CHILDHOOD NEGLECT AND INDUCED ABORTION: NEGLECT AND ABORTION; WHY THEY GO TOGETHER
Philip G. Ney MD FRCP(C) 21/9/12
STATISTICS
The results were clear. When we instructed the computer to do a step wise regression on our data, it showed the closest correlation between 35 possible reasons a woman choose to have an abortion is that she was neglected as a child. All the usual factors that people assumed were the causes for an abortion like age, marital status, education, income, number of children etc. were at the bottom of the list. None were remotely significant. This is quite remarkable said I to the professor of statistics at the U of Calgary. “I suppose’ said unable Dr. Tak Fung, “but why?” “Ahhhh said I, it does make sense. Yes, it really does make a lot of sense. People must know this.”
Twenty five years later and still no journal willing to publish this quite good study, it is even more important for post abortion, women, men and children to know what affected them but professionals don’t want to know this. But you readers do. It will help you understand what happened to you. If you really think about it, it will help you a great deal.
The other factors that correlated closely with a choice to have an abortion were, in descending order: Lack of partner support, have aborted siblings, mother had an abortion, was sexually abused.
EXPERIENCE
If these statistics don’t seem to be intuitively correct, let me try to explain. The explanations are interconnected so bear with me a moment.
If a girl child is neglected: lack of understanding, little affection or affirmation, not defended but accused, lack of sibling fun and frolic, not approved when successful but too often criticized, she will ask herself, “why? Why me? Other kids have fun loving, hugging parents, why don’t’ I get all that rich stuff I need to grow?”
Imagine you are at a banquet table and all those around you have heaping plate full of delicious food and tall glass-full of tasty lemonade. You have a few scraps and dirty water in your glass. “This isn’t fair. Why am I left out? I am just as pretty and my manners are good. I guess they (hosts) don’t like me. I think they are mean. No, they can’t be. Look at all the good food around me. Well, I (tears welling up), I guess it’s because I’m not good enough. I’ll just hide under the table and maybe find some scraps the others have dropped.”
A child has feedback from others, you’re “pretty” or “smart” or “quick at games” that gives her reason to believe she should have her needs properly met. However, children must believe their parents, not so much what they say but how well they love (meeting all her needs) this child. Since a child is intuitively aware of how much, when and what her needs are in terms of her blueprint, she knows when she is deprived. It is agonizing for any child to be neglected for she subconsciously knows if these needs are not met when they should be, she will never have another chance.
Thus, the net effects of neglect are:
a) A constant, increasingly hopeless yearning that somehow, someone someday will really love her and make it all better. Since development in house building or human maturing is irreversible, those hopes are unrealistic and she eventually knows it.
b) She develops the life-long perspective, that her needs were not met because she is unworthy of love.
c) She battles this lack of self-esteem by trying to prove to herself and important others, by prodigious effort and a string of accomplishments that she is worth more than her neglected state would indicate.
d) Because she values herself so lowly, she expects to be treated poorly, because after all that is what she really believes she deserves.
e) What she expects to get is what she gets, poor treatment, especially by those she hopes will love her most.
f) The present neglect is a reenactment of the unresolved conflict from her childhood that never seems to end, resulting in the perpetual cry from the heart, “Why do people keep treating me so poorly when I try so hard to be nice to them.”
g) As a mother she soon finds it is nearly impossible to give to her child the recognition, affirmation etc., she did not receive as a child.
h) Realizing she is neglecting her child, she tries extra hard at giving, only to end up spoiling him/her.
i) When she first becomes pregnant she understands all too well, she will not naturally be a good mother, so is more inclined to have an abortion. “Knowing the effects of my neglect, I know I could never be a good mother, so I will save this poor child from all the heart-ache I experienced growing up.”
j) Part of the reenactment of childhood neglect is falling in love with a person who has also been neglected, “He really understands what it is like and would never let that happen to me’. Initially it is all flowers and chocolates. As soon as she becomes pregnant and hopes desperately he will be there for all her needs, he is inclined to communicate, “I’m really sorry, but I am such a needy person myself, I could never look after both you and a baby. You had better get rid of it.”
