we are doing. He will judge the world, and that judgement always begins with His people.

Treatment.

We must treat the whole family - wounded mothers, fathers and siblings. The treatment requires facing the most difficult and painful experiences, grieving losses, facing anger, fear and guilt, effecting a reconciliation, and learning how to put painful truth into the practice of helping others. Having faced the most difficult truth, post-abortion parents are in a position to engage in the painful process of reconciliation. Since in the nations with oppression and abortion there are few who are not implicated as perpetrators, observers or victims, reconciliation must involve the whole nation. Everyone must forgive and be forgiven. It is possible the damage is too deep and extensive. The ecological imbalance is irreversible. We may not survive, but we must try and try immediately.

a) We must treat the wounded. The International Institute for Pregnancy Loss and Child Abuse Research and Recovery provides training for in depth group counselling of those injured by child abuse and abortion.

b) Medicine must return to honest science and reinstate enduring ethics.

c) We must welcome every child whenever, wherever, and whomever they may be. Every child is a part of us. To discriminate against and kill any pre-born babies because they are considered genetically inferior is the worst transgression of the poor. It is an abomination the Lord will not tolerate.

Conclusion.

We cannot benefit at the expense of another. If it is not good for black it is not good for white. If it is not good for the baby it is not good for the parents. We are tightly bound in the bundle of life. When we kill, we destroy humanity in ourselves. Abortion cuts the roots of human survival and causes the leaves of the tree to wither and the branches to die. When we love and nurture and welcome, we are loved; we grow and flourish.