Printer-friendly versionThe author explores the connection between women who have abortions and a history of abuse in their lives.     Psalm 27:14  “Wait on the Lord; be of good courage and he shall strengthen thine heart.” Volume 8, No. 5                                                                                                                                                      July 2002   The Connection Between Abortion and Abuse   During my years of working at a crisis pregnancy center, I gained much insight into the effects of abortion and abuse and the methods of treatment.  What I didn’t understand was the connection between the two.  When I was introduced to Philip G. Ney, MD, FRCP(C), RPsych, founder of the Hope Alive program at a Heartbeat Conference in 1997, many of my unanswered questions were answered.  It is through the insight I gained from Dr. Ney and training in the Hope Alive method of treatment that I share with you my understanding of the connection between abortion and abuse.   These two tragedies are like a web, woven through generations and the whole of one’s life.  Abuse destroys and devalues the person a child is growing into and that person’s later involvement in abortion completes the process of dehumanization.  History is repeated until we understand and deal with the origination of conflicts.  Underneath the abortion and abuse trauma is Satan’s ploy to destroy God’s creation, humanity that God loves and with whom He desires relationships.  Satan will condemn and discredit to inflict with unworthiness.   He is the instigator of dehumanization and worthlessness in humanity, and his goal is to convince people his debilitating lies are truth. With his ploy to wear down one’s strengths, self image, and concept of God’s created life, he seeks to disable people so they’re powerless in pursuing life and being healthy contributors in God’s growing Kingdom.   Child abuse and infant abortion have many things in common and one leads to the other in complex cycles of cause and effect, inflicting deep damage and conflicts that are hard to resolve.  Attempting to treat one without treating the other can leave the individual with many unresolved issues that can result in hopelessness.  We must treat both the symptoms and the root causes of abuse and abortion to stop tragic history from repeating itself.     Mistreating and even killing children causes deep and often irreparable harm in families and cuts at the very root of our humanity.  Over the years, we’ve seen that abortion not only kills a child, but also affects a broad spectrum of people, including fathers, mothers, siblings, and grandparents who have been deeply damaged.  When damage is done, it not only affects the one being damaged, but also affects the one doing the harm.  One cannot harm others without harming one’s self.   Abortion tends to lead to abuse when it creates an anxious future pregnancy and interferes with the parents’ joyful preparation for the arrival of their baby.  Dr. Ney writes, “Because the baby’s placenta enfolds itself within the mother’s uterine wall, and because there are only two cells between baby and mother, there is intimate communication.  Mother and unborn baby get to know each other very well and that knowledge lasts a lifetime.  The mother’s uterus makes an organic attachment.  This attachment is recorded and reinforced in the mother’s mind.  In this way, every mother and subsequently every father become attached to their baby” (Hope Alive,  p. VI-38). The bond between a mother and her unborn child is closer than any other human bond. Their bodies move in rhythm in constant contact as the baby develops in the womb.  In the process of natural development, bonding increases throughout pregnancy.   Abortion interrupts this very delicate mechanism, severs the developing bond that is critical for an infant’s protection, and lessens the ability for bonding between mother and future children.   The failure of bonding is an important cause of child battering.   Anything that interferes with early attachment and bonding of mother to child is an important contributor of child abuse. Consequently, as rates of abortion have increased, rates of abuse have increased proportionately.   ____________________________________________________________________________________________
In research studies, mothers report that when they abort it destroys a part of themselves.  A mother must overcome her instinctual impulse to attend to a little one’s helplessness in order to choose abortion.   She must shut down her God-given response and this affects future children and their cries for help.  When those pleas are ignored or stifled in a child, when the child becomes a parent there is a weakened ability to recognize the unborn’s cry for protection.   When someone doesn’t respond to an unborn’s struggle, he or she becomes inclined to passivity when a battered child cries for help.  This results in more people responding to cries of distress with rage or neglect, rather than with protection.   Abortion results in further abuse through displaced hostility.  There is an increasing hostility of men and women towards each other. For the woman, the baby may be a constant reminder of a previous relationship and she can displace aggression toward the former boyfriend onto the child.  When men have no legal right to participate in the decision of abortion for their child, and with the promotion of single parenting, the establishment of sperm banks and test tube babies, men deem themselves and are so deemed by some groups as unnecessary.  When they are unable to express their pent-up rage, they displace their aggression onto children. Abortion diminishes the value of all children.  When destruction of the unborn is socially sanctioned and even applauded, children recognize their loss of worthiness and value.  This awareness may contribute both to subsequent abortions and an increasing rate of suicide.    Abuse tends to lead to abortion when a mother is threatened with abandonment by those she looks to for love and respect.  One who has been deeply wounded through abuse has been desensitized to death, both for themselves and their unborn child.  It is difficult to humanize an unborn child when one has themselves been dehumanized through abuse.  Abuse and abortion have resulted in the devaluing of all children.   An abused child lives as the lesser of two humans, powerlessly vulnerable to an abusive environment.  When these children become parents, they revert to what they learned.  If the parent or authority figures rule, when their children become parents they believe they now have the right to choose, at their child’s expense, what is best for them as parent. The scapegoating and abuse of children continues passing from generation to generation.  Abortion is the ultimate abuse which results from the mind set that one has the right to choose the outcome of life for one that is believed to have less value, the belief that one can benefit from the disposal of one’s own species, God’s created humanity.  The future of all life has become a matter of selection by those with power and authority.   The interlocking web of abuse and abortion is  depersonalization or dehumanization, an internal process that dictates that, before one can abuse another person, they must first see that person as a lesser person, or less human than themselves.  If one perceives themselves as having more value, they take the right to control and power over one they see as having less value.  It is a gradual degradation of humanity that affects the entire person: physical, spiritual and emotional.  With a snowball effect, all of humanity is affected.   To change the course of history, we must learn to rehumanize all of humanity.  We must become integrated, authentic individuals with more insight and many skills to live a full, complete, and healthy life.  To recapture part of one’s own humanity, one must rehumanize the unborn baby and all others who have been deemed of lesser value. Dealing with the effects of abortion directly diminishes the internal tension and allows realistic expectations.  This provides a model for resolving many kinds of conflicts so generational tragedy stops and children stop being scapegoated through abuse and abortion.   People created in God’s image are trifold beings with interwoven elements of life.  Rather than attempting to treat segmented pieces with the hope you can put them back in their rightful place, we must continually search for understanding of the whole person to successfully help people walk in the wholeness of life.  As we understand more of who we are and see our personal relationships become more meaningful and rewarding, we broaden our understanding of others and can help others walk through similar healing processes.    God is the healer and only as we develop a more intimate relationship with Him that brings growth to our own lives can we be effective in helping others in healing and growth.  The deep damages resulting from abortion and child abuse have unleashed a multitude of afflictions - physical, spiritual, and emotional - on people around the world, passing the worthlessness from generation to generation.  As we help parents heal from these deep damages, we can influence the societal atmosphere, affect the decrease of abuse and abortion of children, and bring new hope for future generations.  Copyright 2002 Heartbeat International. Used with permission. This is the fifth in a series on Post-Abortion Syndrome edited by Margaret H. Hartshorn, Heartbeat President.  This issue was written by Eunice Eastman.  Eunice, a certified counselor and trainer in the Hope Alive method of treatment and she works for Heartbeat as a consultant for H.E.A.R.T.  If you have questions about either of these programs, she can be contacted at (817)490-1007 or eastman5052@juno.com.