k) Threatened with being abandoned again, she reluctantly agrees to an abortion, only to find he leaves anyhow.
l) Her deep bitterness at how she has been neglected and abandoned once again makes her “hate men” and inclined to join the militant feminists only then to realize she is among a bitter group of neglected woman who are in no position to meet her needs, even if she joins them in bed.
m) With IVF she has a child, “I’ll show them I don’t need them” only to find she is poor at mothering, a deep damage that no amount of reading parenting books and popular parenting courses will correct. “I just don’t understand why I keep losing my cool.”
n) She places her infant son in a “really good day-care” and ferociously pursues a career while “co-parenting” with a boyfriend who lives 500 miles away. At 40+ she finds fame, position and fortune are empty attractions so once more finds a partner who “accidentally” makes her pregnant. This time she abandons him. When confronted by a physicians who warns her she could have a Down’s baby, she replies, “I don’t care. I just want to be unconditionally loved and I understand Down’s will do that.” Her baby is truly Down’s and really loves her but not in the complicated manner she dreamed of. So she puts her “difficult child” in a government institution. “He’ll be happier there.”
o) If she has a genetically normal child, she finds she can’t give up the old comforts and the retirement package of her job. So at an early age, she puts the baby girl in day care, starting a pattern of fatherless neglect she knows so well.
p) Her baby girl repeats the cycle of being neglected, aborting or neglecting her babies. As a young woman, this child can’t settle down, bounces from one relationship to another and can’t understand why until someone explains the effects of being a post abortion survivor.
q) Her son tries hard to overcome the deficits from his neglect, only to find that the women he subconsciously chooses turn him off soon after they become bonded in sex. Why? Because he is searching for the sister who was aborted. Realizing the wonderful woman in his arms could have been his sister, he flees this kind of incest, never more to kiss a woman.
This story is not uncommon but does not have to be as preset or tragic as I have described. People can learn but it takes a very perceptive, well trained counselor to help this lady unravel the complicated psych-dynamics. There are many variations on the basic neglect-abortion connection. Many seem to end up as another minor or major tragedy. Is there hope? Yes.
CHILDHOOD NEGLECT AND INDUCED ABORTION: NEGLECT AND ABORTION; WHY THEY GO TOGETHER
Philip G. Ney MD FRCP(C) 21/9/12
STATISTICS
The results were clear. When we instructed the computer to do a step wise regression on our data, it showed the closest correlation between 35 possible reasons a woman choose to have an abortion is that she was neglected as a child. All the usual factors that people assumed were the causes for an abortion like age, marital status, education, income, number of children etc. were at the bottom of the list. None were remotely significant. This is quite remarkable said I to the professor of statistics at the U of Calgary. “I suppose’ said unable Dr. Tak Fung, “but why?” “Ahhhh said I, it does make sense. Yes, it really does make a lot of sense. People must know this.”
Twenty five years later and still no journal willing to publish this quite good study, it is even more important for post abortion, women, men and children to know what affected them but professionals don’t want to know this. But you readers do. It will help you understand what happened to you. If you really think about it, it will help you a great deal.
The other factors that correlated closely with a choice to have an abortion were, in descending order: Lack of partner support, have aborted siblings, mother had an abortion, was sexually abused.
EXPERIENCE
If these statistics don’t seem to be intuitively correct, let me try to explain. The explanations are interconnected so bear with me a moment.
If a girl child is neglected: lack of understanding, little affection or affirmation, not defended but accused, lack of sibling fun and frolic, not approved when successful but too often criticized, she will ask herself, “why? Why me? Other kids have fun loving, hugging parents, why don’t’ I get all that rich stuff I need to grow?”
Imagine you are at a banquet table and all those around you have heaping plate full of delicious food and tall glass-full of tasty lemonade. You have a few scraps and dirty water in your glass. “This isn’t fair. Why am I left out? I am just as pretty and my manners are good. I guess they (hosts) don’t like me. I think they are mean. No, they can’t be. Look at all the good food around me. Well, I (tears welling up), I guess it’s because I’m not good enough. I’ll just hide under the table and maybe find some scraps the others have dropped.”
A child has feedback from others, you’re “pretty” or “smart” or “quick at games” that gives her reason to believe she should have her needs properly met. However, children must believe their parents, not so much what they say but how well they love (meeting all her needs) this child. Since a child is intuitively aware of how much, when and what her needs are in terms of her blueprint, she knows when she is deprived. It is agonizing for any child to be neglected for she subconsciously knows if these needs are not met when they should be, she will never have another chance.
Thus, the net effects of neglect are:
a) A constant, increasingly hopeless yearning that somehow, someone someday will really love her and make it all better. Since development in house building or human maturing is irreversible, those hopes are unrealistic and she eventually knows it.
b) She develops the life-long perspective, that her needs were not met because she is unworthy of love.
c) She battles this lack of self-esteem by trying to prove to herself and important others, by prodigious effort and a string of accomplishments that she is worth more than her neglected state would indicate.
d) Because she values herself so lowly, she expects to be treated poorly, because after all that is what she really believes she deserves.
e) What she expects to get is what she gets, poor treatment, especially by those she hopes will love her most.
f) The present neglect is a reenactment of the unresolved conflict from her childhood that never seems to end, resulting in the perpetual cry from the heart, “Why do people keep treating me so poorly when I try so hard to be nice to them.”
g) As a mother she soon finds it is nearly impossible to give to her child the recognition, affirmation etc., she did not receive as a child.
h) Realizing she is neglecting her child, she tries extra hard at giving, only to end up spoiling him/her.
i) When she first becomes pregnant she understands all too well, she will not naturally be a good mother, so is more inclined to have an abortion. “Knowing the effects of my neglect, I know I could never be a good mother, so I will save this poor child from all the heart-ache I experienced growing up.”
j) Part of the reenactment of childhood neglect is falling in love with a person who has also been neglected, “He really understands what it is like and would never let that happen to me’. Initially it is all flowers and chocolates. As soon as she becomes pregnant and hopes desperately he will be there for all her needs, he is inclined to communicate, “I’m really sorry, but I am such a needy person myself, I could never look after both you and a baby. You had better get rid of it.”
k) Threatened with being abandoned again, she reluctantly agrees to an abortion, only to find he leaves anyhow.
l) Her deep bitterness at how she has been neglected and abandoned once again makes her “hate men” and inclined to join the militant feminists only then to realize she is among a bitter group of neglected woman who are in no position to meet her needs, even if she joins them in bed.
m) With IVF she has a child, “I’ll show them I don’t need them” only to find she is poor at mothering, a deep damage that no amount of reading parenting books and popular parenting courses will correct. “I just don’t understand why I keep losing my cool.”
n) She places her infant son in a “really good day-care” and ferociously pursues a career while “co-parenting” with a boyfriend who lives 500 miles away. At 40+ she finds fame, position and fortune are empty attractions so once more finds a partner who “accidentally” makes her pregnant. This time she abandons him. When confronted by a physicians who warns her she could have a Down’s baby, she replies, “I don’t care. I just want to be unconditionally loved and I understand Down’s will do that.” Her baby is truly Down’s and really loves her but not in the complicated manner she dreamed of. So she puts her “difficult child” in a government institution. “He’ll be happier there.”
o) If she has a genetically normal child, she finds she can’t give up the old comforts and the retirement package of her job. So at an early age, she puts the baby girl in day care, starting a pattern of fatherless neglect she knows so well.
p) Her baby girl repeats the cycle of being neglected, aborting or neglecting her babies. As a young woman, this child can’t settle down, bounces from one relationship to another and can’t understand why until someone explains the effects of being a post abortion survivor.
q) Her son tries hard to overcome the deficits from his neglect, only to find that the women he subconsciously chooses turn him off soon after they become bonded in sex. Why? Because he is searching for the sister who was aborted. Realizing the wonderful woman in his arms could have been his sister, he flees this kind of incest, never more to kiss a woman.
This story is not uncommon but does not have to be as preset or tragic as I have described. People can learn but it takes a very perceptive, well trained counselor to help this lady unravel the complicated psych-dynamics. There are many variations on the basic neglect-abortion connection. Many seem to end up as another minor or major tragedy. Is there hope? Yes.